Page 108 of On the Line
Mitch missed being on the ice, being the one the crowds cheered for, but he was happy to be here nonetheless.
The second the puck dropped, Mitch knew it was going to be a hard-fought battle, a win earned by pure grit and physicality. The Chargers didn’t allow the Warriors to demonstrate any of their usual finesse with the puck, instead using their brute force and big bodies to create choppy gameplay full of starts and stops.
Within the first period, each team had fifteen penalty minutes, five of those from major penalties, when one of the Warriors’ fourth liners got into a little fisticuffs with a Chargers’ defenseman.
The game progressed the same way through the first half of the second period until around the twelve-minute mark when Rat scored on a breakaway, teeing up a shot on a beautiful pass from Grey. Had anyone but those two attempted to make that play, the game would still be scoreless.
After the excitement and brutality of the first period, things settled down in the second, and the Warriors took a 1-0 lead into the locker room at the second intermission.
Coach stood in front of his team and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Is there anything more stressful than only being up a goal going into the third period?”
“Yeah,” Brent said. “Being down a goal going into the third period.”
His teammates laughed, some of the tension in the room easing.
“There’s nothing I can say right now that you don’t already know, that you haven’t already heard,” Coach said. “We have twenty minutes. The next goal, whichever way it goes, is going to be the most important one in this game. Let’s win this one at home, okay?”
The Warriors nodded and mumbled their agreement, the game clock on the wall showing less than two minutes until the puck dropped on the third period.
When they trotted back down the tunnel, the fans in the stands were quieter, more subdued than they had been at the start of the game. They were all on the edges of their seats, hoping and praying that the game ended in favor of the home team.
And Mitch had a good feeling it would, when a scant two minutes into the period, Brent beat the Chargers goalie high on his glove side, the lamp behind the net burning red, the goal horn lost in the deafening roar of the Warriors fans as they lost their collective minds over the goal.
Mitch couldn’t help but grin when, moments later, the arena broke into a “BRENT JEAN” chant.
The Warriors were flying high for the next ten minutes, zipping around the ice, blocking shots, stealing pucks, and laying big hits on opponents.
Until the clock ticked under five minutes remaining, and a few seconds later, traffic in front caught Roberts blind and the Chargers snuck a goal past him.
Two-goal leads really were the worst in hockey, and the Warriors’ had been cut in half.
Mitch had played hockey long enough, and been involved in enough close games like this one to rarely—if ever—let the stress and sense of urgency get to him.
But tonight, he wasn’t playing, and he’d be damned if he didn’t have to ball his hands into fists at his sides to keep from chewing on his nails as those final seconds ticked off the clock.
A late whistle stopped play in the Warriors’ defensive zone, setting up a face-off in the circle to Roberts’ right with under a minute to play.
Arguably, this was the biggest face-off of the game, and Mitch hoped to God that Cole had one last win in him.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the Warriors and Chargers moved into their positions around the face-off circle, Cole’s back to Roberts as he hinged forward, angling his stick in preparation of the puck dropping and sweeping it behind him to Brent.
Fifty-five seconds stood between them and a championship.
Mitch blinked as the ref dropped the puck onto the face-off dot, staring in horror as the Chargers’ player won the duel and tipped it behind him to a teammate, their goalie rushing toward the bench in the same instant to give them an extra skater.
The extra skater crossed into the Warriors’ zone and zipped into the corner, where the player on the blue line who had the puck attempted a long, cross-ice pass to him.
But Cole was there to cut it off.
In the span of another blink, Cole skated into the neutral zone, narrowly avoiding an open-ice check from a Chargers’ player. He reached center ice and slid a soft shot on net.
The crowd noise faded to a dull buzz as Mitch’s eyes darted from the puck to the game clock, hands curled around the edges of the half-wall in front of him, knuckles blanched white.
The puck sailed across the goal line and into the empty net.
Mitch was on the ice before the goal horn even sounded, his dress shoes sliding all over as he rushed toward Cole.
“Mitch!” Coach was yelling behind him. “Get your ass back here!”
