Aspiring

The lead held well into the third and final period. The Eagle Swoop really took over then, taking the edge off the Fitters’ offensive game. Their passes went awry, the open man wasn’t so easy to find, as he was in the first period. Within their zone, Coach drew them into a defense designed to jam the front of their net and force the Fitters to take low-percentage shots from the perimeter.

The clock wound down – ten minutes to go, seven, five. The Fitters were gasping now, and growing frustrated. They seemed astonished that they could be the losing team. With three minutes and sixteen second to go, their astonishment turned to exasperation – one of them took a cross-checking penalty. Their coach nearly vaulted over the boards to assail the referee. Now the Fitters were playing stupid. The Eagles would have a one-man advantage for two minutes. In the stands, the fans began to celebrate. The state title was within reach. All they had to do was keep the puck out of the net.

I don’t know why Patrick Cleary chose that moment to sabotage my efforts and make Drouin be all alone. He chased the loose puck in the Fitter zone. Drouin was as tired as the rest of his teammates. He hadn’t had a clean shot on Andrew since that breakaway he’d barely been able to stop. He shoved Tyler away and took over, separating me from Drouin. Maybe he thought, with the one-man advantage, he could take a chance on scoring the goal that would put the game and the championship away. But when he abandoned Drouin in pursuit of the open puck, he left five strides between himself and his man.

Tyler heard Coach scream, “Patrick – no!” As Patrick reached the puck, Wallman snuck up on his blind side and flattened him. The Eagles fans howled for a penalty. Wallman whacked the puck off the glass and it slide to Drouin in full stride. “Patrick Cleary, get up!” Coach yelled. But Drouin was gone.

Patrick’s gamble left the rest of the Eagles flat-footed, Tyler gave a futile chase from the opposite side of the rink, as Drouin swooped in from his right. Andrew saw it too. He pushed out. The enemy wound up. Andrew never saw the puck. He heard three distinct sounds, barely a second apart. First was the thunderous thwack of wood on rubber. Then the sickening ting of the puck inside the juncture of the goalpost and the crossbar. Then the roar of the Fitter fans.

As Drouin whipped past him, his stick raised high over his head, he looked over and again winked his good eye. “Can’t see it, can’t stop it.”

Andrew skated over to Tyler, who felt a hand grab him by the back of his jersey. He was red-faced and furious. “Fucking Blackburn,” he sputtered, his spittle flecking the skin behind his mask. “I knew this would happening!”

“Forget it, Andrew. We’re going to win.”

“You don’t understand,” Patrick’s voice cried.

Past him, Tyler could see Blackburn and Fiyero calling out from the bench, Zilchy and Bryan skated over.

“Blackburn fucked us, Marchy,” Andrew snarled into his ear.

“Calm down, Carpie.”

“Like hell,” Patrick had said. He turned to skate away, back to his goal and then, as Zilchy and Bryan caught up to him; he wheeled around and yelled, “Watch. I’ll show these motherfuckers a fancy-ass fag move, all right.”

Tyler knew immediately what he meant. It was like back in Halifax. It was happening again, only this time Tyler wasn’t exactly playing the opposing, bastard role.

When it happened, they were five minutes into sudden-death overtime. They had just dumped the puck into the Fitter zone. Number 25 slapped it high on the glass around the back of the net and up the opposite boards. Zack stopped it with his chest and shoveled it back across the ice into the corner left of the Fitter net, where Patrick, having snuck in from his defensive post, now appeared.

Two Fitters converged, but Patrick sidestepped one, then the other, cut left, and scooted behind the net. The two Fitter defensemen momentarily froze in front of their net. The goalie grabbed his crossbar and looked frantically over one shoulder, then the other, trying to anticipate which way Patrick would go. But Tyler was the only one on the rink who knew what was about to happen. (As it turns out, Andrew Campbell, my old rival, wasn’t the only one who knew how to do the move.) I was the only one in the theatre who had seen the movie before, who knew how it was going to end, who knew that Patrick Cleary, no matter how Coach had upset him, was going to be the hero.

He scooped the puck up in his stick blade, lacrosse-like, in a motion so fast that only someone who had seen it before could fathom what was happening. To Tyler, it was al in slow motion. It was Patrick all alone in the rink that afternoon, like Soupy, months before, flinging pucks into the goal mesh from behind the net. It was Patrick practicing the same utterly absurd, utterly sublime move, unbeknownst to Blackburn or anyone else except him, in the moonless cold on the frozen patch behind his garage. For all Tyler Marchand knew, Patrick Cleary had somehow channeled Andrew Campbell.

The Eagles and Fitters crossed in Andrew’s line of sight. He squatted low and eased forward, so he could see through to Patrick. He raised his stick, the puck a black blotch on the white tape on his blade, and snapped it around the wide-open upper corner of the Fitter net. Tyler raised his arms over his head and saw Andrew take a big stride, then another, waiting for the goal light, the last whistle, the explosion of the crowd. They were going to win the state title.

But none of it came.

Instead of the fans’ roar, Tyler heard the clank – Tyler would learn only later – of a puck bouncing off the crossbar. When Tyler looked for the goal light, he saw instead the Fitter goalie pointing his stick in the air high above the rink. Everyone on the ice turned in Andrew’s direction, looing for the puck.

Drouin found it first.

He appeared, alone, legs in full churn, tearing down the boards to his left, Zilchy and Milan in hopeless pursuit. Coach was yelling, “Back, Andy! Back! Back! Back!” Tyler looked down to see that his celebration had taken the goalie almost to his blue line, a good forty feet from the net. The puck fell from the sky and plopped to the ice about fifteen feet to his left and in front of him, directly in Drouin’s path.

For one foolish instant Tyler saw Andrew hesitant, thinking he could beat him to it. Another mistake. Tyler started backpedalling with his goalie, wanting to aid him, knowing he had to help him out. Drouin snatched the puck up. Coach yelled. The Fitter fans shrieked. There were still twenty feet between him and the empty net, when Drouin pulled nearly even on his left. Andre was never doing to outrace him. He had no choice.

The goalie threw the lower part of his body across the ice, stacking his leg pads to form a sliding blockade. He hoped to flummox Drouin enough that he might hurry a shot that would hit some part of him or skitter wide. The crowd’s roar swelled in Tyler’s ears. Drouin leaned hard to his left, while keeping the puck just out of Andrew’s reach of his outstretched stick. His blades dug in and he felt the spray of snow, like needles across his neck and face. Drouin lost his edge. He fell. Andrew grounded his slide to a halt and twisted around and propped himself on his glove. Other skates were scraping toward them.

The puck had come to a stop ten feet from the open net, just out of Drouin’s reach.

If Andrew had jumped up at that very instant and dove and threw his stick at the puck, he might have been able to smack it out of the way. But he didn’t. Instead, in that sliver of a split second, he looked at the fallen Drouin. Their eyes met again. This time, his eyes startled him more. Maybe it was because he realized then, in the back of his mind that he had lost most of his dreams forever, and there he was trying to take the last one away. Or maybe he just choked.

Whatever the reason, he froze. Not for long. Half a second maybe. But it felt for that half a second, as if his arms and legs were stuck to the ice. In the years to follow, that half a second would become a full second, five seconds, a minute, a lifetime in the town’s collective memory. To the people of Boston college and the Northeast, in the wake of Tyler’s heroic efforts, and Patrick’s attempt, and despite Andrew’s own heroics, earlier in the game, he’d have a chance to keep the Eagles and their state championship dream, alive. And he blew it…well not yet, but he was.

The puck sat between them. Drouin lunged, but Tyler was there in a flash. The Fitters had pulled their own goalie, so the young Nova Scotia native had one shot and chance. He could be the ultimate hero. Tyler caught the puck with the heel of his stick. Drouin was in shock once more. Andrew stared, as Tyler skated hard to the abandoned blue line. Everyone of the opponents drove, finally, but the puck crossed the goal line, at the other end inches ahead of any of the defenseman’s sticks for the Fitters.

Whooping Boston College Eagles piled on Tyler, as Drouin and rest of his team, dragged themselves away and toward the bench. Finally the Fitter wasn’t grinning cleverly, and hung his head in defeat. Tyler was lifted onto the shoulders of his teammates, who chanted his name, “Marchy! Marchy! Marchy!”

After the celebration died down a little, someone came up to Tyler on the ice. He tapped the back of his jersey, as he high-fived Zack and Fiyero. They skated off, leaving him to laugh. Tyler spun around and blinked. Standing before him, was none-other-than the NHL head coach for the notorious Boston Blackhawks.

“Son, you have some speed, agility and skill, like I have never seen before, how would you like to be signed into the NHL?”

Tyler’s eyes went wide with shock and joy. “I’d love to!”

“Great, come to DT Arena tomorrow morning to sign some paperwork and I’ll give you a tour.”

“Sounds like a plan, sir.” Tyler held his hand out to shake the coach’s. It was a firm shake, with a business-like feel to it.

“Please call me Julien.”

That was the start of Tyler Marchand’s NHL career. He was going places and impressing people. Three other coaches came up to him, offering him jobs and a chance to play in the big leagues, but in Tyler’s heart he turned them down. He loved Boston and wanted to stay here. If the coach of his favorite team wanted him, he was sure as hell going to pick that.

He kindly declined the other offers and made his way back to his teammates, jumping into the arms of his captain, Fiyero, who hoisted him up, like a female dancer or child. He wanted to let the victory sink in some more.