The Ice Chips and the Grizzly Escape

by Roy MacGregor

  “The Riverton Ice Chips, led by their captain, number 97, Lucas Finnigan . . .”

  The announcer had to yell into his microphone to be heard over the loud cheers of the crowd.

  Chapter 15

  “MAAAAAAHRIAA SHOT!” Edge shouted as his team flooded onto the gravelly pavement of Rink B. This was the cheer he’d borrowed from his grandmother—his dadi—during the championship game last season. It was the one that had been inspired by the announcers on Hockey Night in Canada: Punjabi Edition. And now it was a permanent part of the Ice Chips’ pre-game cheer.

  “MAAAAAAHRIAA SHOT!” he shouted again, nodding toward his teammates. He was trying to tell them to ignore the spectators around the rink; he was trying to get them to focus.

  “KEETA GOAL!” they shouted back, some still looking into the stands, intimidated.

  “MAAAAAAHRIAA SHOT!” Edge called out, stronger.

  “KEETA GOAL!” the others repeated, now with more enthusiasm.

  For a heartbeat, Lucas thought he should pick up the rest of the chant—“WHO OWNS THE RUBBER TIKI?”—but for some reason, he couldn’t. He couldn’t shout. He couldn’t lead.

  He’d been introduced as the Ice Chips’ captain, but that wasn’t who he was anymore.

  * * *

  “Hey, do you think they’re any good?” Bond asked Swift as the dropped ball rocketed away from the faceoff circle and slammed against the boards. An Ice Chip and a Gravel player were running as fast as they could after the bouncing ball.

  “I guess we’ll know pretty soon,” the Chips’ goalie answered, readying herself with a nervous smile behind her mask.

  Swift wasn’t a great fan of this game compared to ice hockey. She was wearing her regular goalie pads, but without a slick surface, she couldn’t slide from goalpost to goalpost—not in the smooth, graceful way Carey Price could in an arena. Slide across a ball hockey crease and you’d get road rash. Blocking shots was tricky, too, because a shot could rise or dip at the last second—it was hard to read.

  When the Chips practised road hockey, it was often in Bond’s driveway with her Shooter Tutor or the Face, the Chips’ second goalie, in net. Swift had played with a ball, but not nearly as much as the others.

  She watched as Mouth Guard plucked a Gravel pass out of the air and started running with it “up ice.” He was still a little wobbly from his sprained ankle and had lost his lucky long johns to Beatrice, but he was doing well. The puck tricks Jack had taught him seemed to be paying off, even with the switch from a puck to a ball. Mouth Guard’s keep-away moves were stronger than ever.

  He used one of those moves when he reached the opposition goal. Instead of shooting, he flipped the ball in a high arc so that it rose over the head of the Gravel goaltender and fell onto his back before bouncing into the net.

  The Chips were the first on the scoreboard!

  “Yessssssss!” Swift cheered, glancing up into the stands to see if her friend’s parents had seen his goal.

  Mouth Guard loved road hockey. He often talked (non-stop, of course) about the way the ball felt on the end of his hockey stick. Not only could he stickhandle it, he said, but if he practised enough, he could almost “dribble” it, bouncing it past players and controlling it in a different way than he would a puck on the ice.

  He also said he liked the way he could shoot in this game. It took a lot of effort to hoist a puck into the roof of a net, but it was simple with a road hockey ball. He could pass high and his teammates could catch or knock the ball down, no matter how high it came at them. Pucks hurt.

  Next it was Slapper’s turn. The defender scored on a hard shot that must have bounced off five different legs, arms, and butts before it landed in the net. The Guelph Gravel players weren’t happy. The team was full of ice hockey kids who’d thought they could adapt instantly to this game, but they couldn’t.

  “Top Sheeeeelf!” Edge called as he knocked a Gravel pass out of the air and chased it.

  Lucas knew that call meant he should head toward the other net as fast as his sneakers would take him.

  He didn’t even look back. He heard the thunk behind him and saw a flash of orange bounce by his shoulder. He reached over and pulled the ball down to his foot, as niftily as an experienced fly fisherman reeling in his catch—or at least as someone who’d reeled something in once.

  The Chips’ centre was soon coming in fast, stickhandling. The goalie stayed with him. Lucas pretended to lose the ball—a trick Mouth Guard had taught him—reaching for it far out to his left, just out of range of a poke check. Then at the last moment, he tugged the ball toward his shoe, kicked it back to his stick, and with a quick flip, roofed it into the net.

  The game ended Ice Chips 9, Gravel 3.

  The large crowd around Rink B erupted into cheers.

  * * *

  “Where’re you going?” Lucas asked Swift in the dressing room. She’d thrown on a T-shirt and was rushing to put her pads and gloves away. None of the ball hockey players were in full equipment—they had on shorts, sneakers, helmets, shin pads, and gloves—but that was still too much to wear for what Swift and Edge had planned.

  Lucas’s teammates were going to run over to the corner of the parking lot, where Edge’s basketball buddies had set up a free-throw competition to help raise more money for the village’s arena.

  “You come, too, Lucas. You can even toss in one of your ring-a-rific toilet bowls, if you want,” Edge suggested, grinning.

  His best friend’s cheeks flushed pink.

  “You’ll do fine,” Bond said to Lucas, trying to encourage him. “It’s not like any of us will be dunking.”

  “I might,” said Edge. “My layups are getting pretty good.” Now it was his turn to blush.

  Swift said that after the free-throw competition, she wanted to go to Rink A to watch the Bears play for a bit before the Chips’ next game. “There’s a lot to fit in today!” she said, pulling on Edge’s arm.

  In the basketball zone, Edge sunk a few creative baskets using some of his new camp skills. Swift sunk one out of three, and Lucas sunk none.

  “Can I try?”

  It was Jack. He was wearing a borrowed Stars jersey with “Jack Dangle” written on duct tape stuck to the back. Since Nolan and Shayna had gone to play for the Bears, Coach Blitz had shuffled his team around and drafted Jack as a fill-in forward on the Stars. That rich jerk probably believes that’s how his team will win the tournament, thought Lucas, shaking his head.

  “Of course,” said Edge, smiling and throwing Jack the ball with a chest pass. He’d heard about the kid’s candy-filled breakfasts, but this was the first time they’d been around each other. Edge had never seen Jack on the ice. He’d never seen what he could do.

  Right away, Jack looped the ball around his legs and through the middle in a figure eight, ducking and weaving his body as he went. Then he added a bounce. After one of those bounces, he flipped the ball up, spun it on his finger, and then let it roll all the way along his arm, over the back of his neck, and down the other arm. That’s when he turned and—without even looking—tossed the ball over his shoulder and into the net behind him.

  Two kids from Edge’s basketball camp gasped. The Chips’ mouths dropped open.

  “Where’d he learn that?” Lucas heard one of the basketball players ask.

  Jack, it seemed, was just as good at tricks on the court as he was on the ice.

  “Well, he doesn’t live in a house with a big TV or tons of fancy toys, right?” Bond said once Jack had left to join the other Stars in their dressing room. “I guess that’s what you do when—”

  “When you don’t have a lot money, you learn tricks?” asked Swift, still amazed by Jack’s skills.

  “No, you practise,” said Bond. “You practise as hard as you can.”

  BBZZZZZZZ-weeeeeep! Weep! Weep! Weep!

  The alarm Edge had set on his comm-band was going off.

  “Hey, the Bears’ next game is about to start!”

  * *
*

  Swift looked at her friends with a hopeful smile. “Here they go!”

  August, Sam, Shayna, Nolan, and the rest of the Bears were up against the Toronto Tornados, a group of players from the big city. Right from the start, the teams seemed mismatched, like a mouse against an elephant. The players from Toronto were big, and their equipment was shiny. The only new-looking equipment the Bears had was the red stick tape Shayna had shared with her teammates that morning. But from the moment the ball was dropped, the mouse was clearly the one to fear.

  The ball was immediately cuffed away by Shayna. Nolan read her body language and was already waiting along the boards when she sent the ball bouncing over to him. The orange sphere then went from Nolan to August, who deked past the Toronto defenders and had the ball in the net before the big-city goalie even saw her coming.

  The three Chips were in awe of how well the Bears played. August, no longer held back by her weak skating, was incredible, able to stickhandle around anything that stood between her and the other team’s net. Sam was like a tank out there: big and strong and powerful, able to plow through any barrier, and with a shot like a cannon. And Swift’s billet, Charlie, now made sense as a goalie, since he seemed to be able to leap easily to cover any corner of the net.

  The three Chips had played against Shayna and Nolan many times on the ice when they were Stars. But now, as Bears—with the help of their cousin and the clever plays of Layla Smith, the coach—the Atlookan siblings were killing it.

  But can they keep this up for the entire tournament? Lucas wondered.

  No one was surprised when the Bears beat the Tornados 4–1—except maybe some of the parents.

  “They’re not even a real registered hockey team,” Lucas overheard one of the competitive-looking dads say to an equally competitive-looking mom. “They shouldn’t have been allowed into the competition.”

  “How can he say that?” Lucas whispered to Edge. This was a fundraiser for the Bears, put on by the Bears. Of course they were welcome here.

  “That’s what Shayna’s red tape is for,” said Edge, sadly. “It’s to stand up against that kind of bullying.”

  “But the Bears are a really good team,” Lucas said, not sure if he’d completely understood. “They just beat them.”

  “You’re right,” said Coach Small. “They’re all great players.” He’d just walked up behind the Chips to remind them of their playing schedule. “They’re a wonderful bunch of kids, and they all deserve respect. Whether they have an arena or not, this is their game, too.”

  Coach Small was looking straight at the dad who’d made the comment. The man looked annoyed, but also embarrassed.

  “Now, let’s get a move on,” Coach Small said as he led his players back to their dressing room.

  * * *

  By mid-afternoon, there were three teams with perfect 3–0 records: the Ice Chips, the Bears, and the Riverton Stars. The Stars had been working for weeks on their ball hockey play, and it had paid off. Beatrice and Jared Blitz were every bit the stars on the pavement that they were on the ice. Plus they had Jack on their team. That guy was like a weasel in a woodshed the way he could slip through openings and instantly appear where no one had expected him, suddenly gobbling up the ball and racing toward the other team’s net faster than any other kid.

  When Bond had talked about all the practising Jack must do, both Lucas and Swift had looked embarrassed. Swift felt bad that she hadn’t been practising enough that summer—she’d just expected to do well without putting in the work because everyone already said she was so good. Lucas had immediately looked at the ground, only for a different reason. His family didn’t have a lot of money, either; like Jack, he was wearing hand-me-down equipment. But unlike Jack, he didn’t have any tricks. No longer captain, he had no idea what he had to offer his team.

  Because of the three-way tie, there was much consultation along the sidelines among the referees and the organizers. Coach Small was called over, as were Coach Blitz and Coach Smith from the Bears. The three listened awhile, and then the meeting broke up. Coach Small showed no emotion as he walked back to his team, and the same with the coach of the Bears. Mr. Blitz, however, looked like he was chewing glass, and his face was as red as a stop sign.

  Coach Small broke out in a small smile when he reached the group of Ice Chips.

  “There’s a three-way tie at the top,” he said. “So they went to the difference between goals scored and goals allowed. You can thank Swift for a lot of this. We scored twenty-two goals and allowed only seven. That’s a difference of plus-15. The Stars were second at plus-13, with nineteen for and six against. The Bears won all three games, but they were only a plus-5—ten goals for them and five against.”

  Edge seemed baffled. “Is this a math test or ball hockey?”

  “Both,” said Coach Small. “We had the best record of the three 3–0 teams. That means the Stars and Bears will play each other to see who will play us in the final.”

  “I didn’t think we’d be the ones with the best score,” said Swift.

  “It’s not that score that will count now anyway,” said Lucas, feeling nervous. The stress was rising in his stomach like a pair of angry pterodactyls. “What matters is what happens in these next two games.”

  Chapter 16

  The parking lot around the Blitz Sports Complex was now packed like an outdoor music festival, with spectators standing six- and ten-deep along the boards. Lucas, Bond, Swift, and Edge had squished in together, behind the extra chairs they’d added. They were watching, waiting.

  Both the Riverton Stars and the Bears had shown that they were exceptional teams, but only one of them could win this semifinal.

  And that winner would then meet the Ice Chips in the championship match.

  The Chips saw Shayna and Beatrice Blitz shake hands before the opening faceoff, and they wondered how long it would be before Beatrice or Jared tripped her or slashed her shins. The Blitz twins could be a nasty combination on the ice, and the pavement didn’t seem to be any different. Of course, Shayna would already know that; she was normally on their team.

  Shayna won the faceoff and got the ball back to Nolan, playing defence. Nolan immediately launched a high floating pass, and it seemed to those watching that he was throwing the ball away.

  But it was a set play. August had already flown down the parking lot, her feet a blur, when Nolan’s long pass curved and came down. She was able to cup the ball with her hand and then direct it toward her feet and onto the blade of her stick.

  Five seconds into the semifinal and the Bears were on a clear breakaway! August ran in, controlling the ball, and deftly faked out Zia, the Stars’ goalie, so that he went one way while she and the ball went the other. The net was wide open! August tapped the ball in as carefully and effortlessly as if she were placing a crystal bowl into a kitchen cabinet.

  “Wow! Nice move!” exclaimed Edge.

  “Incredible!” Swift agreed.

  The Bears’ lead did not last long, though. Jack tied the game after he deflected a shot from Jared Blitz into the Bears’ net for the goal. There was something about that kid’s ability to sneak up on the net, to seemingly appear out of nowhere and score. Lucas was amazed by Jack’s skills—especially since he seemed to have learned them all on his own.

  Nolan used his “airplane” pass again to break a player free. This time it was his sister, and Shayna picked up the ball on the first bounce before breaking in on the Stars’ net.

  She used a trick she often practised up north when she visited her grandparents: she let the ball keep rolling and ran right past it before poking her hockey stick back between her legs and flicking the ball off the blade. The Stars’ goalie swung to the far side to stay with Shayna, but that left her an opening and she sent the ball high into the short side of the net.

  This play was like the one Lucas had used against the Guelph Gravel, only better. It was a trick he’d seen on the NHL highlights—Matthew Tkachuk of the Calgary
Flames had done it several times—but Shayna did it with added style. Lucas could explain these kinds of moves pretty well, but when it came to actually doing them, he found he was rarely the best of the best, as Swift would say.

  “Sorry about that,” Shayna said with a smile, looking at Zia. He was, after all, her goalie when she played for the Stars. With a similar look, she gave Jessie Bonino, the Stars’ defender, a friendly shrug. What else can I do? The Stars were her teammates during the regular season. But the Bears were family.

  Lucas, Swift, Bond, and Edge were amazed at how well the kids from up north could play. Clearly, they had mastered ball hockey. All that time they’d spent practising without a rink was paying off. They could control bounces better. They could run faster with the ball than the other team. They could poke-check and snipe. They could do it all.

  Shayna and Nolan were very good, but August was amazing. Her control over the ball was unmatched, and even mid-run, she could switch directions in a split second.

  When time ran out in the game, the Bears were up 11–6, a clear victory.

  The Ice Chips would meet the Bears for the final match!

  Coach Blitz was furious. His red face now looked like a ripe strawberry. He was yelling at Mayor Ward, who was sometimes a coach herself and was the one who’d convinced the coaches to agree to this playoff style. Edge and Lucas couldn’t hear what Coach Blitz was saying, but they didn’t need to know the words. The actions told it all when Mr. Blitz grabbed Jared’s stick and smashed it on the parking lot pavement before stabbing the two pieces into the rock-and-cactus garden that ran along the side of his arena.

  He appeared to be looking for another stick to break, but Jared’s sister was nowhere near them.

  Beatrice and August were off in another part of the parking lot, near the fruit-shaped lemonade stand. They were both sipping drinks and giggling. August showed Beatrice how to grab the ball out of the air and drop it, then she taught her Shayna’s between-the-legs move. Beatrice tried it twice—tripping herself once and then missing the shot entirely.