Page 51 of The Trade Deadline
“Piss off, Nilsson,” growled Marley, a man who’d never said a cross word to Lars in the four years they’d played together (including the time Lars accidentally hit him in the head with a puck during practice). “Hope Baltimore isn’t too disappointed to learn you’re an overrated piece of crap.”
Lars stood there, stunned.
“Fuck off,” Jake yelled, standing up his full six foot four height and drifting menacingly towards the center dot. Marley gave him the finger (or tried; with his glove on the effect was weakened), but did mercifully shut up. Lars, very admirably in his opinion, resisted the urge to knock him over as the puck dropped and instead won the face-off, which was almost as satisfying.
It didn’t get better when the game started. Any time he touched the puck, boos rang out through the arena. Whenever he tried to get himself back on track, any positive momentum was literally knocked out of him. He was checked and slashed and definitely tripped at least once, a constant barrage as his old team took it out on him for daring to leave. The refs let them, too—not a single whistle except once when the puck went out of play. It was hard to keep them as nameless faces when they kept forcing Lars to pay attention to them and hear their chirps each time they nailed him to the boards. Like it or not, he had to face the Prowlers as people instead of anonymous players.
He learned quickly that he didn’t much like the Prowlers as people.
On a certain level, he understood it. They felt betrayed by his apparent abandonment, even though the truth of it had nothing to do with them. He’d basically fled Portland and never looked back. But while he’d never been close friends with any of them, he hadn’t anticipated them to come after him like this.
“You okay?” Ryan asked after the second.
No, he wanted to say.I'm bruised all over, my former teammates are trying to murder me, and all I have to show for my efforts are two measly shots on goal. They’re laughing at me on the bench, in the stands, at home. They’re happy I’m sucking and on a team that has slim playoff prospects.
“Great,” he said with more forced cheer than he’d mustered all day. After Ryan had tried to help him, he didn’t want him to think the effort was wasted. “Gonna score any moment.”
Anyone else would’ve laughed and let it go; Ryan eyed him critically. “If you don’t score,” he said carefully, “it doesn’t mean anything. If we don’t win, don’t get it in your head that it’s a moral victory on their part.”
“It’d be nice to win, though.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Obviously. But no matter how they hyped up this game in the locker room or what people are saying online, no matter how big it feels right now, this game is basically meaningless. Big picture, it’s game twenty of eighty-two in year eight of probably another decade of games. Who fucking cares?”
Ryan rarely cursed. Hearing him so casually do so now was like an electric shock.
I care, he almost said, then realized he actually didn’t care. It wasn’thimto care about this game more than their game next week or the one a few days ago. Like he didn’t care about the first- or second-line bullshit, eighty-two games a year (seventy-nine games, he mentally corrected; he wanted to be first line against Anders), it didn’t matter to him who was across the ice. How fucking dare the Portland Prowlers try to take that power away from him?
“Who fucking cares,” Lars agreed.
“Atta boy.” Ryan slugged him on the shoulder. “But honestly, I do kinda want to win. They’ve been jerks all night.”
“Jerks” was only the tip of the iceberg, but he could tell that was Ryan being his meanest. It was cute, the way he always tried to put the most positive spin possible on everyone but himself, and Lars appreciated that even Ryan’s positivity couldn’t rescue his opinion of the Prowlers. Though Lars had about a dozen harsher words than “jerks” he’d use.
He hoped the third period would go quickly, but given the 0-0 score it wasn’t likely. The longest games were the ones you were losing by a lot and the scoreless ones, in his opinion. He just wanted to be put out of his misery so he could regroup and come back stronger for having gotten through this.
Unfortunately, he was both right and wrong. The period dragged until about halfway through, when he was tripped so blatantly on a breakaway that the refs couldn’t ignore it. Better yet, after much discussion among the zebras, they awarded him a penalty shot. Lars had won a Stanley Cup in this very building, and the place had never been so loud as when they booed him while he awaited the go-ahead on the shot.
Lars stared down Knapp. Knapp was a good goalie. Not Vezina Trophy caliber, though he’d never say it to the man’s face, but solid. He was left-handed, his blocker and glove in opposite hands to most netminders, which made him a little more challenging to face. For some people, anyway. The ref blew the whistle, and Lars started forward at a leisurely pace.
Knapp was guaranteed to catch anything Lars shot to the left. Knapp knew that Lars knew this. Knapp would expect him to make a move and go blocker side. That was what Lars had usually done in practice, even to the right-handed goalies. He’d beaten Knapp that way dozens of times.
Lars picked up speed and started his move to the blocker side…
And shot left.
It went in the top corner, right above Knapp’s outstretched glove, his body out of position as he’d committed too far to the right post.
There was a deafening silence, one that Lars and the Blue Crabs did their best to fill. Their shouts were just starting to echo through the arena before the boos drowned them up, somehow louder than ever. Lars didn’t care. He skated past Knapp and raised his hands like a gladiator, asking if they were entertained and knowing they were despite themselves. They gave him the finger, they pounded the glass, they screamed at him, and yet he knew they’d be talking about this game for years.
Lars Nilsson left us and then the bastard had the audacity to score on a fucking penalty shot when he came back.
Damn fucking right he did.
When the Prowlers rallied to first tie and then eked out a game winning goal in the last minute of play, Lars didn’t even care. He blew the crowd a kiss before he disappeared back down the tunnel and was immensely glad he would never have another first game back in Portland.
Thompkins was the only one with a dour face in the locker room. Everyone else clapped Lars on the back and congratulated him on the penalty shot.
“Knapp looked like he was about to break his stick.”
