“Oh.” Jules chuckled. “When you’re asked, you should probably say you love hockey and Virgil would have wanted you to keep his team. Then mention that people should come out and watch Game Four next Wednesday night.”
She could do that. “What if they ask me something about the game?”
“Like what?”
She thought a moment. “Like icing. What’s an icing call? I read the rules last night and didn’t understand it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Not many people understand icing.” Jules shook his head. “We’ll go over a few basic answers before you talk to reporters. But if there is a question you don’t understand, just say, ‘I can’t comment at this time.’ It’s the standard non-answer.”
She could do that. Maybe. She sat next to her mother and watched the rest of the game. In the last three minutes, Ty knocked an opponent off the puck and raced to the opposite end of the ice. The crowd inside the Key cheered, and just inside the blue line, he pulled back his stick and fired. The puck shot across the ice so fast that Faith didn’t know it scored until a horn blasted and the light above the net flashed. The fans jumped to their feet screaming, “Rock and Roll Part 2” thumping the concrete beneath Faith’s pumps, and the Chinooks skated around Ty, slapping him on the back with their big gloves as he skated with his hands in the air as if he was the champion of the world. All except Sam, who punched some player in the head, then threw off his gloves—and the fight was on.
Jules lifted one hand and gave both Faith and Valerie high fives. “That hat trick is why you pay the Saint thirty million.”
Faith didn’t know what a hat trick was and made a mental note to look it up in her Idiot’s Guide.
He grinned. “Damn, Virgil put together one hell of a team this season. I’m going to love watching them play.”
“Does that mean you’re my assistant?”
Jules nodded. “Oh yeah.”
In the aftermath of Seattle’s 3–2 victory over Vancouver, the post-game media scrum inside the Chinooks locker room was more jovial than the last time they’d played in the Key Arena. The coaches allowed the reporters in after a few minutes, and the players laughed and joked as they toweled off after their showers.
“You’re tied in the playoffs. What are you going to do to advance to the next level?” Jim Davidson, the reporter from the Seattle Times asked Ty.
“We’re going to keep doing what we just did tonight,” he answered as he zipped up his dress pants. “After our last loss to the Canucks, we couldn’t afford to lose points in our building.”
“Having been the captain of both the Canucks and the Seattle teams, what would you say is the biggest difference?”
“The coaching philosophy in each club is different. The Chinooks give me more freedom to play the kind of hockey I like to play,” he answered, and wondered when they were going to get around to asking about his hat trick.
“Which is?”
He glanced over the reporter’s head to Sam, who was being grilled by someone from a Canadian news organization. Ty smiled. “Coach Nystrom thinks outside the box.”
“The team already has twenty combined penalty minutes. Just last week, Nystrom expressed his desire to keep penalty minutes per game at a minimum. Don’t you consider twenty excessive?”
Ty shoved his arms in his shirt and buttoned it.
“Not at all, Jim. We kept Vancouver from taking advantage of the power plays. So, I’d say we did our jobs tonight.”
“You scored your first hat trick of the season on your home ice. How does that feel?”
Finally. “Real good. The whole team deserves a lot of credit for tonight’s win. I just happened to be in the right place when Daniel passed me the puck. Monty’s first assist since being called up from—”
“Mrs. Duffy’s in the lounge,” someone from the Post Intelligencer called out, and Jim turned toward the commotion in the doorway. “Thanks, Savage,” the reporter said and followed the stampede out of the locker room.
Ty buttoned the front of his blue dress shirt and shoved the tails into his gray wool pants. He glanced around at the guys, who looked as stunned as he was. This was the second game of the playoffs. They’d won in their own house and the coach had granted the press full access to the team. Reporters loved full access. They loved it like a kid loved cake, but the sudden appearance of Faith Duffy prompted an en masse exodus. Like rats bailing from a sinking boat. What the hell?
Ty pulled on his socks and shoved his feet into his shoes. He combed his fingers through his damp hair and moved into the team’s lounge. Mrs. Duffy stood in the middle of the huge Chinooks logo woven into the blue carpet, smiling for the cameras and answering questions thrown at her by a knot of sports reporters. She looked almost fragile in the totally male environment. Beneath the bright lights and camera flash, her smooth hair shined, her skin kind of glowed, and her lips were a glistening pink. She wore a black suit that hugged her waist and buttoned beneath her breasts. He and the boys had worked their asses off tonight, and apparently all she had to do was show up all bright and shiny and the guys in the press went ape-shit nuts.
“What made you decide not to sell the team?” someone asked.
“My late husband, Virgil, knew how much I love hockey. He left me this team because he wanted me to be happy. It was only right that I keep it.”
What utter bullshit. Ty moved further into the room and shoved one shoulder into the doorway leading to the workout gym.
“What are your plans for the team?”