Page 41 of The Trade Deadline
Lars Nilsson was mostly known in terms of his hockey, including who his family was. His dad played for the Terrors, his brother for the Otters. But he was also an uncle and a brother-in-law and a grandson, and those relationships seemed to shape him more as a person.
“Your mormor watch all your games?” Ryan asked, voice light and teasing.
Lars picked up the puck and bounced it off the end of his stick. “Most of them. It’s easier now that I’m in the east. She doesn’t like to stay up for the late games, and if me and Anders play at the same time, she has to pick one to watch the next day.” He tossed the puck up and hit it like a baseball towards the net. “C’mon, let’s go warm up Vorny.”
Only once did Ryan get a chance to actually look at Anders on his side of the ice. He was easy to spot, several inches taller than most of the other players. His size wasn’t just his height, either. He was a solid man that looked like he had no issues keeping his goalie’s crease clear. Even from a distance, Ryan could see the family resemblance: blond, with the same jawline and nose, and the same grim expression that had been plastered on Lars’s face since the airport. Two angry peas in a pod, those Nilsson brothers.
If Ryan held any hope that Lars had regained his cool after seeing his family, it dried up during Lars’s first shift. He was over the boards before Ryan had fully gotten off. By the time Ryan was settled on the bench, Lars had skated right to where his brother was corralling the puck Ryan had just dumped in. Undeterred by his brother’s size, he pushed him into the boards and manhandled the puck away. He got a shot, a quick cover, and managed to get in his brother’s face to yell something in Swedish.
The game was…intense. The brothers set the tempo, with the rest of them at their mercy. It didn’t help that both Lars and Anders were clearly the best players on the ice, so if the rest of them didn’t up their effort, they didn’t stand a chance at being in the play. Ryan could barely keep up, and it left him huffing and puffing at the end of every shift.
Lars was thriving, though. He managed to steal a shift from their fourth line center when Anders wasn’t on the ice. He forced a turnover, got a breakaway, scored, and then made sure to celebrate right in front of the Otters bench where his brother sat glaring at him.
“Du är bortskämd,” Anders sneered at him. “Sluta bete dig som ett barn.”
“Sluta bete dig som ett fitta!” Lars shot back. Ryan had no idea what they were saying, but Anders stiffened and looked like he was about to climb over the boards to wipe the smug look off his little brother’s face. Ryan had seen that look on his sisters’ faces before, and except in those moments when he was feeling particularly brave, it usually resulted in him running away while apologizing; Lars didn’t look the least bit sorry.
“You know,” Jake said next to Ryan as they watched the brothers fight over a puck in the second, “Nilsy’s only got five career fights and four of them are against his brother.”
Ryan watched with a grimace. They hadn’t dropped gloves yet, but he felt like it could happen at any moment. “Who was the other one against?”
“Someone on the Otters who got in the way,” Jake said.
“You saying he’d fight one of us if we got in the way?” Jordy said it as a joke, but there was a hint of worry there.
Anders slammed into his brother, knocking Lars flat on his ass and making Ryan cringe in sympathy. Lars jumped up and sprinted after his brother, clearly not thinking about hockey but revenge. The resulting cross checking penalty against Lars was hardly a surprise.
“...He might fight us if we try to stop him,” Jake muttered. He moved out of the way to let Ryan out for the Penalty Kill. “Maybe stay out of his way once he’s out of the box?”
That was the smart thing to do. Whatever poor fool got between the brothers was going to get flattened like a pancake.
It wasn’t an easy kill. The Otters rested Anders for the first thirty seconds then had him out the rest of the time. The man had a monster slap shot that Ryan made the mistake of blocking (thankfully it hit his shinguard, though it still hurt something awful), and the Otters seemed to enjoy setting Anders up for pot shots while Lars was stuck watching in the box. They were somehow able to hold off the Otters, Ryan getting a whole 45 seconds to rest before he was forced back on the ice to finish the kill. And then, with the seconds ticking down, Ryan got the puck and was able to do one of his favorite things.
The timing rarely worked out, but Ryan saw the pieces falling into place. With two seconds left on the penalty and nothing but open ice in front of him, the safe play was to launch it down to the other zone and run for a change. He faked the dump, then instead sent a pass up the boards. It left the Crabs’ zone with one second left, bounced to the empty space right in front of the penalty box.
Lars jumped out of the box and skated into the puck at full speed. He was a good ten feet behind the defense, the poor goalie left to face Lars one-on-one.
As the goal horn sounded, Ryan skated down the ice. Normally he would’ve changed after he sent the pass or at least after the goal, but he went to Lars. He could see Lars about to get in his brother’s face again, so he put himself right in his path. He pulled him into a celebratory hug and spun them so Lars was turned away from the Otters. Finally, blue eyes settled on him and he saw the second Lars Nilsson, the determined younger brother, disappeared and Lasse reappeared.
“That was sick,” Ryan said loudly. He punched Lars’s shoulder, earning a grin.
“Your pass was pretty perfect,” he agreed.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Your goal, dummy.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had better.” Then he lit up. “Hey! We’re on the ice together!”
“First and only time I’ll get a point for you scoring.”
Lars seemingly forgot to rub the goal in his brother’s face, since he skated with Ryan back to the bench to accept a line of fist bumps. The last few shifts of the game, Lars was mellower. Not completely himself, but a much more recognizable version. Ryan could feel the team relax around him, like air settling back in their lungs after a deep dive.
They lost 2-4, Lars’s two to Anders’s one, but the Otters were clearly more acquainted with the Nilsson Show and knew how to capitalize on it. At the start of the game, Ryan would’ve thought the loss would devastate Lars. Instead, he took it calmly and seemed content that he had at least outscored his brother.
Chapter14
Lars
They were flying directlyfrom Ohio to Calgary, not even getting a break between the game and being shuttled to the airport. This time they were mercifully in a secluded area where fans and reporters couldn’t find them, giving Lars time to decompress. Lars enjoyed playing against his brother in a perverse sort of way. They were both competitive and not sentimental, and it let Lars get out some of his years-old frustrations with Anders for leaving. He also hated what it did to him, the inevitable crash into an awful, all consuming headspace that felt like it chipped away pieces of his soul. He didn’t like himself when he was around Anders, and he hated that it wasn’t even really Anders’s fault. His brother, for all his faults, was rarely the instigator when they went at it. Of course the worst part of a game against Anders was?—
