Jonah was already there. He scooped it up and turned, smooth and efficient, sending it ahead before the pressure could settle back on us. The puck snapped tape to tape to Marco through center, and suddenly the whole play flipped—defense becoming attack in the space of a heartbeat.
That was what had made tonight feel different from the first drop of the puck.
We were connected. No scrambling. No hesitation. No one chasing the game half a second behind where it had already gone. We moved like a team that trusted the next man to be where he was supposed to be. Like all the pieces that had spent weeks grinding against each other had finally decided, for one night at least, to fit.
Marco crossed the blue line with speed, dragging coverage wide before feeding it off to Boris on the far side. Boris ripped the shot without breaking stride.
Pad save.
Rebound kicked low into the crease.
A mess of bodies crashed in after it, skates carving up white spray, sticks hacking and reaching while the crowd surged to its feet in one violent swell of noise that shook the boards and rattled under my ribs.
I was already moving before the whistle. Not because I thought the puck was in. Because their defenseman had put both hands in Zee’s back and driven him straight into the goalie after the shot.
The old instinct rose fast and ugly. Searing hot. A short, brutal line of heat from spine to jaw. I was three strides inbefore I fully felt it, my body recognizing the threat before my brain finished processing the details.
Then Zee caught himself on the side of the net, shoved back on his own, and the refs got in between it before anything could turn into something worth hundreds headlines and another hearing.
I pulled up hard.
Snow sprayed from my edges.
The defenseman glanced at me once over the official’s shoulder and looked away just as fast.
The whistle blew late. The puck had already been frozen under a pile of limbs and bad decisions, but the crowd didn’t care. They were roaring now—half for the chance, half because they’d seen me coming.
I could smell it before I even turned toward the glass. That shift in the noise. That strange current that had followed me all night. Recognition sharpened by appetite.
My name started somewhere low in the bowl—not a full chant, not yet, just one voice, then another, then enough of them strung together that it became impossible not to hear.
“Mül-ler.”
I looked away from the stands immediately.
The linesman skated past me with a pointed stare, warning already loaded into the angle of his mouth even though I hadn’t done a damn thing. I didn’t bother acknowledging him. My chest rose once beneath my gear, slow and controlled, while Zee circled back toward the hash marks with that twitchy rookie energy he still hadn’t learned to hide.
“You were about to kill him,” he muttered as he passed me.
Zee looked over.
I adjusted my grip on my stick and stared out toward the dot. “Keep telling yourself that, slapdick.”
That got a quick huff out of him before the insult soaked into his cauliflower ears. “What the fuck you just call me?”
I was about to have a little more fun with their linesman but the game was moving and I wasn’t looking to end up with five minutes in the box.
The ref dropped the puck.
Oliver tied up his man long enough for the draw to kick loose behind us, and I turned immediately, shouldering through traffic to rim it out along the wall. It took one lucky bounce off the boards, skipped past their pinching defenseman, and landed right on Ty’s tape in stride.
Buzz took off like he’d been shot out of a cannon, all long limbs and chaos and filthy acceleration, drawing the crowd up again as he tore through center ice with Liam trailing high and wide. The entire building seemed to tilt with the rush, thousands of bodies rising together, breath catching collectively in that split second before a play either became magic or died ugly.
Ty cut inside at the top of the circle and dished it across.
Liam buried it clean.
The red light went on so fast it almost felt delayed, like the arena itself had needed a second to understand what it had just seen. Then the place exploded.