Nish cradled the little puck as if it were an egg that would break if anyone so much as touched it as he passed by. He turned past the winger, then slipped the puck between Slava’s feet and broke over centre, his head level, his hips square, the puck out in front of him and moving back and forth as if it were tied to the blade of his stick.
Soundless! Nish was stickhandling in utter silence, the puck soft on the stick blade, the ice so smooth from the flood there was only the sizzle and sigh of skates digging in and gliding.
Nish fired the little puck towards the far corner. It seemed to catch the wind, almost like a Frisbee as it hung in the air, and flew effortlessly, the rink suddenly filling with a loud crack as it found the glass and bounced back out, landing flat along the face-off circle.
Nish and Dmitri had played it perfectly. Dmitri had taken off the moment he figured Nish would dump the puck in. Dmitri was so fast he blew by the defence in a blur and was at the circle as the puck landed.
Dmitri was in and free–the shoulder fake, the move to the backhand, and the little puck clicked in smartly off the crossbar.
Canada 2, Russia 1.
“Is this legal?” Nish wanted to know when he had high-fived his way to the bench.
“We’re here to have fun,” Muck reminded him. “Remember?”
“Yeah, but…does it count if we use that little puck?”
“Did it go in?”
“Yeah, but–”
“Then it counts, Nishikawa. Relax.”
Travis looked up at Muck and could hardly believe his eyes. Muck was laughing in the final period of a championship game, the Owls up by only one goal. Travis had never seen him so relaxed, so easygoing. And all because of a little puck.
Borje Salming faced the two teams off again, and again he dropped the miniature practice puck. It seemed he was going to finish the game with it. And why not? Travis said to himself. Look at how exciting the game has become.
The Russians tied it on a long shot from the point, the shot taking off so fast Travis couldn’t even track it from the bench. Jeremy Weathers’s glove shot out, but too late.
Russia 2, Canada 2.
Muck tapped Sarah on the shoulder the next time Slava’s line came out. She went over the boards immediately, Dmitri and Travis following.
The face-off was in the Owls’ end, to the right of Jeremy. Sarah wanted everyone placed exactly right, and while she was signalling to Nish, Jeremy skated quickly out to Travis.
“No fair!” Jeremy shouted.
Travis looked up. Jeremy was in despair. His face was red, flushed, and sweaty.
“Whadya mean?” Travis asked.
“I can’t stop a puck I can’t even see. You guys should have to use miniature sticks and wear skates that are two sizes too small.”
Travis giggled at the thought. “Yeah, right.”
The linesman blew quickly on his whistle and pointed to the net. Jeremy wiggled back. Travis looked down at the ice and laughed. He could hardly wait to get his stick on the little puck again. But he realized it wasn’t the same for everyone. No doubt the Russian goalie felt the same as Jeremy. The goalies would prefer pucks the size of pizzas.
The puck flew back to the point, where one of the Russian defencemen gloved it and dropped it down for a perfect slapshot. Travis was the closest Owl. He knew what he had to do. He dived and twisted his body perfectly, the drive from the point hammering into his pants.
Compared with the danger he had faced this week, blocking a tiny puck seemed easy.
The two teams played back and forth for most of the period, neither side able to penetrate the other’s defence. The miniature puck had such a strange effect on the game. The forwards were clearly more excited, trying harder, more anxious, and it caused a lot of broken plays. The defence were all more concerned, more wary of the power of a shot, and so they played with greater responsibility, always trying to make sure they kept shooters to the boards or blocked shots from the point. The goaltenders, too, seemed more alert, more worried, more frightened that they would let in a bad shot and be held responsible for a loss.
Travis figured he would have one final shift before the game ended. What would happen if the game was still tied? he asked himself. Overtime? A shootout?
They faced off to the left of Jeremy. Sarah won the puck from Slava and clipped it back to Nish, who immediately spun behind the net. Slava charged him. Nish tried a dangerous little move he had worked on in practice, a back pass against the boards just as the checker arrived, the puck bouncing back to Nish as the checker skated by. It worked perfectly! Nish faked to his right and broke out the left side, gathering speed.
Travis heard the call from behind the glass: “EEEE-AWWW-KEEE!”
Nish faked a pass to Dmitri and flipped a little backhand to Sarah, who was cutting across centre. Sarah carried the puck into the Russian end. She dropped for Dmitri, who tried to hit Travis flying in on the left side, but the defence stuck out his skate and the little puck ticked off and into the boards. Slava Shadrin, racing back, picked it up and turned. He failed, however, to see Nish sliding in to block any pass.
It was a dangerous pinch, but it worked. Nish’s shin pads swept the little puck away from Slava, off the boards, and down into the corner, where Sarah was waiting. She shot the puck behind the net to Dmitri. Dmitri pivoted and fired it backhand out to Travis, who was fighting through the two defencemen to get to the front of the net.
Travis’s stick blade just caught the little puck. It was so small, so light, that it stayed. He was off balance, falling, but he managed to flick a shot towards the net as he went down.
The tiny puck flew up as if Travis had cracked the hardest slapshot of his life. The goalie’s glove shot out, but too late. The shot went hard into the roof of the net, exploding the goaltender’s water bottle high into the air.
Travis knew it was in before he hit the ice. He couldn’t believe it! He, Travis Lindsay, had just scored the winning goal against Russia in the final minute! He was Paul Henderson!
He felt the ice, hard beneath him, and he felt his teammates, soft but heavy as they piled on, screaming and screeching. The tangle of bodies and sticks and helmets slid towards the corner. The last to join in was a whooping Jeremy Weathers, who had skated the length of the ice to jump into the celebration.
“Travis!” they yelled.
“Way to go, Trav!”
“We won!”
“We won!”
“We won!”
There were thirty-four seconds left on the clock, the same amount of time remaining when Paul Henderson had scored the goal to give Canada a win over the Soviet Union back in 1972. There was singing in the stands. Swedish flags and Canadian flags waving, everyone on their feet for the countdown. Travis could see Annika right against the glass in the Canadian end. She was blowing a kiss to Nish. Nish was pretending he hadn’t noticed, leaning over with his stick on his knees and fussing with his skate laces. But Travis could see that, every once in a while, Nish was stealing a peek to check what was going on behind the glass.
Muck wanted Andy’s line out for the final seconds. They were stronger defensively, but he also wanted Nish out with Lars, the two strongest Owls defencemen.
Travis drooped his glove over the boards and watched. His heart was still pounding. He was the hero, the Canadian hero, and he still couldn’t believe it. He looked up towards the face-off circle, where Borje Salming was just moving in to drop the puck.
The little puck had barely hit the ice when the Russian centre bolted for the bench and Slava Shadrin leapt straight over the boards. One moment he was landing on the ice, the next he was a blur across the blueline. There was no time for Muck to get Sarah out!
Lars was a great skater, the best on the whole team at moving backwards or to the sides, but he was helpless against such speed.
Slava took the pass and looped around Lars. He came in on Jeremy, cutting across the crease. Jeremy lunged for the poke check just as Slava dropped the puc
k into his skates, then kicked it back up as Jeremy’s stick bounced off Slava’s shin pads. A quick little backhand and the puck was high in the far corner of the net.
Tie game!
“I can’t shoot.”
Travis said nothing. He, like everyone else, was listening to Sarah Cuthbertson explain to Muck why she couldn’t take the first shot in the shootout. The two teams had played ten minutes of overtime without a goal being scored, and the reason was largely Sarah, who had checked Slava Shadrin so well he had not even managed one good shot on net.
But Sarah had paid a heavy price. Both her gloves were off. Mr. Dillinger had wrapped her wrists in towels, but the blood was seeping through. Sarah was crying. And if Sarah was crying, it had to hurt bad.
“Travis,” Muck said. “You’re up first.”
Travis had half wanted this, half feared it. He was going to have to take the first shot for Canada. There was absolutely no doubt who would be taking the shot for Russia.
He took a deep breath and looked across the ice. Slava was already out, circling, staring down at the ice, gathering himself. Travis wondered how this must look to the huge crowd: Travis Lindsay, skinny, goofy Screech Owl, up against Slava Shadrin, the greatest peewee hockey player in the entire world.
Borje Salming was conferring with the two goaltenders. Travis could tell that Jeremy was talking excitedly. The Russian goalie also seemed worked up. Borje Salming was nodding. Salming skated over to the Russian bench, talked with the coach, then came over and spoke to Muck.
“The goalies want to go back to the regulation puck for the shootout,” he explained. “It’s only fair.”
“No problem,” Muck said. He obviously wanted Jeremy to have every chance possible.
They would shoot in turn, starting with Slava and Travis. Then four more shooters for each team would follow. If the teams were still tied after five shots each, they would go into a sudden-death shootout, beginning again with the first two, Travis Lindsay for Canada, and Slava Shadrin for Russia.
Slava went first. He flew down the ice so fast Jeremy had trouble moving with him, and when he passed by, he reached back and tapped the puck into the open far side. A goal so seemingly effortless that Jeremy slammed his stick in anger against the crossbar. But all the Owls knew how impossible it had been. It was a great goal.
Borje Salming laid the puck at centre ice and blew the whistle for Travis to begin skating.
Travis felt like he was sneaking up on the puck. And when he reached it, it seemed the puck had grown to the size of a patio stone. It was as if it weighed more than he did. His arms were weak, his legs rubbery. He felt like he was once again wearing the spangenhelm and his neck muscles were giving way. He moved up over the blueline slowly, afraid even to stickhandle for fear he would drop the huge, heavy puck and skate right past it.
Should he deke? Shoot? He didn’t know and hadn’t any time to decide. He was instantly at the edge of the net, trying to put a backhand through the solid mass of the goalie’s pads, not a crack of daylight between the goalie and the post.
The puck dribbled off harmlessly to the side.
The Russian bench went crazy. Half the crowd cheered and whistled and sang. Travis skated, head down, back to his bench. No one looked at him.
The second shooters both failed, and so, too, did the third.
When the fourth Russian shooter failed, Muck chose Lars Johanssen to take the shot for Canada. It was a surprising move–a defenceman?–but Travis understood. They couldn’t use their best player, Sarah. And Dmitri had already shot and just missed a high corner. Lars had moves. And Lars was in his home country, with his family in the stands.
He came up the ice slowly, almost as if he were sitting in a chair relaxing. He didn’t seem afraid of stickhandling the big puck. He slowed up even more, seemed almost to stop, then accelerated quickly, catching the goalie for a second off guard. The goaltender moved with him, and Lars reached back with one hand on his backhand and tapped the puck in.
Tied, again!
The Canadian bench emptied and piled onto Lars. Travis was one of the first to reach him, and they went down together under a crush of bodies.
“Way to go, Lars!” Travis screamed.
“I tried my Peter Forsberg!” Lars shouted back, ecstatic.
The fifth Russian was stopped by a great butterfly move by Jeremy, leaving one final Canadian chance in the first round of the shootout. But who was going to take it?
“Nishikawa,” Muck said.
Nish skated all the way back to the Canadian net and slammed Jeremy on the pads. He took off his helmet and skated to the glass, leaned into it, and left a big smudge of a kiss for Annika. The crowd roared and cheered.
Nish then came flying down the ice and picked up the puck at centre. He hit the Russian blueline–everyone thinking deke–and suddenly wound up and let go the wildest, hardest slapper Travis had ever seen, a shot so hard that the follow-through knocked Nish to the ice.
The shot hit the goalie’s glove and kept going, the puck like a live mouse as it scurried up over the edge of the Russian’s glove and found the net.
Nish, still sliding along the ice on his back, hit the goalie next, the two of them crashing into the net with the puck.
Borje Salming’s whistle was in his mouth, and his cheeks were puffng in and out, but Travis couldn’t hear. He could see Salming’s hand though, and Salming was pointing into the net.
Goal!
Canada wins!
If hockey kept such records, this would have gone down as the greatest pile-on in history. The second the red light went on, the Screech Owls poured onto the ice like a pail of minnows dumped off the end of a dock.
Travis felt as if he had left the ice surface at the blueline and hadn’t landed until he was at the crease, his stick and gloves and helmet flying as he soared and slid towards the greatest Canadian hero of the moment: Wayne Nishikawa.
“Hey!” Nish screamed as the first Screech Owls hit him. “Watch the hair!”
But no one paid him the slightest attention. Dmitri pushed off Nish’s helmet, Lars wrapped his arms around him, Sarah–trying to protect her bleeding wrists–fell onto him, laughing.
“The hair! The hair!” Nish screamed.
Even Muck piled on. In all the dozens of tournaments the Owls had played, Travis had never seen Muck do much more than smile or nod or, a couple of times, shake the hands of the players as they came off the ice. But Muck was digging down from on top, his big face open wide in a laugh that had no sound.
Muck found what he was looking for: Nish’s head. He grabbed it in a hammerlock, then sharply rasped the knuckles of his free hand through Nish’s pride and joy.
“Not my hair! Lemme go!”
Travis could see Nish’s beet-red face from where he lay in the tangle. He could tell the last thing in the world Nish wanted was to be let go. He was the hero of the hour–and he was going to milk it for all it was worth.
Travis felt a body pushing up from beneath him. He thought at first it must be Sarah, trying to protect her wrists, but when he turned he realized it was the little Russian goaltender, still trapped in the Owls’ pile-on.
The goalie was crying. Travis could see through the player’s mask that his eyes were red and swollen and wet. It must have been horrible for him; not only had he let in the goal that lost the tournament, but then he had been forced to be part of the celebration.
They hugged Nish and roughed up his greasy hair and slapped his shoulders and his back, and finally the knot of legs and arms and heads undid itself and the Owls began collecting their gloves and sticks and helmets for the post-tournament ceremony.
Dmitri’s stick was over by Travis’s left glove. As they bent down, Travis asked a quick question.
“How do you say, ‘Great game’?”
Dmitri looked up. “‘Great game.’ Just like that.”
“No, no, I mean in Russian.”
“Oh…. Try, ‘Horoshosvgeal.’”
&nbs
p; “‘Horse-os…’”
Dmitri shook his head, laughing. “‘Horosh-osv-geal,’” he repeated carefully.
“‘Horoshosvgeal.’”
“That’s it.”
They lined up for the handshake. Jeremy went first, Travis last, then Muck. The Russians were very gracious, some of them smiling. Travis came to the goalie who’d been crying and reached out with his arm and grabbed the goalie’s shoulder instead of his hand and brought him to a stop.
“‘Horoshosvgeal,’” Travis said.
The goalie stopped. He blinked, his eyes still red. Then he smiled.
Travis came to Slava, who hit Travis on the shoulder and smiled when he saw him.
“‘Horoshosvgeal,’” Travis said.
Slava looked back, then roared with laughter.
“Thank you,” he said in English. “And the same to you!”
Slava came to Sarah, who couldn’t shake hands because of her wrists. He smiled, and suddenly–much to Sarah’s shock–grabbed her in a big bear hug, lifting her off the ice. The rest of the CSKA players rattled their sticks on the ice in recognition. Perhaps better than anyone, they knew the job Sarah had done on Slava.
Some of the crowd was on the ice. Annika and her Swedish friends came running and sliding and cheering over to the Owls. Annika jumped at Nish and wrapped herself around his neck. They hugged, but Travis noticed there was no kiss. Nish obviously felt safer with a half-inch of bulletproof Plexiglas between them.
The tournament organizers had rolled out a red carpet for the final ceremonies.
Two young women followed behind Borje Salming carrying medals on velvet cushions.
One by one Salming placed a medal around the neck of each Screech Owl and shook the player’s hand. When Sarah couldn’t shake, he leaned over and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek, which brought a cheer from the crowd.
Borje Salming came to Travis and smiled as he put the medal around his neck. “Good game,” he said as he shook Travis’s hand.
Travis was speechless.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2 Page 7
