The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4

by Roy MacGregor

What a difference an ocean made! When the Owls went to Sweden, they were baffled at first by the big Olympic ice surface. Now the Djurgården peewees had the same problem in reverse. To them, the ice was cramped and tight. Less space meant less time, and they were panicking with the puck. Used to being able to work the corners, they now had to fight for them, and the usual long cross-ice passes of European hockey were easy pickings for the Owls – particularly for a player as quick as Dmitri.

  Dmitri scored the first two goals. He snared a lazy Swedish pass in the neutral zone, roared in on the opponents’ net, faked once, went to his backhand and roofed the puck, sending the water bottle flying. On the second, he finished off a pretty tictac-toe play where Travis slipped the puck back to Sarah, moving in late on a rush, and Sarah snapped the puck ahead to Dmitri as he came to a spraying stop at the far goal post. Dmitri had only to redirect the puck in behind the falling goaltender.

  “They’ll find themselves,” Muck warned at the first break. “Just like you guys had to find yourselves over there.”

  Muck was right. In the second period, the Swedes adjusted their game. Forwards carried less and shortened their passes. Defencemen used the boards more, pinching in on the Owls whenever they could and causing pucks to jump free. The first Djurgården goal came on a scramble, and then a fluid-skating centre scored a beautiful goal on a solo rush when he managed to slip the puck between Nish’s legs and get in alone on Jenny.

  “Never would have happened if I’d had my old boxers on,” a red-faced Nish muttered when he plunked down on the bench.

  “The puck would have melted!” laughed Sam, plunking down beside him and giving him a shot in the shoulder.

  Both teams scored in the third, Djurgården on a tip, and Lars on a beautiful end-to-end rush with a hard backhander along the ice that just caught the corner.

  Muck called a time-out with two minutes to go and hardly said a word. There was really nothing to say. Everyone knew how much a win mattered in a round robin. Travis also knew that Muck wanted his top line out for the final moments, and Sarah was gasping for breath, having just killed off a penalty.

  Nothing had gone right for Travis. He had the one assist, but nothing more. The one good shot he’d had slipped off his blade and flopped off to the side of the net. He thought the other team might even be laughing at his weak shot. He needed something. Anything.

  Nish and Sam were back. The most powerful five Owls had the ice, and Sarah won the faceoff by sweeping it back to Nish. Nish moved back behind his own net, checking the clock quickly and then measuring the ice for the best side to go up.

  He faked a pass to Travis along the left boards and then shot it back off the boards to Sam on the other side.

  Nish moved out quickly, “accidentally” brushing by the forechecker to put him off balance and give Sam more time. Sam used it to step around the second forechecker and fire a hard pass up-centre to Sarah, who was curling just before the red line.

  Dmitri was already away down the right side. Sarah dumped the puck in as she crossed centre, and Dmitri beat the Djurgården defence to it.

  Dmitri danced with the puck out to the open corner. Travis cut for the slot, slapping his stick on the ice.

  Dmitri hit him perfectly.

  Travis tucked the puck in to himself as he drifted around the last defenceman. He had an open shot – and fired hard. The goaltender jumped, literally leaving the ice, and the puck hit him high in the chest pad and dropped back down in the crease.

  Travis was still moving in. He saw the puck there, patiently waiting for him, as the goalie came back down on his skates, scraping hard and falling off to the other side.

  Open net!

  Travis stabbed at the free puck just as a glove lunged out of nowhere and yanked it to the side and out of harm’s way.

  Travis could not stop his stab. He hit air, then fell, tearing the net off its moorings as he was hit from behind.

  He could see nothing. All he could hear was the referee’s whistle, so close it seemed to be screaming. He rolled over, looking back to see what the call was and who had hit him. At least he had drawn a penalty, he figured. Not as good as a goal, but not bad.

  But the referee was not pointing at any of the Djurgården players. He was pointing hard towards centre ice.

  Travis was momentarily confused. He knew the signal from somewhere. Had he seen it in the rule book? Had he seen it on television?

  Suddenly it came to him.

  Penalty shot!

  7

  “Number seven – white!”

  Travis didn’t need to hear it again. He knew what the referee’s call meant. He’d been closest to the puck when the Djurgården defenceman had put his hand over the puck in the crease. The penalty-shot call was automatic.

  “A penalty shot has been awarded to the Screech Owls,” the PA system crackled throughout the arena. “The shot will be taken by number seven, Travis Lindsay.”

  Travis got shakily to his feet. It wasn’t because of the hit that he felt wobbly.

  He skated slowly to the bench, where Muck was leaning over, a big arm open for Travis to skate into. If only the arm would open up like a cave and swallow me, thought Travis. If only they’d called out number nine for Sarah, or ninety-one for Dmitri, or even forty-four – no, twenty-two! – for Nish. Anybody but me! But outwardly Travis managed to remain calm. Muck’s big arm around his shoulders helped.

  So did Muck’s voice, so soft and reassuring.

  “There’s a secret to the penalty shot, you know,” Muck said.

  “What?” Travis asked, desperate to know.

  “Shoot,” Muck said, and smiled down at him. “Some guys get so excited they forget to shoot. Just shoot the puck and see what happens.”

  Travis nodded. He felt like he couldn’t talk.

  The linesman was placing the puck at centre ice. Only the officials, the Djurgården goaltender, and Travis Lindsay were on the ice.

  The referee blew his whistle and swung his arm to indicate it was time.

  Travis circled back on his own side of centre. He could hear the crowd cheering. He could hear his teammates thumping their sticks against the boards.

  He picked up the puck and felt it wobble at the end of his blade. He almost lost it immediately.

  He dug in. He hadn’t noticed how much snow was on the ice, but they’d played the entire game and there had been no flood. Now it seemed there was snow everywhere! The ice was chopped up and gouged and the snow seemed to have piled up so deep in front of him he needed a plough to get through.

  He felt his legs turn to rubber, his stick to boiled spaghetti. He felt his hands weaken, his shoulders sag. He felt his brain begin to race like a motor at full throttle. He felt his eyes go out of focus, his hips stop moving, his spine collapse, his brain spring apart like the rubber in a sliced golf ball.

  He was on a breakaway – a penalty shot in an international tournament – and he was screwing up!

  Time had never gone so slow, and at the same moment so fast.

  He looked up. The Djurgården goaltender seemed completely at ease. He had come out to cut off the angle, and now was reading Travis perfectly and wiggling his way back toward the net, always with the angle right, giving away nothing.

  What do I do? Travis wanted to shout. Deke him?

  Blast away?

  Fake the shot and try and get the angle?

  Go five hole?

  Backhand?

  Forehand?

  He wanted to stop dead in his tracks, turn to the bench and scream, “MUCK! WHAT DO I DOOOOO?”

  But there was no time. The referee was skating alongside him now, watching. The little Swedish goaltender was wiggling back into his crease and still had given Travis nothing to shoot at.

  There’s too much snow!

  The ice is too bad!

  I need to circle back and come in again!

  It was too late. He was in too close. He decided, at the last moment, to go backhand, and flicked the puck
over from his forehand.

  The puck slid away from him!

  Travis jabbed at it. He hit the puck badly with the blade of his stick. It skipped towards the corner. He lunged, swinging madly at the puck and catching it with the heel of his stick.

  The puck shot towards the net, narrowly missing the post – but on the wrong side!

  The whistle blew, the Djurgården bench erupted – Travis started to turn away from the net, lost his edge, and fell, sliding into the boards.

  He could hear people in the crowd laughing.

  He got up, knocked the snow off – See, he wanted to yell, look at the snow! – and headed back to a bench where no one was cheering, where hardly anyone was even looking at him.

  He had failed the Owls.

  Sarah gave him a sympathetic smile, but it wasn’t what Travis needed. He needed a second chance.

  Muck had his big fists jammed deep in the pockets of his old windbreaker. He was half smiling, half shaking his head.

  “Shoot next time,” Muck said in his very quiet voice.

  Travis nodded. Inside, he was bawling.

  8

  Travis had no idea how long he’d been standing at the urinal. He’d come off the ice with the rest of the Owls – the silence crushing as they slouched their way back to the dressing room – and he’d set his stick against the wall, lopped off his helmet, dropped his gloves, and hurried off to the little washroom. He didn’t need to go. He’d just wanted to get away.

  He stood there, waiting, all through the low rumble of Muck’s short post-game speech. He knew what Muck would be saying: Good effort, good work, lucky to come out of it with a tie, we’ll just have to be a little sharper next game … He could hear Mr. Dillinger putting away the skate sharpener and bundling up the sticks, lightly whistling as he worked, the way he always did when there was a bit of tension in the dressing room.

  Travis felt terrible. He felt he’d failed the team. He felt he should rip the “C” off his sweater and hand it back. A captain was supposed to lead by example, or so Muck always said, and what an example Travis had set:

  Blow the penalty shot.

  Give up the win when it is yours for the taking.

  Choke under pressure.

  Travis stood there until he knew he could put it off no longer. He buckled up and headed back in to face the jury.

  As he came through the door, he pretended to be absorbed in lacing up his hockey pants. The Owls were all busy shedding their gear. There was the familiar smell of hockey in the air, a steely, damp, and sweaty smell found nowhere else on earth but a dressing room in the minutes following a hard-fought game.

  Fahd looked up first, one of his ridiculous questions rising.

  “Where were you?” Fahd asked accusingly.

  “Going to the bathroom,” Travis said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  Nish looked up, grinning like a red tomato.

  “Did you miss that, too?” Nish giggled.

  The dressing room exploded with laughter.

  “Nish is a goof,” Fahd said to Travis as they backed out through the door with their equipment.

  “You’re just realizing that?” Travis said. His voice made him sound angrier than he was. He wasn’t upset with Nish – at least, not as much as he was with himself.

  The bus was parked behind the MCI Center, and the fastest way out was through the Zamboni chute. They pushed through a second door, neither one saying a word, and began to walk across the drainage grating alongside the Zamboni.

  “DON’T MOVE!”

  Travis and Fahd froze in their tracks. It was like being in a movie. Someone they couldn’t see had barked a command. What was next? Gunfire?

  A shadow emerged from the far side of the Zamboni.

  Earplug!

  He was snapping his gum and had one hand just inside his jacket as if prepared to pull out his .38 snubnose Smith & Wesson and blow the two Screech Owls away.

  “What’re you two doing here?” Earplug snapped.

  “We just played a game,” said Fahd. “We’re leaving.”

  “Door’s that way, smart fellow!” Earplug barked, nodding in the opposite direction.

  “Our bus’s out back,” said Fahd.

  Earplug seemed to think about that a moment. There was no sound at all in the room but the grind of his teeth and the periodic little snap-snap-snap as he flicked his tongue through the gum.

  Like a snake! Travis thought. A gum-chewing snake!

  Finally, it seemed to register on Earplug. The bus could be out back. The shortest route between dressing room and back parking lot was indeed through the Zamboni chute and out the back door.

  He nodded to himself and stepped back for them to pass. He waved them along with his one free hand, as if directing traffic.

  Travis could hardly believe how jumpy Earplug was. He seemed almost out of control – one hand waving two peewee hockey players through to the parking lot, the other hand on his concealed weapon as if, any second now, he’d be forced to blow them away.

  “Th-thanks,” said Fahd.

  The two Owls squeezed by. The Zamboni had been opened up so Earplug and his security force could check the insides. Travis could see the blades that sent the shaved ice up into the holding tank and the hydraulic pistons that dumped the snow out. What did he think? Travis wondered. That one of the Zamboni drivers might sneak out with the machine during play, slip up behind the President’s son during a faceoff, gobble him up, and then race out the back doors to hold him for ransom? Travis giggled to himself at the thought of the chase: police cars, fire engines, helicopters all chasing the chugging Zamboni down Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Ludicrous, he thought.

  But still, he had to give Earplug credit. He was thorough.

  9

  Fahd turned the television on. He wanted to play the hotel’s in-house Nintendo, but Travis caught him before he switched it over.

  “There’s the White House!” Travis almost shouted.

  “So?” Fahd said. “It’s CNN. It’s always got the stupid news on.”

  “Yeah, but that’s live – and it’s just around the corner.”

  Fahd paused. “Yeah, weird.”

  They watched for a few moments. It was a report of a big summit on the Middle East Peace Accord, and there were shots of limousines arriving and world leaders getting in and out. There was a clip of the President talking to the media out in the garden, the White House huge behind him.

  Travis wondered what it must be like to live there – especially for a kid. Could the President’s son have friends over after school? Did he have a net set up in the basement like Nish did, and could he just jump up from his homework at the kitchen table – would he even have a kitchen table? – and run down and take shots until, as Nish’s mom always said, he’d “worked the heebie-jeebies out of his system”?

  Travis knew he wouldn’t trade places for anything. His father might never be on the news, people outside of Tamarack might not know his name, but he liked his quiet little house and the fact that his father worried more about things like the lawn than whether he could stop bombs from going off in the Middle East.

  “You can switch it,” Travis said.

  Fahd fiddled with the control and the familiar Super Mario music came on. He would be lost for the next hour or so.

  The telephone rang.

  Travis rolled on his shoulders across the bed and dropped off the side, scooping up the phone as he fell. It was Mr. Dillinger.

  “Muck wants the team down in the lobby,” Mr. Dillinger said. “Round up your roomies and get everyone down here.”

  “Now?” Travis asked. He could see Fahd’s questioning stare.

  “Right now.”

  Muck was waiting for them, standing in the middle of the lobby with his fists jammed into his old windbreaker. He didn’t seem upset, but he did look serious.

  Once everyone was there, Muck began.

  “The Screech Owls have been asked if they’d do a favou
r for our hosts,” he told them. “I said I’d put it to a vote.”

  “What is it?” Fahd asked unnecessarily.

  Muck didn’t want to get to the point right away. “You know,” he said, “believe it or not, Wayne Gretzky was also a peewee player much like you guys.”

  Travis blinked. Was Wayne Gretzky here? Was the all-time leading goal scorer in the National Hockey League coming to the tournament? Was his kid playing in it?

  “Wayne Gretzky was so famous even as a peewee, he couldn’t live a normal life,” Muck went on. “One of the things his teammates used to do was swap jackets with him at the end of the games so he could sneak out without the other team’s parents screaming at him. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” said Willie Granger, the team trivia expert. No one else seemed to know.

  “Mr. Dillinger and I have discussed helping out a youngster in this tournament. His team has asked us if we might consider including him in our tour plans – so he can fit in just like any other player and not be bothered by anyone.”

  Mr. Dillinger held out a team jacket. He’d already stitched a number on the sleeve, 17, that no one else on the team wore.

  Travis felt a shiver of understanding go up and down his spine.

  “Who is it?” Fahd asked.

  Muck cleared his throat.

  “Chase Jordan. The President’s son.”

  “Why us?” Nish squeaked from the back of the gathering.

  “Why not us?” Muck asked. “We’re not even an American team. We’re from Canada. We plan on visiting the sights. We have our own bus –”

  “Even if it is only running on five cylinders,” Mr. Dillinger added.

  “– and, most important of all,” Muck continued, “we already have a player who has to be the centre of attention everywhere he goes.”

  “Who’s that?” Nish squeaked.

  Muck closed his eyes and, very slightly, shook his head.

  “Well?” Mr. Dillinger said. “What do we say? Do the Owls take on a temporary player or what?”

  “Yes!” shouted Sarah.

  “Absolutely!” yelled Sam.

  “Yes!”