Defenceman: Parallel Ice (Non-Canonical Saga)
Copyright© 2025 by Cold Creek Tribute Writer
47. The Regional Playdown
Coming of Age Story: 47. The Regional Playdown - Defenceman: Parallel Ice (A Non-Canonical Saga) builds on Cold Creek’s Defenceman series while offering a new interpretation. Michael Stewart’s journey extends beyond the rink into intrigue, modeling, and the launch of his AI: Aegis. From Ann Arbor to London, Japan, and Spain, the story explores honor, love, betrayal, and resilience. Rivals and allies test his limits in the arena, courts and shadows—where triumph demands sacrifice and heart both on and off the ice.
Caution: This Coming of Age Story contains strong sexual content, including Romantic Celebrity Sports Interracial White Female Oriental Female White Couple Royalty AI Generated
The St. Louis Gateway
The Charter Life, March 26, 2011
The tarmac at Avflight Willow Run East is cold and gray, the March wind cutting across the runway with the Michigan bite that never quite goes away. I’m boarding the team charter with the rest of the Wolverines, garment bags slung over shoulders, when I catch movement across the apron.
The Matsuda Gulfstream sits there, sleek and silver, engines already spooling up with that distinctive whine that means money and efficiency. I stop halfway up the stairs, one hand on the railing, and watch.
Hanna stands at the top of the aircraft stairs, phone out, filming something below her. I squint and pick out Rika trying to wrestle three carry-on bags up the steps at once, moving with that stubborn determination I’ve come to recognize, refusing help even when accepting it would make sense. Hanna is laughing, the sound swallowed across the distance and the engine whine.
On the tarmac below, Kiyomi paces with her phone pressed to her ear, in command despite the chaos around her. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I know that posture. She’s organizing something, coordinating hotel logistics, locking down every detail. That’s Kiyomi, the machine that makes everything else possible.
I spot Hiroto helping load luggage, his Michigan pullover looking comically casual on a man who usually wears Ginza-tailored suits. Ryuichi stands near the nose of the aircraft, speaking with Takeru while both of them scan the perimeter with that practiced awareness that never quite turns off, and there, seated in a vehicle near the stairs, I catch a glimpse of Takeshi, the patriarch, traveling with his family to watch a college hockey game in Missouri.
The Chairman of Matsuda Industrial Group, a man who has seen empires rise and fall, is chartering a plane to follow a bunch of twenty-year-olds playing a sport.
Then I see my girls. Willow emerges from the terminal building, her dirty blonde hair whipping in the wind, laughing at something Molly just said. Molly’s red hair catches the gray light like a signal flare while she gestures with both hands, probably telling some story about the press conference disaster, and Asuka walks behind them, moving with that water-like silence, her eyes sweeping the tarmac even as she smiles at her companions.
They’re all traveling together. The Matsudas, my girlfriends, Hanna, the entire support structure that has rebuilt my life over the past year, packing into a private jet to follow us into the regional playdown.
“Stew.” Noley’s voice comes from behind me, and I catch myself standing on the stairs like a statue. “You good?”
I turn and find half my teammates pressed against the windows of our charter, faces plastered to the glass like kids at an aquarium.
“Holy shit,” Bobby breathes. “Is that a G550?”
“Dude,” Noley says, his eyes wide. “Is that your ... fan club?”
I watch Mitsy bound up the Gulfstream stairs and Sensei Ogata follow at his measured pace, his sharp eyes taking in everything around him.
“That’s family,” I say.
Noley stares at me for a long moment, then shakes his head. “Your life is insane, Stew. You know that, right?”
“Getting that impression, yeah.”
I climb the rest of the way into our charter and find my seat, but I keep watching through the window as the Gulfstream’s door closes. Kiyomi is the last one aboard, ending her call and ascending the stairs with the composure of someone who has done this a thousand times.
The logistics of what they’re doing lands on me. This isn’t a road trip. They’ve chartered a plane, booked hotel suites, coordinated ground transport, security, probably catering for a pre-game meal. Hiroto is planning a celebratory dinner that he says will make the Mason Cup look like a snack, and Kiyomi has been on the phone for days, turning the regional playdown into a high-stakes family vacation.
And they’re doing it for me. For us. For the chance to watch a hockey game.
“They’re really following us to St. Louis?” Reilly asks from across the aisle, craning his neck to see.
“Looks that way.”
“That’s...” He searches for the word. “That’s intense, man.”
It is intense. St. Louis is supposed to be neutral ground, neither team’s home ice, neither team’s crowd. But with the Matsuda family coming, with Willow and Molly and Asuka in the stands, with Hanna running social media and Kiyomi coordinating logistics like a general planning a campaign, it won’t feel neutral at all.
It’ll feel like home.
The Gulfstream begins to taxi, and I watch it roll toward the runway, silver and sleek against the gray Michigan sky. Somewhere in that cabin, Takeshi is sitting in measured dignity while Mitsy bounces in her seat, Rika is already reviewing game film on her tablet, and Kiyomi is making another call, solving another problem, keeping the machine running.
And my girlfriends are laughing together, wearing matching jerseys, ready to cheer until their voices give out.
The energy in our charter shifts. I can feel that electric current running through a team when something is about to happen. We’re not just going to St. Louis to play a hockey game. We’re going to dominate. We’re going to sweep the playdown weekend and punch our ticket to the Frozen Four.
“One down,” Zonk calls out from the back of the plane. “Two to go!”
The team erupts in cheers, fists pounding the seatbacks, voices rising in that primal roar that means we’re ready for war.
I lean back in my seat and smile. Across the tarmac, the Gulfstream lifts off, climbing into the gray sky, carrying everyone I love toward the same destination.
They’re following us into the fire, and with them behind us, I don’t see how we can lose.
The Command Center
We arrive at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch, and the team is handed room keys at once. My personal entourage has beaten us here and has again purchased a block of suites for the game. They’re already upstairs.
After check-in, I sneak away from the team meal to visit the “Command Center,” as Molly calls it.
The suite overlooks the Arch, and it’s filled with room service carts and laughter; Molly is trying to teach Asuka how to play poker while Willow tunes a guitar on the balcony.
It’s so ordinary. That’s the magic of it.
“You look ready,” Willow says, setting the guitar down.
“I feel ready,” I admit.
Asuka catches my eye, her expression serene. “Focus on the ice. We will handle the noise.”
The rest of the Matsudas filter into and out of the suites, each stopping by to wish me luck in their own way. This is a big deal for them; none of the family has ever competed in collegiate sports, so they all feel like proud uncles, fathers, and grandfathers.
Hanna is walking around documenting me for posts on my Facebook page. Melissa is curating the message going to the press, and my Q Score is doing good things. Even David Keane has passed along his best wishes and says that interest after the Mason Cup win keeps climbing. I know that means dollar signs for all of us.
I catch a snippet of Kiyomi’s conversation on the phone. She’s talking about a surprise at the game, then she moves into another room and leaves me to guess what it might be.
The Snack
At 5:00 p.m. we skate onto the ice at Scottrade, and the first thing that hits me isn’t the cold, it’s the definition. This is home ice for the NHL Blues, and it shows in every detail. The lighting rig is broadcast-perfect, banishing shadows and turning the ice into a sheet of backlit glass, the air thin and biting and stripped of humidity, the noise crashing down from the steep rake of the stands in a vertical wave. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faithful have turned the lower bowl into a hostile sea of red and white, their chants ricocheting off the glass of the luxury suites that ring the mid-level.
I’m taking my warm-up lap, feeling the edges of my skates bite into the hard, fast surface, when Noley taps my shin pads with his stick blade.
“Holy shit, Stew. Look up.”
I follow his gaze toward the “Ring of Silence,” the suite level splitting the bowls, and my stride falters. Amidst the chaotic patchwork of fan banners and corporate signage, one suite stands out like a calm anchor in the middle of a storm. Heavy-gauge, deep navy silk panels drape over the glass railing, shimmering under the lights. These aren’t cheap vinyl prints zip-tied to a railing; each is embroidered with a silver Michigan “M” above a bold, stylized number 5, the Matsuda Industrial Group crest stitched small in the lower corner. The whole display says support and corporate power at once, a block of “Matsuda Blue” cutting through the haze.
“That’s not subtle,” Noley says, and I can hear the grin in his voice even through his cage.
Before I can respond, the Jumbotron catches the suite’s interior. The camera zooms in, filling the center scoreboard, and I nearly trip over the blue line. The entire entourage is standing in a unified front: Willow, Molly, Asuka, the rest of the Matsudas, and even Takeshi himself, all of them wearing crisp white Michigan jerseys with my number, turning the Matsuda suite into a single block of white high above the ice. Peppered among the uniform elegance are hand-painted signs held high by the girls, glittering under the lights, softening the corporate edges with something personal.
My ladies spot themselves on the Jumbotron and the reaction is immediate. Willow waves with both hands, her smile so wide I can read it from across the building, while Molly strikes a pose, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at the ice like she’s claiming territory for the Crown, and Asuka, usually the ghost in the machine, blows an exaggerated kiss at the camera before dissolving into laughter.
Even Takeshi stands with a terrifying dignity, clapping slowly.
“Your fan club doesn’t mess around,” Noley says, skating up beside me.
I shake my head, processing the scale of it. “They really don’t.”
In a building designed to intimidate us, the Matsudas have planted a flag, an elegant and unmistakable flag that says we aren’t fighting alone. Every time I glance up at that suite, I feel something solid at my back.
At 7:00 p.m., the puck drops for the Regional Semifinal, and the difference in pedigree is apparent at once.
We draw the fourth seed, the RPI Engineers, a nervous squad from the ECAC that looks terrified the moment they see the block ‘M’ on our chests. They’re fast, but they’re fragile, playing a perimeter game, trying to keep the puck to the outside, hoping to survive the shift rather than win the game.
It isn’t a war; it’s a surgical dissection.
We don’t try to intimidate them with hits; we suffocate them with possession, cycling the puck in their zone for shifts that feel like eternities, the rubber moving tape-to-tape with a rhythmic snap-snap-snap that wears down their defense until the structural cracks appear.
Cason breaks the seal in the first period. He parks himself in the blue paint, immovable, and buries a greasy rebound that the RPI goalie kicks loose into the slot. 1–0.
In the second, Reilly adds a silky tip-in on the power play. I walk the line at the point, drawing the penalty killers high, before sliding a pass down the seam, and Reilly redirects it with a subtle twist of the wrists, the puck changing direction and finding the twine with a muffled thump. 2–0.
By the third period, RPI is chasing shadows. They’re gassed, their lungs seared, their legs heavy with a deep-tissue fever that turns muscle to cooling stone.
I play an efficient game, moving the puck, holding the blue line, conserving energy. I don’t need to block shots tonight. I don’t need to test the scar tissue in my abdomen or sacrifice my body to the “lively” boards. I just need to steer the ship, so I distribute the puck, keep my gap control tight, and watch the clock bleed down.
When the final horn sounds, the scoreboard reads 2–0. A clinical, drama-free shutout.
We line up for the handshake, barely sweating. The RPI players look defeated not just by the score but by the inevitability of it; we didn’t beat them so much as dismiss them. The handshakes are quick, the mumbled “good games” filtered through mouthguards, the smell of salt and exhaustion hanging in the air.
Back in the locker room, the mood is loose. There is no celebration, no roaring speech, no gate-banging, just the sound of clear tape ripping while we peel off our gear.
“One down,” Zonk announces, tossing his gloves into the drying rack with a wet thud. “That was the appetizer, boys. That was a snack.”
Cason walks to the whiteboard and erases the ‘27’ in our win column, replacing it with a bold ‘28’.
Record: 28–9–4.
“Rest up,” Coach Benson says, walking through the room without breaking stride, his eyes already focused on something none of us can see yet. “Tonight was practice. Tomorrow is North Dakota. Tomorrow is the war.”
The Grinder
First Period - The Prairie Violence, March 27, 2011
The puck hits the ice, and Scottrade detonates.
It isn’t just noise; it’s a physical force, a vertical wall of sound crashing down from the rafters where the “Sea of Green” is screaming for blood. North Dakota isn’t here to finesse us. They aren’t here to trade rush chances or dazzle the crowd with toe-drags. They’re here to turn the neutral zone into a demolition derby.
“Get it deep! Get it deep!” their bench is screaming, a chaotic chorus of baritones cutting through the crisp, surgical air of the building.
They dump the puck. It’s not a soft chip; it’s a hard rim, fired with the intent to hurt.
“Wheel! Wheel!” Josh screams from the net, banging his stick on the ice to signal the direction.
I pivot, my edges carving deep into the hard, fast surface. I know the reputation of this building. I know the boards at Scottrade are “lively,” wood-backed and unforgiving, but knowing it and feeling it are two different things.
The puck hits the dasher behind the net. Instead of dying against the kickplate, it explodes off the wood with a hollow boom, ricocheting wildly into the slot rather than wrapping around to the corner. It’s a bad bounce, a chaos play.
I have to adjust, stopping my momentum and twisting back toward the slot to corral the bouncing rubber, and it leaves my chest exposed, my ribs open.
And that’s when I hear the train coming.
There’s no attempt to play the puck. The North Dakota forechecker, a massive winger with a visor tilted too high and a grin missing two teeth, has already committed, coming downhill, strides heavy, intent on finishing a check that hasn’t even started yet.
Safe is death.
I don’t bail. I don’t chip it blindly up the glass to save my skin. I plant my feet and engage my core, the bracing sequence Dr. Whitfield drilled into me firing instinctively to protect the scar tissue in my abdomen.
I snap the pass to Noley just as the world goes white.
WHAM.
The impact is seismic. He drives his shoulder into my sternum, lifting me off my skates and into the glass. The stanchions flex with a shuttering groan, and the air leaves my lungs in a singular, agonizing whoosh. It’s not a clean hit; it’s a message, “Prairie Violence” delivered at twenty miles an hour.
I slide down the glass, one knee hitting the ice. I can’t breathe. My vision swims with purple ghosts, and there’s the distinct taste of blood in my mouth.
“Hey! Get your eyes open!” Coach Benson is screaming from the bench, his voice piercing the roar of the crowd. I catch him in my periphery, climbing halfway over the boards, pointing a furious finger at the referee. “That’s charging! That’s five minutes! Wake up!”
The whistle shrieks. The ref’s arm shoots up, and he points at the winger, two fingers tapping his own shoulder for the charge.
“Get up, Stew! Get up!” Noley is there, shoving the North Dakota winger backward, a gloved hand in the guy’s face.
I grit my teeth, forcing the air back into my seizing lungs. The pain is sharp, a hot wire running through my chest, but the structural integrity holds. The armor does its job. The core holds.
I look up through the glass. High above the chaos, in the “Ring of Silence” that splits the lower and upper bowls, I see it. The flash of Matsuda Blue. The silver “M.”
Asuka stands near the glass of the suite, her arms crossed, watching. She isn’t cheering. She isn’t panicking. She’s just watching, her expression unreadable, waiting to see if I get up.
This is the test, I tell myself. They want to see if the surgery kid breaks.
I grab Noley’s extended hand and haul myself upright.
“You good?” Noley barks, his eyes scanning me for a concussion, for the glassy stare of a bell-ringer.
“I’m good,” I wheeze, spitting a spray of bloody saliva onto the ice. “Let’s go.”
I don’t skate to the bench. I finish the shift. The puck rims around the boards, a jagged, rattling spin off the glass, and I pinch, closing the vice on their winger, forcing the turnover despite the lead-heavy feeling in my quads.
I spot Cason finding soft ice in the high slot, ignore the hot wire in my chest, and snap a pass, crisp, tape-to-tape. Cason doesn’t dust it off. He rips a one-timer.
Clack.
The sound is sharp, percussive, then the muffled thwack of the mesh. The red light erupts behind the glass, dissolving the tension in a wash of crimson.
1–0 Michigan.
I glide to the bench as the whistle blows, the roar of the Michigan section finally cutting through the ringing in my ears. I keep my head up. I don’t hunch or hold my ribs.
I step through the gate, and the boys are there, banging their sticks against the boards in a rhythmic, violent thump-thump-thump.
“Way to make ‘em pay, Stew!” Cason yells, skating by for the fist bump, his grin visible through the cage. “That’s a beauty!”
“Did you get the number of the guy who hit you?” Reilly asks, leaning over the divider, his eyes hard.
I sit down on the pine, the cold air finally hitting the sweat on my neck, and take a squirt from the water bottle, rinsing my mouth.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say, staring across the ice at the North Dakota bench. They aren’t grinning anymore.
“That is how we answer,” Benson says, walking down the line. He stops behind me, his hand resting on my shoulder pad. It’s not a comfort; it’s a check. He’s feeling for the flinch.
I don’t flinch.
“We answer on the scoreboard,” Benson growls, leaning in so only I can hear him. “But Michael? Keep your head on a swivel. The boards are the sixth man tonight, and they’re playing for the other team.”
“I know,” I say, tossing the water bottle back into the rack. “I’m fine, Coach.”
“Good,” he says, stepping back. “Because you’re up in forty seconds. Short shifts. Grind them down.”
I look up at the suite one last time. Asuka hasn’t moved, but the scoreboard has.
I tap my stick on the floor. I’m not breaking today.
Second Period - The Green Wall
The second period isn’t hockey; it’s trench warfare.
North Dakota has abandoned any pretense of flow or finesse. They’ve erected a “Green Wall” across the neutral zone, a suffocating, cohesive trap designed to strip the puck, kill our speed, and turn the game into a grinding war of attrition. Every time we try to break out, we run into a forest of sticks and bodies. There is no open ice, no “North-South” speed, only the mud.
I collect a rim-pass behind our net, pivoting to scan the ice. Usually I see lanes, angles, the shape of the attack unfolding before it happens. Right now all I see is green jerseys clogging the passing lanes, standing four-abreast at their blue line like bouncers at a club nobody gets into.
I try to force a pass through the middle, a mistake. A North Dakota stick flashes out, intercepting the puck with a sharp clack, and the transition is instantaneous. They catch us flat-footed, turning a turnover into a two-on-one rush, the pass going tape-to-tape across the slot, their winger unleashing a snap shot before Hayes can slide across.
The net snaps. The red light erupts. The scoreboard flickers: 1–1.
“Move it! Move it!” Coach Benson barks from the bench, his voice cutting through the sudden lull. He doesn’t care about the goal; he cares about the response.
I skate it up on the next shift, looking for a seam to get it back. There isn’t one. I have to dump it deep, the pragmatic “dump and chase” that feels like a surrender of possession but is the only way to bypass the wall, and I fire the puck into the corner, hearing the shattering echo as it hits the end boards.
Then comes the hit.
I know it’s coming. I release the puck, but the North Dakota forechecker finishes his check anyway, driving his shoulder into my chest a full second late, a heavy, suffocating impact that rattles my teeth. My core engages instinctively, but the force still sends a jolt of electricity through my ribs.
“Keep moving, Stew!” Noley yells, stepping in to absorb the next wave of pressure.
The referees have swallowed their whistles. This is “playoff hockey,” a euphemism that apparently means muggings are legal as long as nobody pulls a knife. Every time I touch the puck, a green jersey is glued to my hip. I feel the unseen slashes on my calves, the blade of a stick digging into the back of my knee, the cross-checks to the lower back that happen just outside the referee’s vision.
My lungs sting with a jagged fever, my limbs fighting that thick-water resistance that turns every stride into a survivalist haul. We’re grinding, shifting, hitting, but we aren’t generating anything. We are just surviving the collision.
“Short shifts! Get off!” Benson screams as I scramble over the boards, my legs feeling lead-heavy. I drop onto the pine, chest heaving, the sweat stinging my eyes.
“They’re clutching and grabbing everything,” I wheeze, grabbing a water bottle. “It’s a rodeo out there.”
“Play through it,” Reilly growls, leaning forward to look down the line. “Make them pay for the real estate.”
The break comes at the twelve-minute mark, and it comes in blood.
We are cycling the puck in the offensive zone, trying to create chaos in the corners. Noley digs for a loose puck, his head down, battling two North Dakota defenders. One of them, a frantic defenseman trying to lift Noley’s stick, misses his target completely.
Clack-thud.
The sound of the composite shaft hitting Noley’s face mask is sickeningly loud. Noley’s head snaps back, and he drops to his knees, his gloves flying off as he clutches his face.
The whistle finally shrieks.
I’m the first one there, skating over as Noley rolls onto his back. He pulls his hands away, and I see the “leak,” a bright red stream flowing from a cut on his chin, dripping onto the white ice.
“You okay?” I ask, leaning over him.
“Did we get the call?” Noley mumbles, spitting red onto the ice, blood from the tongue he bit when the stick caught his jaw. “Tell me we got the call.”
I look up. The referee is standing there, looking at the blood on the ice. He raises his arm, then holds up four fingers.
Double minor. High-sticking. Four minutes of power play.
“We got it,” I tell him, helping him up as the trainer runs out with a towel. “Go get stitched up. We’ll handle the rest.”
The crew descends on the blood, scraping the ice clean while the linesmen wave for fresh water. It buys us a free minute at the bench, the air vibrating with a mix of exhaustion and sharp opportunity. We cracked the “Green Wall,” not by force, but by discipline. Behind me, the trainer presses butterfly bandages over the cut on Noley’s chin to keep him in the game.
Benson uses the delay like a timeout. He steps into the middle of the huddle. He doesn’t look frantic. He looks cold.
“Listen to me,” he says, his voice low and dangerous. “They want to turn this into a street fight. They want to muck it up, drag us down into the mud, and win a wrestling match.”
He looks at me, then at Cason, then at Zonk.
“We don’t street fight,” Benson says. “We execute. You have four minutes. You don’t rush. You set it up. You punish them with the puck, not the body.”
He draws a quick diagram on the whiteboard, the “Umbrella” formation.
“Michael, you run the point. Top of the umbrella. Walk the line. Make them chase you. Open up the seam.” He taps the board hard with the marker. “Pucks on net. Greasy goals. I don’t care if it goes in off a shin pad. Put it in the blue paint.”
“Let’s go, boys!” Cason shouts, and we break the huddle with a collective roar.
I skate to the blue line. The “tunnel vision” sets in. The crowd noise, the screaming North Dakota fans, the chanting student section, fades into a muffled hum, and the building narrows down to the offensive zone.
The puck drops. We win the draw.
I collect the puck at the point. The North Dakota penalty kill is aggressive, a “diamond” formation designed to pressure the puck carrier. Their top forward charges at me, stick waving, trying to force a mistake.
I don’t panic. I walk the line.
I skate laterally, heel-to-toe, my eyes up. I drag the defender with me, changing the angle of the attack. He slashes at my hands, a stinging “wristy” chop that hits me right on the cuff of my glove. I feel the vibration travel up my forearm, a dull throb in the bone, but I don’t flinch.
Pain is information. Ignore it.
I fake the shot. The defender bites, dropping to one knee to block a lane I have no intention of using.
That’s the opening.
I see the “Royal Road,” the imaginary line splitting the slot directly in front of the goalie. Crossing that line forces the goalie to move laterally, opening up holes in his coverage.
I slide a hard, crisp pass through the seam. It’s not a shot; it’s a provocation.
The puck zips through the traffic. Zonk is parked in front of the net, a massive, immovable object engaged in a violent shoving match with their defenseman. He doesn’t try to control the pass. He just gets his stick on the ice.
The puck deflects off Zonk’s blade, changes direction, hits a skate in the crease, and creates absolute chaos.
The goalie kicks out a leg, but he’s moving the wrong way. The puck is loose in the “blue paint.”
“Jam it! Jam it!” I scream, skating down from the point.
It’s a scrum, a mess of bodies, sticks, and desperation. Cason dives into the pile. Zonk is hacking away. The North Dakota defenseman is cross-checking everyone in sight.
Then, out of the pile, the puck squirts across the goal line.
The red light erupts. The siren wails.
2–1.
The bench explodes. The guys on the ice converge on Zonk, slamming into the glass, the “Gate-Bang” of the bench rattling the boards.
I don’t jump into the pile. I glide toward them, the adrenaline dump leaving my legs shaky. I rotate my wrist, testing the joint where the slash landed. It throbs, a deep, bone-bruise ache, but everything moves. Nothing is broken.
I look up at the luxury suite. Through the glass, I see the blur of white jerseys, Willow, Molly, Asuka. They’re jumping, waving, a pocket of pure joy in a hostile building.
I tap my glove against Zonk’s helmet as he emerges from the scrum, grinning through his mouthguard.
“Greasy,” I tell him. “Beautifully greasy.”
“They all count, baby!” Zonk roars.
The clock shows we have burned only thirty seconds of the four-minute power play. The first minor wipes off the board on the goal, but North Dakota still has to serve the second in full, so we get another two minutes to twist the knife. We skate back to center ice with the lead, the deadlock broken, but as I look at the North Dakota bench, at the anger radiating off their players, I know this isn’t over.
We’ve wounded the animal. Now we have to survive the death throes.
“Head on a swivel,” I mutter to myself, gripping my stick until my knuckles turn white. “Here comes the heavy stuff.”
The rest of the second period is a cage match. North Dakota throws everything forward, pinching aggressively, cycling low, hunting the equalizer. Josh stops a one-timer from the hash marks with his blocker. He kicks out a rebound off a deflected point shot and covers it before the trailer can jam it home. The horn sounds with the score still 2–1.
Third Period - The Block
The clock above center ice is a red digital eye blinking down the final seconds of our season.
0:14. 0:13.