Aspiring

They came out fast. Zilchy scored on a rebound to make it 1-0 and then Patrick deflected a low shot by Tyler, over Tatch, the Land Sharks’ goalie, for a 2-0 lead late in the first period. Andrew tried to make only one tough save, when Crosby got free and swung in untouched from his left. He shot low and hard to his stick side and he barely got his right tow on it. The rebound went right to his partner in crime, who also happened to be my old enemy back from the dead. It was Andrew Campbell, who tried to jam it just inside the goalpost, but he dove and smothered it for a whistle.

“Screw you, Carpie,” Tyler heard Crosby tell the Eagles’ goalie, Andrew Carpenter yet again.

Sometime in the second period,

A little more than six minutes remained. The skaters lined up for a face-off to Andrew Carpenter’s right. As the ref held the puck out over the face-off dot, Tyler glimpsed Campbell smirking at him. Zack won the face-off and sent it back to Patrick, who slid the puck immediately to his goalie. Andrew froze it for another face-off, which is what Patrick wanted.

“Hang on,” he told the ref, and then skated to the bench. Patrick punched the glass with his right fist and yelled, “No!” The ref’s whistle shrilled.

“Today gentlemen,” he said.

The Eagle player turned back to the game, his face was pale with a mask of anger. Tyler felt certain then that something bad was going to happen.

From the next face-off, Zack shoveled the puck ahead to Bryan, who banged it into the Land Sharks’ end. Zilchy chased it down in a corner and slid a quick pass back to Patrick, waiting just above the face-off dot to the left of the Land Sharks’ net. From there he could’ve had a clear shot on goal or he could’ve passed it to Tyler at the far goalpost. Instead he lifted his stick an inch and let the puck slide beneath it. He tried to make it look like a mistake. Inexplicably, he waited a beat while Crosby rushed past and scooped up the disk. Patrick turned in pursuit at once.

Crosby had a breakaway, Patrick was faster, though, and could have overtaken him easily. Instead he maintained his pace two strides behind, waiting for something. What are you doing? Tyler thought. He saw Andrew, the goalie, slide out to cut down the angle, his eyes darting between both men, still trailing. Crosby veered to the middle of the ice. Andrew stopped and squatted, prepared to push backward, catching glove high. Glove in position, his eyes now on the puck. He was guessing that Crosby was preparing to shoot rather than deke when Patrick stole the puck and Crosby shouted out a cuss word, then Patrick’s legs buckled and the puck squirted away.

The heel of Crosby’s stick caught Patrick just under the right eye. Crosby swung it like a baseball bat, following through as Patrick cried out once and crumpled. Crosby raised his stick again and brought it down like an ax on the side of Patrick’s head. Patrick was wearing a helmet, but again Tyler heard the crack of wood on bone.

“Patrick!” Tyler screamed. He dropped his stick and gloves and rushed to grab Crosby, before he swung his stick again. Tyler had a fistful of his jersey when someone tackled them from behind. In an instant, other Land Sharks and Eagles were piling on, screaming and cursing. A whistle was blowing. Tyler overheard someone saying, “Oh my God, call an ambulance, call an ambulance.” Somebody was punching Tyler in the back, but he hung tight to Crosby, his helmet pressed against the back of his neck. The fiery Shark was muttering to himself, shooting a series of curse words in a row.

The refs peeled them all apart. Somebody pulled Tyler away and Bryan and Fiyero grabbed Crosby by his arms and he let them. “That’s all, Crosby, settle down.”

Patrick somehow had survived and he scrambled to his feet, but he was bleeding from the left side of his head, which looked rather disgusting. That was why someone was calling for an ambulance. Patrick had blood coming from a swollen eye too.

“Crosby, you bastard!”

Both men were ejected from the game, as they should have been. Things were spiraling in this bloodbath of a final game.

As the Sharks took the lead into the second period, Campbell started playing more and more like the man he’d grown up as. He kicked Tyler’s legs out from behind. Elbowed Danny in the face. Clipped Fiyero with a butt end, as he skated past. All when the refs weren’t looking, of course. Mostly though, he gunned for Tyler Marchand. He cross-checked him in the neck, whacked him in the back of the knees, yapped at him at face-offs.

“You think this is a fucking game?” he shouted once.

Tyler did not reply, which wasn’t like him. He was certainly no fighter, but he rarely shied from yapping at a yapper. Crosby kept it up. Tyler kept turning away. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to feed the frenzy. Patrick and Crosby were already ejected from the game and neither team could afford anymore stupidness.

Midway through the third period, Campbell took a pass from his teammate and fired a slapper just to Andrew Carpenter’s right. Campbell had a cannon, but the goalie saw this shot cleanly and flicked out his glove to block it. He thought he had it easily, but it deflected off his bottom edge, ricocheted downward, and bounced off the side of his right leg pad and into the net. While the Sharks celebrated, Andrew, the goalie, looked at his glove in disbelief, wondering if the lack of one wind of tape had cost him.

But Tyler felt like it was his fault.

****

They sat in the dressing room, dazed and silent, but for a few muffled sobs. Coach and his assistants left them alone. After what seemed like an hour, Coach came in and packed up the tackle box, he used to carry tape and first-aid supplies. He looked around the room.

“We’re done here, boys. Get dressed and get out.” He turned to leave.

“Get the fuck out yourself.”

It was Patrick Cleary, sitting on Tyler’s left. Blackburn stopped and turned around. “Excuse me?” he said. Behind him the door opened and the assistant coach walked inside.

“You heard me. You cost us the title!” Patrick threw his runner-up plaque to the floor at Blackburn’s feet. “You put the wrong guy on Crosby and you know it.”

“Fuck off, Cleary,” Tyler whispered. Patrick was slowly becoming more and more like the man I had ended the game again, Andrew Campbell. You might as well pencil him down as my arch-enemy.

Blackburn set the tackle box down and walked over to Patrick. He leaned down until his face was barely two inches from Patrick’s. “I cost us the game?” He smiled in a way Tyler had never seen before. It made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He took Patrick’s chin in his hand. The man tried to pull away, but Blackburn held tight. “You pull that selfish fag move of yours and I cost us the game? You are a joke son, you know that? A joke. Maybe when you realize that, you’ll be able to make better use of your God-given talents instead of wasting them on hot dog fag moves and fighting.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick said, still trying to jerk his face away. He still had the horrendous mark from the scary incident, but at least the medical staff had clean the blood. But still, he looked pretty grotesque, almost like the Phantom of the Opera.

“Coach,” Tyler blurted. “Leave him.”

Coach let Patrick’s chin go and turned slowly to Tyler.

“What did you say?”

“Shut up, Marchy,” Patrick said.

“He’s upset,” Tyler said. “Leave him. He didn’t lose the game. I lost the game.”

“Marchy, shut up.”

“You,” Blackburn said. He reached across Patrick and jabbed a forefinger hard into his chest. “Claude!” the assistant coach admonished, but Blackburn ignored him. “What the hell were you thinking, Tyler, when you were just lying there on the ice, staring at number eighty-seven? Huh? Why didn’t you kiss him?” He jabbed him again and Tyler flinched.

“I couldn’t get up. I tried –”

“You tried?” He pointed his stabbing finger at the door. “Well, you know what? All those people out there who thought we were going to have a state championship in this town? They don’t give a damn if you tried or what you tried or how you tried. Because you failed. That’s what they know, and that’s what they’ll always know. How many times do I have to tell you, Tyler? Nobody gives a good damn how. They only care how many. And you know what? I’m with them. Because right now, we could have a state championship trophy in this room, but we got a little piece-of-shit plague and it doesn’t mean a damn thing how anymore. Do you hear me?”

Patrick leaned between them and directed a low, hoarse whisper at Blackburn, as if he wanted no one else to hear. “He knows.”

Coach’s head snapped back to Patrick. Tyler thought he saw his friend and linemate flinch. “What?”

Their eyes met. Blackburn backed away, raising his palms in a gesture of angry surrender. “Fine,” he growled. He picked up his tackle box and walked out with his assistant.

Yeah, so that was how Tyler Marchand’s third year with Boston College went. Being introduced to Campbell and Crosby, Patrick Cleary was losing his talent and maybe his mind. He was making stupid plays and bad decisions on the ice. And as much as Tyler hated to say it, Patrick WAS the reason they had lost the state championship game. But he was too stubborn and hot headed to realize that.

Luckily, it seemed like a wake-up call to him and he toned down his on-ice aggravation and emotions, holding them in check, as they entered the fourth year and the year of the NHL scouts.