"Different muscle group entirely."
Zay crouches in front of me before the warmup is even over, both thumbs already finding the wrap. "Leg. Let me see it. Don’t argue with me."
"It’s fine, Zay."
"It’s not fine, you can’t walk. Two minutes, I’ll wrap it tighter so you quit standing on it to look taller on the bench."
"I don’t do that."
"You did it twice in the first period. Sit."
I sit. He wraps. It’s the strangest thing in the building, stranger than the score will be. A man kneeling in front of me with his whole attention on a part of my body I can’t use, fixing a thing I can’t fix myself. I’ve spent a career on the other side of thatcrouch. I don’t have anywhere to put my hands while he works, so I push my hair back. I push it back again. I find the tape on Davis’s stick where it’s started to fray at the knob and I pick at it until it’s smooth.
Zay finishes and slaps my shin guard twice. "You just fixed his stick while I was fixing your leg."
"It was fraying."
"Everything is always fraying with you. Sit."
The puck drops and they come at Soucy in waves.
It’s exactly what Karl drew up, which I know because I told Soucy the shape of it on the crutches. Three of them at the top of his crease every shift. The first one goes in off a screen, the third man at the back post the way I said he would. Soucy gets a piece. The piece isn’t enough. I’m on my feet before I clock that I’m on my feet, hand reaching for a strap that’s forty feet away. There’s no strap. I sit back down.
The second one moves him cross-seam and beats him to the room he just left. The building goes quiet. Our building. The quiet that’s worse than noise. My hands find the water bottles and line them up by the boards, caps all facing the same way. Nobody asked for it. Nobody will notice. That’s the whole point. Down two. I push my hair back. I push it back again.
The horn for the intermission goes with us down three. The room I follow them into on the crutches is a morgue. Heads down. Nobody talking. So I talk. The room has always turned toward me when I talk. Right now it needs somewhere to turn.
"Three’s a number," I tell them. "It’s not the horn."
"It’s three goals, Lundy," Berger says, not looking up.
"It’s three goals now. Boston, we were down on the road and we came home and took the series. Numbers move. Ask Soucy, he’ll give you the exact percentage and ruin your night, but they move."
"I’d us at eleven percent after their second one," Berger says, and now he’s looking up, because numbers are the rope I threw and he grabbed it. "We’re back to twenty-six now. That’s not nothing."
"Twenty-six. Berger’s got us at twenty-six. I’ll take twenty-six. Everybody hear that? Twenty-six."
"It goes to thirty-eight if we score in the first five minutes of the third," Berger says. "The model is very clear about the first five minutes."
"Then score in the first five minutes. You heard the model." Davis lifts his head, and I go to him, because Davis has the read I need. "Their left pair."
"Gassed," he says. "They’ve been out for everything."
"Then go at the left pair. Make them chase. Tikh, you and Baz, next shift, dump it to their tired corner and forecheck like it’s overtime."
"Okay," Tikh says, and that’s all Tikh needs to say.
"Marchetti. You scored once. Do it again. Be annoying. You’re good at it."
"I’m great at it."
"I know you’re." Across the room Avi has his head in his hands and Ash is pretending not to watch him, and they think nobody sees it, and they’ve always thought nobody sees it. "Avi’s rattled. He hasn’t moved a puck clean since their second one."
"He’s fine," Ash says, too fast.
"He’s not fine and you know he’s not. Settle him. That’s you. You’re the one he listens to. Tell him to make the first easy pass and the rest comes back."
"How’d you know he listens to me."