“Keep low in the corners,” Lucas said, banging his stick against the back of Bond’s skate as the Chips filed back onto the ice and started to take their positions. He was trying to encourage her. Even if he was the Chips’ captain only for the day, he thought he should take the role seriously.
“Are your hockey gods with us?” Bond asked, giving Lucas a wink.
“I hope so,” he replied, feeling lighter. He hadn’t even bitten his nails during their break.
“Then let’s win this!” Edge said, grinning.
Lucas won the first faceoff and slipped out of the way of Beatrice Blitz’s shoulder as she tried to plow through him. Bond got the puck over to Edge, who then slipped it to Lucas, who turned up-ice and raced over the Stars’ blue line.
Lucas sussed out the situation: he could split the defence or get the puck back to Edge.
He should never have given himself a choice! In the split second between deciding and acting, the puck mysteriously vanished from Lucas’s stick. It was as if a frog’s long tongue had darted out and snapped a big black bug off his blade.
He turned, puzzled, only to see Beatrice scooting back toward the Chips’ end. She was in full flight and had just dropped the puck from her blade back into her skates when Bond, out of nowhere, reached out and scooped it away.
As fast as she could, Bond moved into the corner and crouched down over the puck, just as Sid had told her to do. She was shorter than Beatrice, but now she’d use that to her advantage. Bond moved left, then right, keeping her back to the Stars’ captain, and then fired the puck down the ice with a solid flick of her wrist.
The round black disc was flying a good foot above the ice surface when Mouth Guard plucked it out of the air.
Jared was immediately on Lucas, and the other Stars had the Ice Chips covered. The only one open was Bond, who was charging up the ice, looking as determined as she had pulling that sandbag in the Citadel.
Her head was low and she was moving—as fast as a train.
Mouth Guard made like he was passing to Lucas and instead fired toward the far side of the net. The puck was sliding up toward the crease—and Bond was there to meet it! A perfect pass!
With Beatrice chasing after her, Bond swept in on the goalie and pulled him out. She leaned on her back foot, rolled her wrist like Sid had taught her, and quickly roofed a shot off the crossbar.
Now it was 3–1, with the Stars still ahead.
Dynamo got lucky and scored next. Then Edge slammed one top shelf.
Now they were tied—three for the Chips, and three for the Stars.
Coach Small started to juggle his lines, hoping to find a combination that might help them even more.
“Lars,” he said, tapping him on the shoulder, “you’re on with Edge and Lucas.”
Lucas almost choked. The coach wasn’t looking to put Lars into Lucas’s position this time—he wanted them to be linemates!
Right away, the puck was shot down into the Chips’ end. Bond seized it and skated behind Swift’s net, waiting for Lucas to swoop in and grab it.
As Lucas rounded the net with the puck, he looked up-ice to see Beatrice Blitz coming over the boards from the Stars’ bench!
He quickly passed to his best friend on the backhand. Edge snatched the puck and made a move as if he were going to stickhandle over the blue line, but instead he just left the puck sitting there while he straddled the line, careful not to go offside. Lucas recognized it: this was their drop-pass play.
Moving fast, Lucas picked up the puck again and saw that Beatrice was rushing straight at him. He moved to the left, toward the boards, and did something he knew better than to do—he fired a nearly blind backhand pass across the ice. He was sure he had seen something. No, not quite sure. More like . . . hopeful.
But Lars had read him perfectly! He’d sensed what Lucas was going to do and darted for that open ice on the other side. The puck came through from Lucas, and Lars picked it up in full stride on the absolute centre of his blade. He moved in on the net, faked forehand to backhand, and ripped a goal in off the Stars’ post.
It was 4–3 for the Ice Chips!
The arena erupted in cheers. The Ice Chips were ahead!
Lucas couldn’t believe it. All the Chips were rushing at Lars, who was in the corner with his back to the boards and his arms in the air.
Lucas skated over to them. His eyes briefly met Lars’s, and without even thinking, Lucas jumped at him, throwing an arm around his neck.
“YESSSSS!!!”
“See you tonight!” Bond said to Lars as she swung her bag up onto her shoulder and slipped through the door of the dressing room. Her dad had told her she could have some of her teammates over to celebrate their win. And this time, they’d have two nets: Swift in one and the Shooter Tutor in the other.
“You going?” Lars asked, looking up at Lucas, who was just putting on his coat. Lars had never used a Shooter Tutor before, but he was glad Bond had invited him. “You know, I heard that Sidney Crosby shot into a dryer in his parents’ basement to practise.”
Lucas paused, holding on to his zipper. “Actually, Sid didn’t shoot into the dryer—he just hit it by accident because it was behind his net.” As he spoke, he realized that meant Sidney Crosby—the great Sidney Crosby—hadn’t made all of his shots either.
“Hey, Lucas?” said Swift, once Lars had left to join his mother. The only kids now in the dressing room with her were Lucas, Edge, and Mouth Guard. “The real season starts next week—we’ll have our first game. We met Sid, and that’s awesome. But I was thinking . . .”
“You want to leap again,” Lucas blurted. He’d seen it coming from a mile away.
“I’m in!” cried Mouth Guard.
“Me, toodle-oo!” cheered Edge.
“Good,” said Swift, grinning at all her friends. “But that armpit’s not coming with us, okay?” she added, her eyes resting on Mouth Guard. “And since you all got to meet Sid, your idol,” she continued, smiling. “Next time, it’s my turn.”
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Suzanne Sutherland for helping us grab hold of this hurricane and shape it, for her thoughtful edits, and for shepherding us through our first Ice Chips book signing. Thanks to Maeve O’Regan in publicity for her amazing ideas and enthusiasm; to Kaitlyn Vincent and Ashley Posluns in marketing; and to Editorial Director Jennifer Lambert for her support. And thanks to the rest of the amazing team at HarperCollins, who allowed us to leap through time once again: Janice Weaver, our careful copyeditor; Stephanie Nuñez, our helpful and well-organized production editor; and Lloyd Davis, our keen-eyed proofreader. Thank you also to Bruce Westwood and Meg Wheeler at Westwood Creative Artists for their guidance and friendship.
Thanks to the many friends and new acquaintances who lent us their stories so we could shape the story of Tianna “Bond” Foster: Stephanie MacGregor, the aunt who makes the best curried anything; Camille and Roger Dundas, friends and co-founders of ByBlacks.com; Toronto playwright Teneile Warren; and Kerry’s American in Paris, Kymberli Stewart.
Thank you also to Kim Smith, whose beautiful and inspired art wows us every time.
And thank you to our families, who let us create mini-hurricanes around the house whenever we were stuck in writing mode.
And finally—not wanting to give anything away—thank you to young Sid for providing the world of hockey with such a lovely anecdote.
—Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor
Many thanks to Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor for creating another magical story; to Suzanne Sutherland, who brought everything together; to Kelly Sonnack, my amazing agent; and to my husband, Eric, for answering even more questions about hockey.
—Kim Smith
About the Authors and Illustrator
ROY MACGREGOR, who was the media inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012, has been described by the Washington Post as “the closest thing there is to a poet laureate of Canadian hockey.” He is the author of the internationally
successful Screech Owls hockey mystery series for young readers, which has sold more than two million copies and is also published in French, Chinese, Swedish, Finnish, and Czech. It is the most successful hockey series in history—and is second only to Anne of Green Gables as a Canadian book series for young readers—and, for two seasons, was a live-action hit on YTV. MacGregor has twice won the ACTRA Award for best television screenwriting.
KERRY MACGREGOR is co-author of the latest work in the Screech Owls series. She has worked in news and current affairs at the CBC, and as a journalist with the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, and many other publications. Her columns on parenting, written with a unique, modern perspective on the issues and interests of today’s parents, have appeared in such publications as Parenting Times Magazine.
KIM SMITH is an illustrator from Calgary. She has illustrated several children’s books including The Great Puppy Invasion and storybook adaptations of Home Alone, The X-Files, and E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Her favourite hockey team is the Calgary Flames. Go Flames, Go!
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.
Also by Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor
The Ice Chips and the Magical Rink
Copyright
The Ice Chips and the Haunted Hurricane
Text copyright © 2018 by Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor.
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Kim Smith.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Cover illustration by Kim Smith
EPub Edition: September 2018 EPub ISBN: 978-1-4434-5233-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-4434-5231-1
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The Ice Chips and the Haunted Hurricane Page 9
