Page 65 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

“It’s not a system.”

“It’s a hundred percent a system. You do it every single time in the same order. I’ve been watching you do it since November.” He bites the tape off. “I put it on the wall at home. The order. On a bit of paper.”

I look at him.

In about eleven hours, he’s going to be standing in a crease finishing a game I’ve been paid three hundred thousand dollars to spoil.

“You want to know the real reason for the order?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“There isn’t one.”

“See, that’s what a guy with a system says,” Emil says, delighted, and goes off to get his knee wrapped.

I sit there with my wrists taped correctly and watch him go. He’s copied the part of my day I never thought anybody saw. For a second that lands harder than the money, harder than the schedule in my phone. He thinks the order means I know what I’m doing.

There’s a photograph from November of the two of us after an optional skate. He posted it somewhere; about four hundred thousand people have looked at it. His mask is up on his head, he’s laughing, and I’m pointing at his shoulder. My brother has it printed out. It sits on the windowsill of a rented house two hours north of the city between a picture of our mother and a picture of a job Fin did in 2019.

Buffalo, at home, second-to-last home game of the regular season, and eighteen thousand people who think we’re going to the playoffs.

The anthem singer is a girl from a high school out past the rail crossing. She’s very good, and the building gets loud for her. I stand in my crease and look at the ceiling the way I’ve looked at that ceiling four hundred times.

Marek isn’t at the tunnel. I check twice.

I take the posts. Left twice, right twice.

I feel fine. I want that on the record because of everything that comes after it. I’m rested. The hip is the best it’s been since January. My glove is early in warmup. I stop the first six shots of the game, including one that’s actually good.

Eight minutes in, at 8:04, with the score nothing to nothing, their defenseman walks the line to his forehand. There’s traffic in front of me. I put my glove up a hand’s width low; the puck goes over the cuff and in.

That part is exactly the same as the first time. It takes about a fifth of a second. Nobody says anything. The crowd reacts, the horn goes, and I take the puck out of the net and hand it to the linesman. My hands are level.

And then it doesn’t stop.

That’s the only way I can describe it. The first one goes in and I put it where I put the last one, in the drawer, gone, done, three hundred thousand dollars, play the next shot.

The drawer doesn’t shut.

At 14:20, I let in a wrist shot from the top of the circle that I see the whole way.

It isn’t a screen. There’s nobody within twelve feet of me. I see the puck leave the stick. I know where it’s going. I get across, but it goes under my arm because I’m a fraction late with my weight on the wrong edge. It’s one of the worst goals I’ve let in in four years.

The building gets quiet.

Beau comes past and doesn’t tap my pads.

That’s all Beau does. He isn’t angry. He doesn’t say anything or look at me. I shouldn’t take comfort from a man skating past my crease without the pad tap he’s given me four hundred times. I do anyway. At least somebody in the building has noticed I’m here.

Between periods, the assistant coach draws both goals on the whiteboard. The second one takes him nine seconds. He draws a straight line from the top of the circle to a circle under my arm, studies it for a second, and then moves on.

Nobody in the room says one word to me.

The third one is at 3:11 of the second. I don’t have any account of it at all. A point shot, glove side again. It’s in the net before I’m done dropping to my knees, and the assistant coach is already halfway down the bench with his hand up.

I stay on for another four minutes. Then they get a fourth on a two-on-one. Nils looks down the bench and taps his own shoulder twice. The equipment guy opens the gate. Emil goes past me on his way out without looking at me.

The building claps as I go off. Somebody behind the bench shouts my name once, encouragingly. Eighteen thousand people decide as a group to be decent about it, and the thin wave of applause follows me all the way to the gate.