There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool

by Dave Belisle

  There’s a Shark in My Hockey Pool

  Dave Belisle

  Copyright 2014 by Dave Belisle

  Smashwords Edition

  The Zamboni Knows

  ... 1 ...

  Derek Marcotte finished loosening his skates and relaxed. He looked around the locker room. If they ever needed the Zen of the zamboni, it was now. The resurfacing of the ice between periods had a certain mystique about changing the fortunes of hockey teams. It was the most plausible explanation why a team could go from flat to fabulous ... or why teams were blamed for playing only forty minutes of hockey. How a team performed certainly didn't hinge on the coach's pep talk. In 1985, hockey was still waiting for its first locker room speech of Knute Rockne magnitude. What a team did with the Stanley Cup after they won it, made for far more interesting reading than any behind-the-scenes bravado leading up to it.

  With two intermissions in hockey for every half-time in football, hockey players unfortunately had to focus on twice the number of words as did their football counterparts. Enter the zamboni. The large, oblong, show stopping vehicle parted the ice with a watery wake. It was something tangible, something the hopes of an entire team could easily slide under ... to be mulled over and chewed upon. And when the Zen was "in", there was no need to worry about when momentum, a.k.a. "the mighty mo", would make it's unpredictable shift your way ... because it would. Tracking the mighty mo was perhaps the easiest job an off-ice official could have, but it was never in the scoring summary. It was the Zen of the zamboni.

  The coaching fraternity across Canada knew this. Wally Mitchell, with thirteen years of zamboni-watching under his belt as head coach of the Guelph Gargoyles, understood it all too well. After two periods, his team was down two goals to the Western University Appaloosas in the biggest game of the year -- the 1985 Canadian college championship. Mitchell's decision was immediate. He went for a coffee.

  Derek Marcotte stared across the dank dressing room the Gargoyles were holed up in. Trailing 4-2, most of the players heads were hanging. It was a package deal at the local pillory -- minus the stocks. Their muddled thoughts turned from two-goal uprisings to the scouts in the stands. Had they carried the puck enough to be pencilled in on a notepad as "nifty"? Or mucked it up enough in the corners to be called "gritty"? They prayed a scout wasn't watching when they coughed the puck up in the corner ... lest they be labeled just plain "shitty." But on a team loaded with seniors, the next game for most would be on discount ice time available late at night.

  Marcotte needn't worry. He'd been drafted the previous spring by Winnipeg. He'd have preferred Toronto, but he didn't have the Gretzkyesque numbers to stake out his stomping grounds.

  Winnipeg could wait. Western was in the twenty-two year old's sights. Marcotte rang off a silent roll call of the faces across the room. Jarryd Williams, a pointy-eared kid from Orillia, had come to him a year ago with an economics problem. He'd given Williams the number of a pretty coed who would be his tutor. Williams had gotten her pregnant, and they had the kid. Now they couldn't find student housing, besides having other problems ... in economics.

  Sandy Pederson. A speedster from Thunder Bay. So quick that you had to keep your own head up when he was on the ice. They'd clipped each other in a game against Waterloo. It was a bone-jarring collision with Marcotte carrying the puck north-south and Pederson skating pell-mell from point A to B via an east-west route. The intersection and game was shut down for five minutes. Following that, the coach had put Pederson out on the ice for mostly penalty killing situations. There was more room to roam ... and if he was going to hit someone, it was a 55% chance it would be a player on the other team.

  Patrick Bailey. Right defense and a wicked shot. That is, until February rolled around. Since then, he'd picked up the nickname "Twilight" because that's the only zone his slapshots from the point could find.

  Normie Schuman. A squat, square-faced kid from Tweed who didn't feel he was contributing unless he was in three scraps a week. On and off the ice. He had the distinction of losing a filling in every rink in Ontario college hockey. With his phonics framework shot to hell, it was difficult understanding Normie at times. For a guy who let his fists do the talking, it was time he learned sign language.

  "My goddamn back ... " Gerry Pope said with a wince to the player beside him, Chris Crossley. "Bastard gave me the lumber from behind."

  Derek watched Pope and Crossley. The two were not to be confused with a pair of puck savvy saviors.

  "Don't sweat it," Crossley said. "We'll be swinging nine irons real soon."

  "And how," Pope sneered. "My old man keeps a place down in Fort Lauderdale. Par fours in the a.m. and bar whores in the p.m. Heh-heh."

  Crossley's helmet exploded off the bench. A puck rebounded off the concrete wall behind Crossley, deflected up off the ceiling and back to the rubber-matted floor. It rolled to a stop at Pope's feet. Falling flat, the distinct splat echoed through the room. Marcotte stood in the center of the room, holding a hockey stick in both hands, waist high.

  "So it's the goddamn road show, eh? Mind if I play through?"

  Pope slowly picked up his helmet beside him on the bench and nervously placed it two feet further away. Marcotte was still armed with a hockey stick and the puck was too close for comfort.

  "The biggest game of our lives and you guys are teeing it up. Well, I'm TEED OFF!"

  Derek paced the floor in the slow determined march of his hero, Winston Churchill. Marcotte wondered how fast Churchill actually walked, given the jittery World War II footage in which the British prime minister was held prisoner. Derek used the hockey stick to measure his steps, not unlike Churchill's cane.

  "Sun and surf. Hah! If it's sand you want, remember the beaches of Normandy! The bridge over the River Kwai! The shores of Grenada! These were surfer dudes who came in on the enemy. Wave after wave. They holed out in bunkers day and night -- without a sand wedge. And ditch the surf boards. During war, the Geneva Convention outlawed hanging ten."

  "I should say so. The surf is never up in Geneva," Williams said to Pederson.

  Derek glared through the windowed souls of each player he passed by.

  "Men ... we're about to embark on a twenty-minute quest where we will determine our own brand of world order."

  Pederson meekly raised his hand to draw Marcotte's attention.

  "We only have to pick up two goals," Pederson said matter-of-factly.

  Beautiful, thought Marcotte. Another accounting major masquerading as a hockey player. Derek's stare pierced Pederson's skull. The Gargoyle captain was trying to motivate his troops and this number-crunching nimrod may as well be collecting box tops for a magnetic decal board.

  "Look what the Japanese had to pick up after two bombs!" Marcotte hollered. "We're getting our butts kicked, men! Let's go!"

  The players jumped to their feet. They quickly adjusted their helmet straps, shoved their hands into their gloves and made their way for the door. Marcotte's tirade had fired up a few of the players. These were the players who stumbled by, fumbling with their sticks as they tried picking them out of the stick rack.

  "Damn the torpedoes!" Bailey yelled.

  Schuman, walking ahead of him, turned around.

  "Great tune. Tom Petty and the Heart-breakers, eh?"

  ... 2 ...

  Third period play was underway. A capacity crowd was on hand ... and not sitting on them. While their eyes followed the sluggish play, their mouths spoke of actions taking place off the ice. A collective smugness had washed over the audience. Amateur sports were still safe from salary caps and strikes. At least until the players demanded representation to get more money under the table.

  The action
turned chippy as players took runs at anything moving in a different colored sweater. An Appaloosa player blasted Derek into the corner boards to the left of the Western goalie. As Marcotte lay dazed with his head at ice level ... he was mesmerized by the gleam of nearby skate blades ... biting ice flakes with their scraping steel appetite. The safety of his own sight and health demanded he take a different vantage point and he groggily staggered to his feet. He grabbed the dasherboard on the second try. Steadying himself, he focused on a little girl sitting in a man's lap, three rows behind the puck-marked plexiglass. She was pointing off into the distance, presumably at the team mascot ... a babysitter-at-large -- paid to obstruct as many views as possible in sixty minutes.

  "Hey, Marcotte! Get stuffed!"

  Derek closed his eyes, conserving energy. It was a shame children had to hear such filth. But the obscenities raining down out of the crisp, cool, refrigerated air reminded him where he was ... and where he should go. He blinked twice to cure his double vision.

  He immediately spotted Williams skating in from the blue line, carrying the puck along the same side of the ice. Marcotte rapped his stick hard against the ice twice, in case Williams hadn't seen him. The pass came to Derek, who took it and relayed it back to Williams in one motion. The puck fluttered softly over the outstretched stick of the defending Western player ... back to Williams, completing the drive-thru, give-and-go passing play. He gave the goalie a quick deke to the left. The netminder went for it, looking in the sock drawer when he should have gone for the closet. Williams eased the puck into the gaping net. The deficit was cut in half, with plenty of time left. Williams and Derek tapped gloves, congratulating each other.

  "Nice elevator pass," Williams said.

  Derek nodded toward the scoreboard behind him. 10:32 remained in the third. The white bulbs flashed awake, changing the score to 4-3.

  "Still have one more floor to go."

  There was life on the Guelph bench. The difference between a one- and two-goal third period deficit was not unlike that between community service and capital punishment.

  For the next few minutes however, it was the Guelph goalie, Jason Hartwell, who faced a firing squad of his own. Western kept the Gargoyles hemmed in their own end. Hartwell kept body, limb and every non-regulation inch of equipment between the Appaloosa shooters and the trigger-happy goal judge behind him.

  Finally Guelph gained control of the puck. Bailey hit Derek with a sharp pass as Marcotte came wheeling out of the Gargoyle zone, up the middle. A shift of the hips put Derek in passing gear and by the bewildered Western defenseman at center ice. Marcotte was in cold on a two-on-one break with Crossley. Pope joined the play as a trailer, turning the break-out into a three-on-one. Derek went bowlegged for a split second, dropping a pass between his legs back to Pope.

  Pope one-timed the soft pass past the Western goalie's glove into the top right corner of the net. Derek, Crossley and Pope met in the face-off circle to celebrate the tying goal. Amidst back slapping, high fives and shin pad tapping, they didn't see the Western defenseman, Victor Erskine, until it was too late.

  Erskine shoved Pope from behind. Pope in turn bumped into Crossley and they both went sprawling. Derek grabbed Erskine with his right hand and quickly reeled him in to within nose-biting distance. With gloves in each others faces, they traded various pokes and jabs about ten seconds short of becoming two-minute penalties. The linesmen moved in between the two players.

  "After the next goal, pal ... your ass is gonna be western ... like in B.C.," said Derek.

  Erskine shook his head and smirked.

  "Au contraire. After the next goal ... we'll be toasting our win with champagne. I'll save you the empty for your next bottle drive."

  The Western defenseman spoke with his head tilted back in a haughty sort of way. Marcotte restrained himself from dropping a glove and losing his fist in Erskine's face.

  The linesmen finally pulled them apart and the teams changed their skaters. The scoreboard showed a 4-4 tie with 4:28 remaining.

  ... 3 ...

  Neutral zone play ate up most of the time remaining on the clock. By the time the teams lined up for a face-off deep in Guelph's zone, there were only 42 ticks left. Derek hunkered down in the face-off circle. A defiant, almost maniacal gleam filled his eyes. This was the extreme temporary insanity that all good centers fell victim to prior to the drop of the puck. Marcotte fixated upon the black disc cradled in the referee's hand. It surely was some sort of priceless heirloom, the object of a dream sequence replaying in his head. The clumsy oaf would drop the puck. He always did. Each time, the only way Marcotte could save it was to catch it on the blade of his stick. This was the treacherous part. The opposing center did his damnedest to prevent Derek from retrieving the shiny black disc.

  But these were his dreams ... dreams which the Western player opposite him couldn't see. While the Western player could dream as well, they'd soon be just that -- visions and faded cameo snapshots of a professional hockey career never realized.

  Marcotte's 6' 1" frame was earmarked with the talent needed to make his dreams come true. To know the split second the puck would leave the linesman's hand ... and time the forward push of his stick to direct the disc through the opposing center's legs. This particular face-off maneuver had a very high success rate in his hockey "head games".

  The ref's beefy fingers released the puck. Sticks clashed. Marcotte's blade pushed the puck forward between the other center's skates. Derek veered to his right and sidestepped the Appaloosa center. Corralling the puck, he sped by the nearest Western defenseman at the Guelph blue line. Legs churning, heart pumping, Derek slammed it into overdrive, begging his blades for more.

  The other Western defenseman, Erskine, closed in from the left side, appearing to have the angle on him. He was ready to intercept Derek at the Western blueline. The roar of the crowd provided Derek with the extra burst of speed he needed to pass Erskine as they crossed center ice.

  Erskine hooked at Marcotte's upper body, desperately trying to find a nook or cranny into which he could sink the stick's blade. But Marcotte was pulling away. Erskine reared back and slashed Derek across the left knee with a vicious two-hander that would've made Paul Bunyan proud.

  Marcotte went down like he'd been shot, clutching his knee in agony. He knew it was bad. He cringed, his body contracting inward. Interior sirens rang with distress alarms for parts south. Grimacing, he rolled over on the ice, eyes clamped shut ... searching inward ... somewhere deep inside for solace ... and relief from the pain.

  His mind raced, recapping snippets scattered about -- like pieces of what surely must be a shattered knee. Marcotte tried to make heads or tails of the mess he suddenly found himself. The little girl in that man's lap? Where was she? Damn. Have to suck up the pain. Now she'll never go to another game. Where's that friggin' team mascot? Why didn't he get in front of that goddamn slash?

  In the stands, Helen Dornhoefer jumped from her seat. A nursing student, she'd met Derek in a freshman biology class. When Derek showed up for class following the Pederson collision with his arm in a sling, her interest in him hopscotched madly between the chalked boxes marked "wild woman" and "wet nurse". When his arm had healed, Derek was relieved to see her dropping by less. He needed his stamina for the ice.

  It was her haphazard interest in hockey and him that at first drew him to her. The blondes and brunettes who had thrown themselves at him ... he'd tossed back into the coed pool. He didn't go to college to major in Non-Animalistic Husbandry. Her aloofness gave Marcotte the space and time to concentrate on hockey. She was only at today's game because a girlfriend had a spare ticket and had asked her to go. Helen hadn't struck out with Derek. Their relationship was an accident waiting to happen.

  Helen raced down the concrete steps. Taking them two by two, she lost her balance for a second on some spilled popcorn, but grabbed the railing one step further down and steadied herself in a sticky patch of spilled pop. She surveyed the situation on the ice a
s an emergency response crew member would in planning a triage. With only one casualty, she calculated the medical options available. First she had to find the quickest route to him.

  Two teammates helped Derek along the ice to the door at the end of the rink. Helen yanked it open for them. She'd jumped the last three rows of seats and their unsuspecting occupants to reach the ice-level doors. She was oblivious to the box of Cracker Snacks and beer cup she'd splattered off the plexiglass in the process.

  "Derek! Derek! Are you okay?"

  Never let the patient know how bad it is. But the optimism in her voice did little to mask her heart-pounding concern. Dodging his eyes, she looked down at the ground. Her gaze settled upon the injured knee. Besides not putting any weight on it, something else wasn't right. His right sock had three red stripes. But his left sock had four. The one at the top was a little wider and at a bit of an angle when compared to the other stripes. A gasp escaped her lips. The top stripe was becoming wider. The blossoming red line was the scene of the crime of Erskine's hatchet job. Fresh blood oozed through the heavy wool along the crease carved by Erskine.

  "Okay for a pegleg pirate," Derek said. "Okay for Toulouse-Lautrec. Yeah, I'm okay."

  He tried to crack a grin to show he was already on the road to recovery. But the mere thought of laughing -- or anything remotely related -- caused him to wince anew. Would he skate again? Would he walk? Did anyone have the name of that road to recovery?

  The team trainer, Eddie "Zipper" Zorenson, barreled past Helen, pushing her aside. Eddie was in his fifties and when he wasn't refurbishing Model "A" cars, did a decent job patching up Junior "A" players. Until recently. There was the Swift Current incident where, in the final minute of a game, Zorenson was sewing up a Speedy Creek player's split lip as quick as he could to get the kid back in the game. Zorenson worked so fast he stitched the poor kid's top and bottom lip together, halfway across the mouth. They lost the game, but the player kept the rest of the team loose on the bus trip home ... impersonating Jean Chretien. Swift Current authorities canned Zipper and he'd be selling used cars if it weren't for the kind hearted board of regents at Guelph.