The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2

by Roy MacGregor

  “I think he’s cute,” Sarah whispered back.

  Nish shook his head in disgust.

  Travis noticed that the other coaches were removing the nets from the ice and were bringing out four small, red, box-shaped frames.

  Salming scooped up the puck with his stick. He did it the way Travis had seen other NHLers do it. Effortlessly, smoothly, the stick snaked out, snaked back, and, as if by magic, the puck was suddenly lying on the blade and then floating through the air until it landed, perfectly, in the palm of his glove. He didn’t seem to be even thinking about it.

  Salming held up the puck. “I don’t have to tell you that the game is all about this and what you are able to do with it,” he said. “But we want to show you how kids learn the game in Sweden.”

  He reached into his track-suit pocket, removed another puck, and held it up beside the puck he had scooped from the ice. This one was different. It was about half the size.

  “We teach Swedish youngsters how to handle small pucks first,” he said. “You don’t give a full-size basketball to a five-year-old, do you? No matter how tall he is.”

  “No,” Fahd said. Fahd could always be counted on to say the obvious.

  “The game in Europe is all about tempo,” Salming said. “Anyone know what I mean by ‘tempo’? Anyone a musician?”

  Fahd, of course, raised his hand. “I play piano.”

  “Well?”

  “Tempo tells you how slow or fast to play the piece of music.”

  Salming smiled, nodding. “Same in hockey. If you can learn to do drills at full speed, then you won’t even have to think about what you should be doing during a game. Little kids can’t handle NHL regulation pucks the same way they can these little things. And obviously they can’t shoot them the same.”

  He pointed to the four red frames the other coaches had set up. They faced each other in two pairs on each side of the centre red line.

  “Little pucks require little nets,” he said, indicating the frames. “We teach our skills this way. Young players can handle these little pucks better, and shoot them a lot better. We use the smaller nets to teach accuracy.”

  Salming divided the Owls into two groups, one for the pair of tiny nets at the far end of the Globen rink, one for the near end. The rules were simple: no offsides, no stoppages, be creative, take chances.

  Travis had never heard such talk from a coach–not even Muck, who believed in having fun on the ice and almost always gave them a few minutes of shinny at the end of a practice. But even when they played shinny back in Canada there would be whistles, and play would be stopped, and coaches would explain mistakes. Here there would be nothing. No control. No teaching. No stopping. Nothing.

  In all his hockey years, Travis had never experienced anything quite like this. It was wonderful! It was exciting. It was fun–more fun, he thought, than he had ever had on an ice surface.

  They played in groups of three: Travis, Dmitri, and Sarah against Nish, Data, and big Andy Higgins. Borje Salming and the other coach at their end just threw the puck into the corner and the game was under way. All four coaches then formed a line across centre to stop the little pucks from crossing the centre line.

  The pucks felt almost weightless. Travis found he could stickhandle like an NHL pro. And when he shot, it took the slightest flick of his wrist to send a snap shot hard and high off the glass. He couldn’t believe it!

  And yet there was no point in pounding a shot off the glass just because it sounded great. As he played and sweated and gasped for breath, Travis realized that this explained everything he had ever wondered about European hockey.

  Here, on half the ice in the Globen Arena in Stockholm, with a baby puck and a toy net, he could see it all for the first time: the only way that he and Dmitri and Sarah could attack was to keep circling back and dropping the puck to each other, even if they had only half the ice surface to work with. They had to drop the puck and watch for either Nish or Data or Andy to commit themselves, allowing them a quick three-on-two. The puck was so small and light that they could pass it back and forth effortlessly and quickly, and the passing became almost hypnotic as they kept trying out new ideas. They could do anything they wanted–no whistles, no one yelling at them, no score to worry about. They circled and dropped and flicked quick little passes and kept the puck dancing on the ends of their sticks.

  Scoring, however, was another matter. The net was so small that with Nish and his big shin pads in the way, it was a bit like threading a needle. If they kept to the usual North American strategy they would lose possession. A shot wasn’t always a safe play. Here, a shot for the sake of a shot was a waste. They had to wait, and they had to work at it so one of them would have the ideal angle. No big fancy slapshots. Quick, hard shots exactly placed–nothing else would work.

  They played for nearly half an hour, and when Salming finally blew the whistle and the other coaches began to gather up the little pucks and push away the tiny nets, the Owls collapsed on their backs, sweating and puffng and giggling.

  “That’s my kind of hockey,” Dmitri said.

  “I love it!” said Sarah.

  Off to the side, Nish was grunting and gasping and trying to laugh sarcastically. “One good bodycheck and you wouldn’t be saying that.”

  Sarah laughed. “You’d have to catch us first, Big Boy.”

  Nish threw a glove at her. It bounced off her shoulder pads. “We won,” he announced.

  “Whatdya mean, ‘won’?” Travis asked. “Nobody was even keeping score!”

  “I always keep score–” Nish said.

  He had barely finished speaking when his own glove flew back and bounced off his nose.

  “So do I,” said Sarah, giggling. “And now we’re even.”

  The Screech Owls hadn’t played a single game, and yet already this was the best tournament ever. After the practice with Borje Salming and the little pucks, the lumber company Lars’s father worked for was treating them to a banquet in the restaurant overlooking the ice surface, high up on the seventh floor of the Globen complex. But the Owls kept forgetting that they had come up here to eat. MoDo, one of the Swedish elite teams, was holding a practice below for their upcoming game against Djurgårdens. MoDo was Peter Forsberg’s old team.

  “They’re playing with the little pucks!” Fahd shouted.

  “They just look little from up here,” said Travis, shaking his head at Fahd.

  The meal included tiny, delicious boiled potatoes and lots of different kinds of cheese. Lars wanted them all to try the pickled herring, but he couldn’t convince them that the herring wasn’t a snake all curled up in the dish.

  “Let me at it!” shouted Nish from another table.

  Ever since the trip to James Bay, Nish fancied himself a new Man of the World. He had eaten beaver, after all–and moose nostrils!–so what was the big deal about a little slippery, rubbery fish?

  “You eat this, Nish,” Lars said, “and you get first dibs on the pudding.”

  Nish’s eyes opened wide. “What pudding?”

  “A special Swedish treat. You can go first if you eat this.”

  “No prob-lem,” Nish announced as he sat down and elaborately tucked a napkin under his chin.

  He sliced off a bit of the pickled herring, sniffed it, and then began to chew.

  “Mmmmmmm,” he kept saying. “Ahhhhhhhhh! Per-fect!”

  Nish chewed and ate as if he’d been brought up on nothing but pickled herring. He loved a show. He loved being the centre of attention.

  “You win!” said Lars. “Bring Nish some of the pudding.”

  Nish put down his knife and fork and dabbed at his chin, waiting, like some ancient king on his throne, for someone to serve him.

  A smiling waiter came over with the special dish Lars had promised.

  Nish lightly dabbed at his mouth.

  “I should have some wine to clean my palate,” he announced grandly.

  “You’re thirteen years old!” Fahd scolded.<
br />
  “There is no drinking age in Sweden,” said Nish. “Is there, Lars?”

  “Well, you have to be eighteen, actually,” Lars said. “But it’s pretty well left up to the parents to decide when you’re mature enough–which in your case would be roughly the year 2036.”

  Nish scowled. “Very funny.”

  The waiter placed the pudding down in front of Nish and stood back.

  “Lemme at it!” Nish practically shouted.

  “Go ahead,” Lars said. “You’ve earned it.”

  Nish didn’t even bother to sniff the dish. Like a front-end loader dumping snow into the back of a truck, he spooned up pudding, chewed once with his eyes closed–then stopped, his eyes opening wide!

  “W-what is this?” he mumbled, some of the dark pudding tumbling out of his mouth.

  “The English translation,” said Lars, “would be ‘blood pudding.’ There’s beer and syrup and spices mixed together with flour.” He paused, grinning. “Oh yes, and the blood of a freshly slaughtered pig. It’s a very old, very special Swedish recipe. It dates back hundreds and hundreds of years.”

  More of the dark pudding rolled out of Nish’s open mouth. He turned pale.

  “I’MMM GONNNA HU-URLLL!”

  They walked out into the brilliant sunshine of a late-winter Swedish day. Outside the Globen Hotel they waited while Nish, still spitting into a napkin, ran into the nearby McDonald’s and grabbed a Big Mac to wash away the taste of the dreaded blood pudding. Then they boarded a bus for downtown.

  It didn’t take Nish long to recover. At the corner they passed a gas station, and Nish pointed at the signs on either side of the pumps.

  “‘In-fart’? ‘Ut-fart’?”

  “‘Entrance’ and ‘Exit,’” explained Lars, a trifle impatiently.

  “Cars over here fart when they get gas?” Nish screamed, holding his nose.

  “Very funny,” Lars said. He shrugged his shoulders and moved away to the front of the bus.

  Once downtown, they were all given a couple of hours to go their separate ways, promising to meet back at the bus at four o’clock.

  In the sunshine, and with a light sprinkling of snow on the streets, Stockholm looked like a picture in a fairy tale. Everything seemed so old, and mysterious, and magical.

  Travis and Fahd were interested in the history. They were lucky Lars was along. He told them about the canals, the churches, even a bit about the Vikings. But Nish wasn’t much interested.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Travis winced. This hardly seemed the place for Nish to try out his new yell. They were passing a church–had he no respect?

  “Eeee-awww-keee!”

  The second call didn’t come from Nish. It was higher pitched and distant, far off down the street.

  Nish spun around in his tracks. “What was that?”

  “An echo,” suggested Lars.

  “No way–it sounded like a girl!”

  Nish held his hands up to his mouth to make a trumpet.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!” he shouted.

  “Eeee-awww-keee!” the answer came back, louder now, closer.

  “They’re answering me!” Nish giggled.

  “Maybe they’re wolves,” suggested Travis.

  “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!” Nish called again.

  A throng of kids was coming down the far side of the street.

  One of them ran out into the street, held her hands up to her mouth, raised her head, and howled, “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Nish answered back, “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  The girl waved. Nish turned away, blushing.

  “They’re coming over!” he hissed.

  They were Swedish, seven or eight of them in blue jackets and yellow scarves, and three or four others in ski jackets and baseball caps. They seemed like a team, or at least part of a team and their friends. The girl who had been answering Nish’s call seemed very much the leader.

  “Hi,” she said directly to Nish. “I’m Annika. What’s your name?”

  Nish sputtered, and Travis couldn’t blame him. Annika was so cute–perfectly blond, with nice teeth and dimples when she smiled. But the cutest thing about her was the way she talked. When she spoke English, it was almost as if she were singing.

  “N-Nish. What’s yours?”

  Annika giggled. “Annika. Didn’t you hear me the first time or is my English no good?”

  Nish was flustered. “Y-y-yeah, sure it is. I’m sorry.”

  “Where are you from?”

  With Lars’s help, Nish managed to explain all about the team and what they were doing here.

  Annika’s friends in the blue jackets and yellow scarves were on the Malmö peewee team. They were playing in the tournament and were in Stockholm for a game at the Globen Arena.

  “Malmö?” Lars said. “We play twice in Malmö.”

  “Maybe against us,” a tall boy said. “We’ve got a pretty good team.”

  “So do we,” Nish said. “I’m assistant captain.”

  Travis waited for Nish to point out that he, Travis, was captain, but Nish said nothing. And Travis couldn’t figure out how to say it without sounding full of himself.

  “We had a practice with Borje Salming!” Lars told them.

  “No way!” Annika screeched.

  “We did,” Nish said, nodding.

  “He’s my all-time favourite player!” Annika said, her eyes sparking. “I still have a poster of him up in my bedroom.”

  “When do you go to Malmö?” the tall boy asked Travis.

  “We play Russia tomorrow. I think we leave first thing the next morning.”

  “I’ll come and watch you play,” Annika said, her amazing eyes studying a blushing Nish.

  “I-I’m number 21,” he said.

  “Borje Salming’s number!” she yelled.

  “Yeah,” Nish said. “I know. He’s my favourite player, too.”

  Travis did a double-take. How could he say that? Nish was practically a baby when Salming retired. In all the years they’d been best friends, Travis had never once heard Nish mention Borje Salming. Maybe Bobby Orr. And certainly Brian Leetch. But Salming?

  “No kidding?” said Annika.

  “Yeah,” Nish fibbed. “Sure.”

  Annika held her hands up to her mouth: “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”

  Next morning they went early to the Globen Arena. Dmitri wanted to see his cousin before the game, and Travis, Lars, and Nish went along with him.

  They were already flooding the ice for the Screech Owls–Russia game, but no one was in the stands. Derek’s father, Mr. Dillinger, was sharpening the Owls’ skates, and he waved at them from the far end of the corridor. Good ol’ Mr. Dillinger.

  The Russian team, CSKA, was already there, but the dressing-room door was shut tight. A man in a blue suit stood to the side, watching them. He had the sort of glasses that get darker in bright light, and they gave him a shadowed, sinister look. He had a red-and-gold CSKA pin on his jacket, so they knew he was with the team.

  He answered in Russian when Dmitri addressed him. He even smiled when he realized Dmitri spoke his language, and he listened carefully, nodding and shaking his head.

  Finally the man knocked on the door–two sharp quick knocks, a pause, then a third, more softly–and was admitted.

  “What’s the big fuss?” Nish wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure,” Dmitri said. “They don’t seem to want anybody talking to the team. I told him I’m Slava’s cousin.”

  “Maybe they’re afraid he’ll defect,” Nish said, proud to use such a word.

  Dmitri laughed. “Get with the times, Nish. Russians don’t run away from home any more.”

  “Fedorov did. Mogilny did.”

  “You’re talking Soviet Union, Nish. There is no more Soviet Union–or don’t you pay attention in history class, either?”

  “Well, why are they so nervous, then?”

  A few minutes passed and the boys were getting restless. Finally the door opened and
the man in the blue suit came out. Then another man, who seemed even more furtive. Then a kid. A skinny kid with slightly buck teeth and unruly blond hair.

  “Slava!” Dmitri shouted when he saw who was coming out.

  “Hey!” the other shouted, smiling.

  The two boys hugged each other. Then Dmitri kissed his cousin’s cheek, and Slava kissed Dmitri’s cheek. Travis was standing close enough to Nish to hear him mumble, “I’m gonna hurl.” The cousins hugged again and then separated.

  “Slava,” Dmitri said. “These are my teammates. Travis, Lars, Nish, I want you to meet Viacheslav Shadrin. ‘Slava,’ we call him.”

  “I don’t kiss,” Nish said.

  Even Slava laughed. His big front teeth gave him a wonderful smile when he used it, but he didn’t use it often. His English wasn’t great, and Dmitri had to do a lot of translating, but the boys were able to talk about the tournament and everything they’d seen and done, including Nish’s now-famous Winter Skinny Dip.

  Slava nodded a lot and even laughed a couple of times, but he hadn’t any stories to tell in return. Lars asked him what he’d seen and Dmitri translated, but the answer didn’t amount to much apart from practice and team meetings. He hadn’t shopped. He hadn’t been to any of the museums.

  “Ask Slava if he can come out with us in Malmö,” Travis told Dmitri.

  Dmitri did, but Slava only shook his head and looked forlorn. He spoke quickly to Dmitri, and he kept checking the two men from CSKA, who were talking off to the side.

  “Okay,” Dmitri said. “See you later, then, Slava.”

  Slava quickly shook their hands and turned back towards the dressing room. The man in the blue suit already had the door open. In a moment, all three had vanished inside.

  “What was that all about?” Travis asked Dmitri.

  “In a minute,” Dmitri whispered. He waited until they had almost reached the Owls’ dressing room. Then he gathered the others close.

  “The man in the blue suit?” Dmitri began.

  “Yeah?” Lars said.

  “He’s undercover. You know, KGB, Secret Service? He travels with Slava everywhere he goes.”

  “Even to the bathroom?” Nish had to know.