The Ice Chips and the Stolen Cup

by Roy MacGregor

  Dedication

  For anyone who wants to play this magical game.

  You are welcome here.

  —ROY MACGREGOR AND KERRY MACGREGOR

  To the people who make the Stanley Cup shine

  brightly, as if it were new, after all its adventures.

  —KIM SMITH

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Riverton

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8: Unknown location

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10: Rideau Hall—Ottawa, 1892

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors and Illustrator

  The Ice Chips Series

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Riverton

  Edge cringed as feedback from the hockey announcer’s microphone bounced off the boards and echoed across the Riverton Community Arena:

  “Ice Chips goal by number 17, Ekamjeet Singh!”

  The large crowd in the far corner of the rink—the Ice Chips’ families and friends—cheered wildly. The rest of the people in the arena either clapped quietly or openly booed.

  “Assisted by number 97, Lucas Finnigan, and number 33, Nica Bertrand!”

  The applause grew louder when it was announced that Nica had an assist—a rare accomplishment for a goaltender. Nica—known as “Swift” to her teammates—had caught a long wrist shot, dropped the puck onto her own stick blade, and fired it hard to centre ice. That’s where Lucas “Top Shelf” Finnigan had snared it, carried it over the blue line, and dropped it to his linemate Ekamjeet, also known as “Edge.” Edge then used a nifty toe drag to fake out the defence and another one to draw out the goaltender, and finally backhanded the puck into the net as gently as if he were passing a butter tart across a table.

  This was Edge’s new “tuck play”—a move he’d used to score over and over again ever since he’d seen Chicken do it when they met at the Calgary Olympics. His slick goal, his third of the game, had put the Chips up 5–4 over the Orangeville Orcas with less than ten minutes to play in the semifinal.

  “Nice one!” Lucas said excitedly, patting Edge’s back as the Chips’ top scorer made his way to the bench to drink some water.

  “Yeah, nice teamwork,” said Edge with a smile. He glanced up at his parents, sister, and grandmother, who’d come out to watch the game.

  Just then, another “Boo! BOOOOOO!” erupted in the stands.

  Every Ice Chip on the bench knew where those boos were coming from: the mouths of Jared and Beatrice Blitz and their buddies on the Riverton Stars. The Chips’ main rivals, and the only other competitive U9 novice team in Riverton, had come out to watch this semifinal match to see which team they’d play in the final: the Orcas or the Ice Chips.

  And as usual, they’d brought their bad attitudes with them.

  “Hey, show-off!” yelled a mean, nasally voice as Edge tossed his water bottle back beside the bench. “You try to score like that on us and you’re going through the boards!”

  Edge didn’t have to turn to see who was doing the yelling. It was Jared, the more annoying of the Blitz twins. None of Edge’s teammates would ever call him a show-off. Matías Rodriguez—the Chips’ second goalie, known as “the Face”—was the one who was always bragging and making jokes to get attention. Edge was more the kind of player who made sure all his teammates got a chance with the puck. Coach Small had even called him captain material.

  Throughout this match, the Blitz twins had been coming around the Ice Chips’ box, chirping and trash-talking the players. Mr. Blitz, the Stars’ wealthy coach and the twins’ father, didn’t even seem to care what his top players were doing. They’d been picking on Edge a little more than the others today, either because of his goals or because each time he’d tapped the puck into the net, his grandmother—who’d been a hockey superfan ever since she’d moved to Canada from India—had yelled and cheered louder than anyone else in the stands. Even the Blitz twins now knew that “Mahriaa shot, keeta goal!” in Punjabi meant “He shoots, he scores!”

  And there was nothing that made them madder than hearing that an Ice Chip had shot a puck into their net—even if Edge’s grandmother had called that black disk a “rubber tiki” in her cheers.

  “There’s still time for LOSERS LIKE YOU TO LOSE!” Jared shouted at Edge, and then snickered along with his teammates. There were a few Stars who weren’t seated with the Blitz twins: Shayna and Nolan Atlookan, another brother and sister who were coached by Mr. Blitz, seemed to be keeping their distance. Nolan, who was deaf, couldn’t hear the mean things that the Blitz twins were saying, but he could read lips. Each time Jared gave Edge a thumbs-down or placed his hand on his forehead in the shape of an L, Nolan gave the Ice Chips a shrug and a smile of encouragement.

  As Edge got back into position on the ice, he kept his head tucked down onto his chest, his face slowly burning red. The Orcas thought it was because he was shy about scoring so much; the Stars thought it was because of the booing. But only Lucas knew the truth: Edge was checking the tie on his hockey pants, afraid that while he’d been concentrating on putting the puck in the net, the laces might have come undone.

  Just like Lucas, Edge had a secret he didn’t want anyone to know. And he wanted to make sure it stayed hidden.

  * * *

  For Lucas, it had all happened by accident—the first time.

  A few weeks ago, Lucas was late for their second match in the league semifinal—a game against the Lake Placid Miracles. He’d been helping his parents clean up their store, and they’d simply lost track of time. The Chips’ centre had to throw his stuff into the back seat of the van with lightning speed so his dad could race him to the Blitz Sports Complex for the game.

  In the back of the vehicle, Lucas scrambled to dress, twisting his body like an acrobat as he struggled to put on his hockey underclothes. He knew he’d have to put on all his equipment during the short drive if he was going to make it in time for the puck drop—all but his skates.

  Somehow, in the dark and confusion and in that tight awkward space, he’d managed to get his underwear on, followed by the rest of his equipment.

  Lucas arrived in the dressing room just as Coach Small was starting his pre-game speech. The coach gave him a sharp look, but without a word, Lucas hurried over and began putting on his skates. He’d made it!

  And then something happened during that game against the Lake Placid Miracles. The “miracle,” it turned out, was Lucas himself. He scored four goals (two more than Edge) and led the Chips to a 6–2 victory!

  Lucas had never scored four goals in a game. Not even in Swift’s driveway when the Face—who was often more interested in talking about himself than blocking shots—had come out to play net.

  In the dressing room after the match, as Lucas stripped off his socks, shin pads, and pants, several of the Chips had come up to fist-bump or pat him on the back. Maurice Boudreau—whose hair was still sweaty from his hard work out on the ice—came over to talk.

  “You, uh, made a mistake,” Maurice, the big defenceman known as “Slapper,” said carefully. He was keeping his eyes on the ground.

  “What do you mean? I just played the game of my life!” Lucas asked, confus
ed. He shook his head as he tossed his hockey shorts onto his bag and reached for his regular pants. Is Slapper still complaining that he never gets to shoot on net? Or is he jealous?

  “It has to be a mistake, right?” Slapper asked, smiling, as the tips of his ears turned red.

  Alex Stepanov—the little Russian-speaking kid called “Dynamo”—was soon blushing, too. He was giggling and staring at Lucas’s hockey pants.

  “Unless . . . is that another superstition of yours?” Slapper asked with a little giggle of his own. “I mean, is what you had under there supposed to be lucky?”

  “Under what? Under where?” Lucas asked looking at his pants, still confused.

  “Exactly—underwear,” said Lars Larsson, pointing at Lucas’s butt. “This is your superstition? Wearing underwear that’s all flipped around?”

  Lucas’s cheeks turned the colour of tomatoes when he looked down to see that his blue-and-white-striped underwear, the pair he’d had to put on in the car—in the dark—was inside out and backwards!

  The most embarrassing mistake ever!

  And yet, he’d played such a great game . . .

  So the superstition had stuck. For every single practice. Every single match.

  Wayne Gretzky put baby powder on the blade of his stick before taping it. Patrick Roy won four Stanley Cups while talking to his goalposts as if they were alive and helping him. And Phil Esposito wouldn’t stay in any hotel room that contained the number thirteen.

  Lucas, the Chips’ (now official) team captain and the most superstitious kid in Riverton, had an underwear thing.

  And because this was the semifinals and the Chips were nearing a chance at the trophy, Lucas had made sure his best friend Edge had an underwear thing, too—at least until the end of the playoffs.

  Underneath Edge’s expensive, well-cared-for equipment and Lucas’s stinking hand-me-down gear, the two Chips had their underwear on inside out . . . and backwards!

  * * *

  The seconds ticked down on the old scoreboard clock in the Riverton Community Arena. With just under two minutes left in today’s semifinal game, the Orcas pulled their goaltender in favour of an extra attacker and began to press hard.

  Swift was playing brilliantly in goal, moving side to side to stop shots as the Orcas began pounding pucks at her as hard as they could. She made glove saves, stick saves, saves when she was down on her butt and couldn’t even see the shooter. It was a spectacular performance by the Ice Chips’ goaltender.

  At one point, Swift blocked a hard shot and Edge gobbled up the rebound. He raced up with Lucas trailing, and everyone expected Edge to drop the puck to his teammate, who had also been having a pretty good game. (Thanks to his underwear, of course.) But Edge tricked them all by sending a lovely saucer pass over the stick of the last Orcas’ defenceman.

  The puck slid to Slapper, who was now in all alone with a chance to put the game out of sight. The Orcas’ goalie was sliding over on his pads to cover the short side, but Slapper still had room both over and under the goalie’s blocker glove. He raised his stick to take the shot.

  All he had to do was fire the puck into the net.

  But he didn’t do it!

  That’s because Lucas, afraid that Slapper was taking too long, swooped in and grabbed the black disk before the defender’s stick could make contact. Lucas tried to shoot the puck back to Edge, but the Orcas’ defenceman, who had fallen, slid over the puck and smothered it, completely by accident.

  Slapper banged his stick on the ice in frustration.

  “We could have used that,” Edge said to Lucas. “Why did you take it? Slapper might have put it away!”

  The whistle blew just as the buzzer sounded to end the semifinal game. The Ice Chips had held on, thanks to Edge, Lucas, and Slapper—and more clutch goaltending by Swift. After the on-ice handshake between the teams, the Orcas repeated the team cheer they’d hollered at the start of the game. Only this time, their hearts weren’t in it:

  Do we play hard?

  YES!

  Do we play hard?

  YES!

  Who are we?

  ORCAS!

  Who are we?

  ORCAAAAAS!

  The Ice Chips had just beaten them 5–4.

  Unsurprisingly, Edge was named first star of the game. He was roundly cheered by one corner of the rink, but loudly booed by a section on the other side of the ice.

  Many of Coach Blitz’s players, again led by Jared and Beatrice, had also booed.

  This win had just put the Chips into the final against the Stars!

  Chapter 2

  WHOOOOOOSH! Wuuuuh-OOOOOSH!

  “Do you actually think the hockey gods like that one?” Edge asked as another giant whoosh sounded from the small washroom stall in the Chips’ dressing room. Most of the Chips had already left to collect their newly printed hockey cards from the arena’s skate-sharpening stall, but Lucas had stayed behind.

  As usual, Edge had been sent back to get him.

  Lucas was flushing his hockey stick in the toilet over and over again for luck, just as the Ottawa Senators’ centre Bruce Gardiner had once done in the hopes of ending a scoring slump. It had worked for Gardiner, so why not for Lucas?

  “You know that we won, right?” asked Edge, leaning in the open dressing room door. “I mean, the game’s over. The equipment’s off. You can stop flushing, or whatever you’re doing.”

  It wasn’t so much the flushing that was getting to Edge, but the fact that his best friend already had about a million superstitions. Why did he need more? Every home game, the Chips’ centre would rub his lucky quarter, run his hand along the ledge of the skate-sharpening shop, straighten a picture frame that hung beside it, and squish his face up against his team’s glass trophy case so he could drool over what was inside. The case held a photo of an old Ice Chips team lifting the championship trophy in the air, but no actual trophy. The Chips had won the Golden Grail only that one time—in 1989, back when the Riverton coaches were just kids themselves.

  Over the years, the Grail had gone to the Riverton Stars a few times, but for the past three seasons, it had lived many miles away, in the display case of the Orangeville Orcas.

  Edge, Lucas, and their teammates had never even had a shot at it.

  Until now.

  The Riverton Ice Chips had just beaten the Orcas. If they played their absolute best against the Stars on Saturday, that championship trophy could be theirs!

  Is that what’s making Lucas’s superstitious brain go so wild? Edge wondered. While he’d been playing his heart out, living the Canadian hockey dream for his entire family, Lucas (whose family had played the game for generations) had been thinking about the Blitz twins, flushing toilets, and flipping his underwear inside out. Sometimes Edge didn’t see how two players who played the game so differently could both hope to make the NHL, but they did hope. Sometimes they hoped so hard it hurt—that’s partly what made them such good friends.

  “Look, Top Shelf, why don’t you practise your shot, stretch your legs, or retape your stick? Do something that might actually help. Or make up a cheer for our team. Coach Small says we should have one for the final,” Edge suggested. The noises behind him in the hall were growing louder—the other Chips were celebrating their win and their new hockey cards—but Lucas didn’t seem to notice at all. Tianna Foster, known as “Bond,” and Swift were now just outside the door, comparing the cards they’d already traded with their teammates.

  “It’s not the final that’s freaking me out,” Lucas complained quietly as he leaned out the stall door with his hand on the flusher. “Not yet, anyway. It’s the practice! Didn’t you hear what Coach Small wants us to do?!”

  “Ha! I can’t believe my sister looks so fierce on her card!” Swift said loudly as she burst out laughing in the hall. “You’d think Sadie’s been playing hockey for years!”

  “She’s unstoppable!” Bond giggled. “Dynamo looks awesome, too. Totally pro. Check it out.”

&
nbsp; “Wait, Top Shelf-onator,” Edge said, not worrying if the girls in the hall overheard him. “You mean you’re afraid of playing half ice?” For weeks, the Chips’ coach had been talking about holding some practices where they’d pretend the rink had been cut in two, making two smaller rinks. The idea was that more players would get a chance to handle the puck, which meant they’d get more shots on net. Basically, more practice.

  “Of course I’m afraid of half ice!” Lucas grumbled as more voices joined the girls in the hallway. “I mean, how is playing half ice going to help us prepare for our full-ice final against the Stars?”

  “If you want an entire rink to yourself, that’s easy,” said Bond, turning the corner with a mischievous smile.

  “Just take SCRAAAATCH for a spin,” Swift added, a little too loudly. The Chips’ goalie was feeling reckless—her team had just won!

  Lucas knew that Scratch, the small ice-resurfacing machine they’d found hidden in their arena, could make a perfect clean sheet of ice. But he also knew that Scratch’s floods could open a portal that would send him and his friends flying through space and time.

  “Right! If you want a different rink, you can always leap through time to—” Edge started, but he quickly closed his mouth.

  “Duuuuuuudes!” Slapper shouted as he, too, entered the dressing room with one of his own freshly printed cards stuck to his forehead. “We got hockey cards! Just like the pros! Wooo-hoo!”

  Blades followed behind him, then Lars. Everyone was back to get their equipment.

  “Yeah, Edge, you’re right—it’s time to . . . get my hockey cards!” Lucas said awkwardly, trying to cover. His acting was becoming almost as awful as Edge’s.

  Lars gave him an odd look and then turned to the big Chips’ defenceman. “I’m not sure the pros have ever made that face for the camera,” he said, flicking Slapper’s forehead card before leaning down to grab his bag.

  Slapper had made the goofiest grin he could in his photo and was holding his stick like he was playing a guitar solo—but that was Slapper. He was a lovable bear of a kid who was always ready to make the others laugh.