His whole life, all he’d ever wanted was to play hockey and win the Stanley Cup. He’d lived and breathed it for so long, that’s all he knew. Unlike some guys who got drafted out of college, he’d been drafted into the NHL at the age of nineteen, a bright future ahead of him.
For a while, his future had gotten off track. He’d slid into a vicious cycle of pain and addiction and prescription drugs. Of recovery and hard work. And now finally a chance to return to the game that made him feel alive. But the sport that had given him a Conn Smythe the year before his injury now looked at him sideways and wondered if he still had what it took. There were those, some within the Chinook management, who wondered if they’d payed too much for their premier goalie, if Luc could still deliver on his once-promising career.
Whatever it took, no matter how much pain he had to play through, he’d be damned if he’d let anything stand between him and his shot at the cup.
Right now, he was hot. Saw every play, got a piece of every puck. He was in his zone, but he knew how fast his hot streak could turn cold and unforgiving. He could lose focus. Let in a few soft goals. Misjudge the speed of the puck, let too many get past, and get pulled from the net. Having an off night and getting yanked from the pipes happened to all goalies, but that didn’t make it any less appalling.
A bad game didn’t mean a bad season. Most of the time. But Luc could not afford most of the time.
Chapter 3
Paraphernalia: Between a Player’s Legs
The telephone next to Jane’s laptop rang and she stared at it for a moment before she picked up.
“Hello.” But there was no one on the other end. There hadn’t been the last seven times it had rung either. She dialed the front desk and was told they didn’t know where the calls originated. Jane had a pretty good idea the calls were coming from men with fish on their jerseys.
She left the receiver off the hook and glanced at the clock on the bedside stand. She had five hours before the game. Five hours to finish her Single Girl in the City column. She should have started her column for the Times last night, but she’d been exhausted and jet-lagged and all she’d wanted was to lie in bed, read her research books, and eat chocolate. If Luc hadn’t snuck up on her at the vending machine the night before, she would have bought a Milky Way too. Having been caught in her cow PJs had been bad enough. She hadn’t wanted him to think her a pig, but really, why should she care what he thought of her?
She didn’t know, except she supposed it was in a woman’s genetic makeup to care what handsome men thought. If Luc was ugly, she probably wouldn’t have cared. If he didn’t have those clear blue eyes, long lashes, and a body to make a nun weep, she would have grabbed that Milky Way and maybe chased it with a Hershey’s Big Block. If it weren’t for his evil grin that had her thinking sinful thoughts and remembering the sight of his naked butt, she might not have heard herself babbling about stewardesses like a jealous puck bunny.
She could not afford for any of the players to see her as anything other than a professional. Their reception of her had warmed little since they’d arrived. They spoke to her about recipes and babies, as if by virtue of having a uterus she was naturally interested. But if she brought up hockey, their mouths shut tight as clams.
Jane reread the first part of her column and made a few changes:
Single Girl in the City
Tired of talking about hair care products and men with commitment issues, I tuned out my friends and concentrated on my margarita and corn chips. As I sat looking around at the parrot and sombrero decor, I wondered if men were the only ones with commitment phobias. I mean, here we sat, four thirty-year-old women who’d never been married, and except for Tina’s one attempt at living with her ex-boss, none of us had ever had a real committed relationship. So was it them, or was it us?
There is a saying that goes something like, “If you put two neurotics in a room of one hundred people, they’d find each other.” So was there something else? Something deeper than a lack of available men without issues?
Had the four of us “found” each other? Were we friends because we truly enjoyed each other’s company? Or were we all neurotic?
Five hours and fifteen minutes after she’d started her column, she finally pushed send on her laptop. She shoved her notebook into her big purse, then raced to the door. She ran down the hall to the elevators and practically had to wrestle an elderly couple from a cab. When she walked into the America West Arena, the Phoenix Coyotes were just being introduced. The crowd went crazy cheering for their team.
She’d been given a pass to the press box, but Jane wanted to be as close as possible to the action. She’d finagled a seat three rows up from the boards, wanting to see and feel as much as she could of her first hockey game. She really didn’t know what to expect, she just hoped to God the Chinooks didn’t lose and blame it on her.
She found her place behind the goalie cage just as the Chinooks stepped onto the ice. Boos filled the arena, and Jane glanced around at the ill-behaved Coyotes fans. She’d been to a Mariners game once, but she didn’t remember the fans being so rude.
She turned her attention back to the ice and watched Luc Martineau skate toward her, geared up and ready for battle. She’d done more research on Luc than on the other players, and she knew that everything he wore was custom-made. The arena lights shone off his dark green helmet. His name was sewn across the shoul
ders of his jersey in dark green above the number of the legendary Gump Worsley. Why Mr. Worsley was legendary, Jane had yet to discover.
Luc circled the goal twice, turned, and circled it in the opposite direction. He stopped within the crease, slapped his stick on the posts, and crossed himself. Jane took out her notebook, a pen, and her Post-Its. On the top note she wrote: Superstitions and rituals?
The puck dropped, and all at once the sounds of the game rushed at her, the clash of sticks, scraping of skates on ice, and the puck slamming into the boards. The fans screamed and cheered and the smells of pizza and Budweiser soon hung in the air.
In preparation, Jane had viewed many game tapes. While she knew the game to be fast-paced, the tapes had not conveyed the frenetic energy or the way that energy infected the crowd. When play stopped, infractions were announced from the sound system and music blared until the puck was once more dropped and the team centers hacked it out.
As Jane took note of everything around her, she discovered what the tapes, and even television, did not show. The action wasn’t always where the puck was being played. A lot of the activity took place in the corners with punches and blows while the puck was at center ice. On several occasions she watched Luc whack the ankles of a Phoenix player unfortunate enough to stand within whacking distance. He seemed very good at hooking Coyote skates with his stick, and when he stuck out his arm and clothes lined Coyote Claude Lemieux, two men behind Jane jumped up and yelled, “You play like a girly man, Martineau!”
Whistles blew, the play stopped, and as Claude Lemieux picked himself up off the ice, the penalty was announced. “Martineau, roughing, two minutes.”
Because a goalie could not do time in the sin bin, Bruce Fish took his place. As Fish skated to the penalty box, Luc simply picked up his water bottle from the top of the net, shot a stream through the cage into his mouth, then spit it out. He shrugged, rolled his head from side to side, and tossed the bottle back onto the net.
Game on.
The pace fluctuated from wild to almost orderly. Almost. Just when Jane thought both teams had decided to play nice, the scrum for the puck turned physical. And nothing brought the crowd to their feet like the sight of players throwing their gloves and mixing it up in the corner. She couldn’t actually hear what the players were saying to each other, but she didn’t need to. She could clearly read their lips. The F-word seemed a real favorite. Even by the coaches who stood behind the bench in mild-mannered suits and ties. And when the players on the bench weren’t swearing, they were spitting. She’d never seen men spit so much.