PART ELEVEN: TIME TO WIN
Straight from the faceoff, there was a ton of action. The Hawks were playing the Red Wings, so that was to be expected. It was so cool to be at a rivalry game. It somehow made everything more interesting and exciting. Every hit on the Red Wings got all of us Hawks fans fired up, and every hit the Wings had on the Hawks made us want our team to get the win even more. Both teams were being pretty physical, but the Wings were worse than the Hawks were. Now that I knew the players personally, it made me more mad than usual.
“Come on, check him!” I found myself yelling at the Hawks when a random Wing brutally hit Sharpy. I felt eyes on me and I realized that I had turned into the obnoxious fan that had annoyed me so much at the first game I had gone to. “Sorry,” I muttered, sinking lower in my seat. I didn’t stay low for very long, though. Shaw got the puck and raced down the ice, taking the Wings by surprise. They didn’t get to the net in time and Jimmy Howard crumbled under the pressure. The score was 1-0 Hawks, ten minutes into the first period. The goal was much needed, but not because there hadn’t been any shots. There had been a ton from each end, and many of them were close calls. It was just because the Hawks deserved a goal, with the way they started off the game. It was a great beginning.
“Yes, Shawzy, yes!” Shantelle screamed when he scored. Shantelle, Kara, and I all jumped up onto our feet and began hollering and clapping. My parents were slower to get up. They weren’t nearly as enthusiastic as we were. We were much louder and unlike them, we stood for a good minute or two dancing to Chelsea Dagger.
“Are you proud of your man?” I asked Shantelle.
“Yes I am!” she answered, glowing.
The Hawks had a short adrenaline rush after the goal, but the action soon died down. Even though not as much was happening, I was still a happy fan. We were ahead, and we had done pretty well so far. Kaner even had a couple shots. But sadly, the Wings tied the score up with two minutes left in the period, and when it ended, it was still 1-1.
“Dammit,” my dad mumbled when the horn sounded. He could be really negative sometimes. I wasn’t going to be negative tonight, though.
“It’s only the first period, Dad. There’s still at least forty more minutes to go. They have a good chance.”
Everyone began getting up and moving around as soon as the players headed to the locker room, and my parents, Kara, Shantelle, and I decided to join them. We were getting hungry and intermission seemed to be the best time to get food so we wouldn’t miss any of the game. However, the trip to get it wasn’t as smooth and fast as we had anticipated. I got stopped multiple times by fans when they saw the back of my jersey.
“Oh my god, can I see your jersey?” one woman asked. I nodded and turned around. She gawked at all the autographs. “Is this signed by everyone on the team?”
“Yeah, it is,” I answered, proud to be able to say that.
“That’s absolutely amazing. How on earth did you get this? It had to cost a fortune!”
“Not really, it was just a normal, unsigned jersey when I bought it. The players signed it themselves,” I explained. The lady laughed. I couldn’t tell if it was because she thought I was joking and she was mocking me or if it was out of pure amazement.
“No way. How did you get the whole team to sign YOUR jersey?”
“Her birthday was yesterday. She knows a girl that works for the Hawks, so she made some arrangements and she had her party here and she got to meet the whole team too. We did too. That’s how she got the autographs,” Shantelle told the woman. I almost wished she hadn’t, because other people were watching and listening and I didn’t want anyone to laugh at us in disbelief. Some did, of course, but I just tried to ignore them.
“Well, you’re a very lucky girl then,” was all the woman said, and we moved on. After I was stopped a couple more times, I decided to just ignore people. Many of them were being rude and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with them. I just wanted my food.
Once we had our food, we were all a little happier. We ate relatively quickly, since we had all gotten pretty hungry. I was still receiving looks from people, but I just smiled and then looked away. The players all came back out a couple minutes after we were done eating and the second period started. I had been very hopeful for the period, but it didn’t go quite as well as I had expected it to. The Hawks were getting a little sloppier. They seemed tired, almost. Three minutes into the period, the Wings scored and grabbed a 2-1 lead, which didn’t really help. The Hawks weren’t making nearly as many good plays as the first period and they had barely any shots. Their confidence seemed to be lowering as the seconds ticked by.
Seven minutes left in the period and it was the Wings again, with a power play goal this time. 3-1. They were all smiles, but over by the Hawks bench, there weren’t very many grins. Coach Q didn’t seem too happy. That probably wasn’t saying much, since he rarely looked genuinely joyful, but he looked especially let down after the Wings’ third goal. I saw the guys on the jumbotron and they seemed to be just as let down as their coach was. Kaner looked defeated. So far, my good luck text hadn’t done much. The horn sounded and he went back to the locker room with the rest of his team.
(PATRICK’S P.O.V.)
I couldn’t believe it. After the first period, I had been so positive. We were tied, all it would take was one goal to get the lead back. Now, after this period, it would take two just to tie things back up. I didn’t even have any really good shots, either. What was going on with me? What the hell were we doing out there?
I was really expecting a rage lecture from Coach, but he was a lot more positive than I expected. I mean, sure, he pointed out the terrible things we were doing, but instead of being really upset with us, he tried to pump us up for the next period. He convinced us to fix things and tighten up our plays, and he changed the lines a little, too. We went over some ideas for plays and I realized that we couldn’t be negative. We had to just think positive and play the great hockey that we knew how to play. I thought about the text I had received earlier from Destiny and I remembered that she had been there, watching us all be sloppy. I wanted to prove to her that we could win this and I wanted to remind her and the rest of the fans of how good of a team we really were. I think the rest of the guys wanted to do that too, because we all went back out onto the ice with much better attitudes and we got each other pumped up for the third period.
The period started in no time, and every single one of us paid a lot more attention to what we were doing. I quickly realized that we were paying a little too much attention to some things that didn’t really matter, though. I gave one look to Johnny on the bench and he seemed to read my mind. He got everyone’s attention.
“Guys, we need to fix the things we were doing wrong before, but I think we’re all a little too focused on that. Instead of being so cautious and careful, let’s just focus on playing the hockey we know we can play. Let’s just play some good hockey.” His words of wisdom were simple, but they meant a lot to me and the rest of the guys. We took them to heart, and we did just what he suggested.
It took a little time, but things started coming together. Bickell scored about six minutes in, and I think he was just as surprised as the rest of us that the puck actually went in the net. Howard seemed pissed, because he knew he had let in a puck that he shouldn’t have. At the same time, though, he and his teammates kept their heads up. They still had the lead, and they still acted cocky and ridiculous. They amped up their physical game again and all of us were getting annoyed. I felt the need to get some revenge, so I amped my shooting game up. I got some good shots, but none of them made it in. Luckily, one of Hossa’s shots did though. We were all relieved that we had tied the game up. We needed that. But we couldn’t play it safe. The Wings could easily score still. They had a lot of chances too.
Four minutes left, and Seabs was in the penalty box. A penalty call wasn’t exactly ideal in this situation, but all we could do was try to get the penalty kill. Luckily, we were usually pretty good at that. This time was no different, but once the power play was over for the Wings, we only had two minutes left in regulation to do something before the game would go into overtime.
Coach called a time out and I headed to the bench with my teammates. We got a pep talk and he drew up a play for us. I felt pretty good about the game at that point. We were on a time crunch, but the Wings weren’t as confident anymore. If we played aggressively and pressured them, we would have a good chance of swiping the lead back and winning, whether it be in regulation or overtime. It was time to win.
Back on the ice, it was Bickell, Toews, and I. Bicks got the puck and passed it around a little. Tazer got it eventually, and when he saw my position, he gave it to me.
It was go time. I raced up the ice. I faked a pass to Bickell but gave it to Tazer. Toews gave it back to me and I caught a glimpse of a confused facial expression on one of my opponent’s faces. We were playing with their minds, and it was working. I was up to the net. I did a spin o rama to confuse the Wings further and I took a shot. I watched it go to the back of the net. I watched Howard look at the puck with defeat plastered on his face. I watched my teammates speed up to me and I heard them scream my name. I fell into my celebration, which was just a familiar routine to me by now. There was only fifteen seconds left by the time I had scored. The Wings only had fifteen seconds to get on our level. Fortunately for us, fifteen seconds was not enough. The horn sounded, and I held my stick up high into the air with the rest of my team. It was a good win.