Page 5 of Payback On The Ice

I'm already there. Blocker. The puck hits it and drops and I cover it.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. Warm-up."

"One."

He goes back to the line.

The clip is ninety-one seconds long.

I didn't film it. The broadcast did. There are other angles, phone angles from the stands, but I don't watch those. I watch the broadcast because it's wide enough to show everything. The puck going into the corner. Nico chasing it, his back to the play, the way you're supposed to, the way they teach you at nine years old. Number seventeen in black and orange coming in behind him at full speed.

In the clip, you can see me in the bottom of the frame. Forty feet away, in my crease, watching.

You can see me not move.

You can see Nico's head go into the boards, and then you can see his body go limp before it even reaches the ice, and the angle holds on him for a long time after that because the director didn't know what else to do. The arena goes quiet. You can hear one person screaming somewhere in the stands. Months later I found out it was my mother.

Two cracked vertebrae and his third concussion. He's walking. The doctors said he was lucky. He'll never play again.

I've watched it so many times I don't need the screen anymore.

The second shot, he tries to go five-hole. He's quick, but he drops his right shoulder before he pulls it, the way he probably has since he was twelve. I seal the ice. Nothing.

"Two," I say.

"Yeah, I can count."

Third shot, he comes in slower, trying to make me commit. I don't commit. I don't have to. He runs out of room and tries to go high over my shoulder and the puck hits the crossbar and pings off into the corner.

"That's not a save." He's pointing at me with his stick. "That's metal. That doesn't count as a save."

"It didn't go in."

"So it's luck."

"It's angle." I push the next puck out to him with my stick. "You shot it there because there was nowhere else to shoot it."

He stares at me. Some of the smile is gone now. What's under it is sharper and a lot more interesting.

"That's the most you've ever said to me."

"Go."

The fourth one is good. Actually good. He comes in wide, cuts across the top of the crease at full speed, and pulls it to the backhand so late that I have to stretch the pad across almost flat. The puck hits the toe of it. If he'd gotten another inch of lift, it's in.

He knows it. I can see him know it.

No chirp this time. He goes back to the line and stands there for a while with the puck under his blade. His breath is coming out in clouds.

"Last one, Lindqvist."

"I know it's the last one."

He comes harder than he's come all morning. He's not trying to fool me now. He's trying to beat me, which is a different thing, which is my thing. He winds up from the hash marks and lets it go, and it's a hell of a shot, the kind you hear before you see.

I take it in the chest. It thumps. It drops. I put my glove on it.

The building is quiet again.