Line Change
Red light. Horn. Then, pandemonium. Even the grandmas in the nosebleeds were on their feet.
It was Friday night at the Shady Macaroni Sports Arena, the largest - and only - professional ice rink in Bumstead county (population 2,037) and the Richmond Razorbacks - a minor league ice hockey team, were playing their final game of the season against their cross county rivals, the Thomasville Thunderblades.
At the end of the second period, the score was 3-0 in favor of the Thunderblades, and while opinions up and down the Razorbacks bench varied in regards to why they were losing so badly, the root cause of their current predicament was perfectly clear to their head coach, Krem Brulee.
“We’re not stickin’ to our game,” said left wing Sam "Taco" Tacoma.
“Need to be more patient on the breakout,” said center Timothy "Zippy" Zippideeko.
“Gotta keep the puck in their end more…” mumbled defenseman Vladmir "Sharky" Sherkiviev.
“We’re playing like absolute garbage,” Coach Brulee said. All eyes on the bench turned towards him as if he was a prophet carrying truth down from heaven. Brulee looked at his players, their weary eyes and sweaty mugs staring back at him, waiting for his next nugget of wisdom.
“We should stop doing that,” he said, eyebrows raised.
Easier said than done.
Their troubles started not long after the first puck drop in the opening period.
T.J. Barnburster, star forward of the Thunderblades, intercepted a lackluster neutral zone pass from Razorbacks defenseman Leo "Lipstick" Lipstikeeno, who at the time was intending to capitalize on a poorly-timed Thunderblades line change by setting up his teammate Zule "Thor" Thoraz with a breakout pass. Barnburster's stick regretfully intruded on Lipstick's plan, tripping the puck up as it raced across the ice and collecting it a moment later.
Barnburster turned on the jets and skated into the Razorback's zone on an uncontested breakaway. Then he faked a shot to open up Steven "Squeezy" Squiznowski, the Razorback's goalie, and buried the puck like a dead hamster into the wide open net.
“Well ain’t that a kick in the damn teeth!” D man Yannick "Cowbell" Heiferman said, slamming the butt of his stick into the floor of the Razorbacks bench.
Coach Brulee tried to offer a ray of optimism. “Keep yer heads up boys, show’s just started.” he said. “Let’s stay on our game.”
“Easier said than done,” said Ruby, the equipment manager.
Indeed, things got worse before they got better.
More accurately, things just got worse.
When the ref dropped the puck again, the Thuderblades won the face-off and dumped the puck into the Razorbacks's zone.
Smelling blood after their first goal, the Blades turned up the heat, piling physical pressure onto the Razorbacks's D with a punishing forecheck, shoving their opponents into the boards like a bunch of drugged up rag dolls every time they touched the puck. The Razorbacks, desperate to clear their own zone, but pulverized at every attempt, became increasingly exhausted as every second passed.
Finally, Razorbacks D-man Sam "Eggroll" Stegrolli got the puck and lobbed it off the boards, sending it over the blue line and into neutral ice, allowing his gassed teammates to flock to the bench in exchange for a fresh line of players. But seconds later, Thunderblades player Maurice Milkmann - a foul-scented toothless fourth-line goon - regained possession of the rubber disc as it floated down the ice. He skated back into the Razorbacks's zone with his winger, Hank Locomoni, crashing towards the Razorbacks's net.
Cursing his decision, Eggroll spun 'round and skated back as hard as he could to cover the turnover. Racing towards the two attacking forwards, he tried to block the passing lane between them with his outstretched stick, but Milkmann faked a pass and Eggroll took the bait, dropping prone on the ice to cover the lane. Then Milkmann slammed on the brakes, shaving the ice into a crystalline spray, and with a splayed out Eggroll sliding down the ice like a helpless penguin, the passing lane was open for business. Milkmann flicked the puck across the ice towards Locomoni, who snapped it into the back of the net with his hungry stick.
2-0 Thunderblades.
Five minutes later, another bad turnover led to a scramble in front of the Razorbacks's net. The puck wandered around, drifting from stick to stick as a pile of players hacked at it from every direction, most missing it completely. Finally a Thunderblade player found it and took possession, passing it back to his D man at the blue line, who drilled it towards the net with a blistering slap shot. The puck sailed through the air like a cannonball, bouncing off a cluster of helmets, pads and sticks before flipping past Squeezy, their dazed goaltender, into the open net.
It was ugly, ugly as sin. But it went in, and that's all that mattered.
3-0 Thunderblades.
The crowd in the arena, sparse as it was when the game started, had clearly lessened, leaving half-drunk sodas, empty hot dog containers and the pervasive scent of cheap stale beer lingering in the stands. The spirit of the building itself seemed to have partially dwindled as well; the old pipes, wrought iron handrails and polished wooden seats moaned and groaned, as if they too were ready to pack it in and go home.
One might certainly get the impression that this contest was lopsided from the start. Indeed one would be completely excused if they concluded that this was some charity stunt, or that the Razorbacks were some chewed-up, half-baked beer league rec team playing against a top-notch four-line dynamo by the name of the Thunderblades.
But - shocking as this may seem - this was not the case, as the teams were actually evenly matched on paper. The Razorbacks were good; just three weeks ago they were on a four game-win streak, even beating the top team in the league, the Minnesawkie Moosekissers, 4-0 in their own barn. Two years ago they finished as the top team in the east, and for the past three years numerous sporting periodicals of mild notoriety had tagged them as a potential cinderella contender for the treasured Spoonwhipper Cup.
But for some reason, tonight just wasn’t their night.
Passes with the best intentions got lost like drunk tourists looking for their Ubers. Breakouts from their own zone became a predictable series of desperate-looking disasters, leading to rushes that got snuffed out like candles in a hurricane. Wide open passing lanes became clogged networks of sticks and skates; shots on net that looked great on release ended up skittering off some random pad, sailing wide of the net.
Pucks in the corner always seemed to end up on a Thunderblades stick, victims of some Calvinist predestination scheme. To make matters worse, the Thunderblades dialed up their physical game, knocking Razorbacks players down like bowling pins and crushing them against the boards at every chance they got. The Razorbacks tried shifting to a possession game, which made sense on the drawing board, but the puck treated them like lepers, as if it was consciously doing everything it could to avoid touching their sticks.
“We just need to play our game,” said Sharky, wheezing for breath as he labored into the team’s locker room at the end of the second period. “Stick to our game plan…”
The rest of the team piled in after him, flopping down on the benches in front of their lockers. They looked like the sorriest bunch of rink rats you could ever imagine, a bunch of half-toothed scratched up chicken wings still looking for their sauce, all drenched in sweat, crippled with exhaustion and, given that the end of their season was only twenty minutes away and they were losing three zip, flat out of any and all motivation to put any additional effort into this dead carcass of a hockey game.
Brulee and Ruby entered the room last. "Well, you wanna tell 'em?" Ruby said to Brulee. The coach nodded. He stepped forward and cleared his throat.
All the chatter in the locker room ceased. All eyes turned towards him.
“Guys, we’re down 3-0. We have twenty minutes to play and this is the last game of the season. This is the part where I’m supposed to find ways to motivate you, to tell you that we can do it, that we can dig deep and find a way to win. This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that I believe in you, that I believe in the future of this team.”
The players all looked at him with eager eyes, waiting for him to gush motivation like a scalding geyser of sporting wisdom.
"Well, I don't. Some of you may find that offensive, but so be it. I don't believe in the future of this team."
Ruby bit his lip. A few of the players looked around the room, their faces racked with confusion, perhaps even a tinge of shock. Taco and Eggroll looked particularly bereft, as if they were about to start crying.
"It's not because of any lack of talent. Heck, some of you fellas are actually pretty good hockey players. No, it's because of something that happened this morning. You see this morning, I had a little phone call with a man by the name of Franky Francisco Gibberone. Any of you guys know who that is?"
Heads around the room nodded no, all in unison.
"Figures as much. Franky Francisco Gibberone. They call him “Fishsticks” for short. Don't ask me why. Anyway, he's our owner. The owner of the team. And so Fishsticks calls me up, on a Friday morning too - so I know he's missing his tee time at the country club to talk to me, cause I've golfed with him before, ok? And Fishsticks says to me, 'Brul, we need to chat'. Word to the wise....anytime someone who owns something that you depend on wants to 'chat'...and they're skipping their weekly golf game to do it....well, you'd better sit down for that chat, because it probably isn't gonna be good news."
The team members all turned and looked at the coach. There was now a strange unease wafting through the room, an odd dread that stank like unwashed gear. He lowered his head, and took a deep breath, puffing out his lips as he did. Then he looked up at all of them, and right then and there let the cat out of the bag.
"Mr. Gibberone has informed me he is liquidating the team."
A hushed silence fell over the inside of the locker room.
"Mr. Gibberone has decided that he is no longer capable of being shackled to the endless spring of financial loss that is inherent in owning a minor league hockey team. Mr. Gibberone is also on the verge of bankruptcy, and is the defendant in several multi-million dollar lawsuits, most of which he will probably lose. Without an immediate buyer, of which there currently is none, the team will be liquidated. Additionally, Mr. Gibberone informed me that the property manager - who he also golfs with - has decided that they too are making changes. Next season, this rink is going to be gone."
"The rink is going to be gone?" Zippy asked.
"You heard me. The rink is going to be gone."
"Why?" Sharky asked, clearly anguished.
"The powers that be have decided to do something else with the property."
"Well what the hell are they doing to do with it?" Eggroll spat out. "What are they gonna build instead?"
"Condos. Ugly, awful condos, anchored by some big box retail monster. A god-awful suburban commercial real estate play, uglier than all hell, uglier than that last goal you just let in, Squeezy," Brulee said, nodding towards their goalie, who shook his head in frustration.
"No craftsmanship, no art, no sport - just brick and mortar content, designed to generate flaky tax write offs and stuff up a commercial real estate portfolio with bullshit numbers and soulless drudgery."
A murmur - not just any murmur - but an agitated, brooding murmur, began to percolate throughout the small, smelly room. Overhead, a light flickered, and under the floor, one of the old heat conduit pipes began to moan, as if the building itself was reacting to the news. The coach continued.
"There's no use fighting it fellas, the deal is already done. The rink will be gone, replaced by Peachy Pines Plaza, a corporate cluster of cookie cutter commerce and paint-by-numbers living. Yes, the ice rink will be gone, the Razorbacks will be gone, and so the hockey too will also be gone. Which means that after today, most of you will no longer have a job. Ruby will no longer have a job. I will no longer have a job."
"They can't do that!" Taco cried out, pounding the floor with the butt of his stick.
"They can do whatever they want," Brulee responded. "They've got the cash, they own the business and the property. We are but serfs in a land of sporting vassals."
Again the building seemed to swell. The old bones of the barn creaked and cried out. The players fed off this. They had been upset. Now they were getting angry. Brulee was now determined to do something with it.
"So many memories in this barn, fellas. So many. Can't let 'em get wiped out like this. Think of all the games we played here. The wins, the losses, the energy. The life, for crying out loud! Think of the life! Why, Taco, do you remember that game against the Firewolves, that night you puked all over the bench? And Lipstick, my god man, how many times did you sit in that penalty box? They should've been charging you rent! I remember that one time they called you for tripping, I think it was in double OT, in the playoffs. You were so pissed, you slammed the door so hard you broke one of its hinges! Do you remember?"
Taco and Lipstick both looked at each other, saying nothing, for nothing needed to be said.
"All of you, remember. Remember what we did here. It was special! Some of you have teeth buried in that ice. Blood. This place was special, and so was this team, god dammit!"
A chorus of nods mixed with a slaw of emotion - laughter, anger, confusion, aggression - echoed throughout the locker room. Like a symphony conductor, Brulee swirled the energy. Took the reigns.
They couldn't let it end like this, god dammit.
They just couldn't.
He wouldn't let them.
"We can't let it end like this. We're down three zip. So what. Who cares. Just get one. Just get one, and make that little red lamp light up and that goal horn blare. Do you remember that goal horn? It's been, what, four games since we've heard it? It's loud, I tell ya - maybe the loudest in the league. And the arena is half full. Yeah, so what. Who's left up there, sitting in those seats? The losers, the castaways, the remnants, the people who have nothing better to do on a Friday night than spend ten bucks to watch us - losers, castaways, remnants - try to crawl up this shitty ice and score goals and win. Well they deserve better!"
The team stirred. A mob was forming. This was good, Brulee thought. He continued.
"This summer, next week in fact, they're gonna start the demolition. They're gonna prep the building. And in two weeks, guaranteed - this place is going to be a pile of dust. After that, they'll have their condos up in no time. Have you ever seen a commercial developer put up condos? Holy hell, you think hockey is fast? You should watch those guys! They'll be done in a month. And then by the end of the summer, instead of this barn, this cathedral of energy, this place filled with sound and light and vibration, instead of this, where every night was different...instead of that, you'll have sameness. Sameness, same, static sameness. A cluster of buildings that look like a graveyard of USB sticks. Filled with static people sitting on static couches watching shitty TV written by shitty algorithms. The trade deadline is here, fellas, and we don't have a say in this one. The management is trading life, vibrancy, rock and roll, one-timers, bad nachos, glove saves and fist fights for the death of the human spirit, all so they can make a few extra bucks."
"So are we gonna do something about it?" the coach cried out.
"Damn right!" Eggroll said. Taco and Lipstick and Cowbell piped in too. The team was angry, full of passion and life once again.
"Just get one, that's all I ask," Brulee pleaded. "Just one. Let's not end this by giving the other team a shutout. The top hats want to take our home, the least we can do is burn in down for 'em. Throw a wild party, wake the neighbors. We ain't gonna live forever, but we can seize the moment and make it ours!
"So who's with me?? I'm not asking for a win, just a goal!"
The bubbling anger came to a boil and hung there for a moment. Then there was a dead silence. The room felt heavy, ready to burst, like a balloon ready to pop. Finally John "Sparrow" Spartowski, their cool headed soft-spoken captain, stepped up. He strapped on his helmet and shoved his filthy gloves back onto his hands. Then he picked up his stick and marched towards the door leading back to the ice. He paused at the threshold, turning back to look at his team.
Then he spoke, and as he did the whole team looked at him in a dazed but respectful stupor.
"My dad was an architect. When I was young, he spoke at length regarding the degradation of beauty in the structures we live and work in, often lamenting the death of craftsmanship in our father-son chats. He foresaw the decline of neoclassicism and the takeover of cheap nihilism, and the deafening of aesthetics. He foresaw the growing use of real estate as a portfolio entry for hedging against inflation, rather than an artistic celebration of forms which emphasize the virtue of human action. Furthermore, he was wise enough to foresee the mass decline of human health and the replacement of virtuous everyday athleticism with a sinister binge-viewing, pill-popping couch culture, the purest embodiment of sloth. When he told me all of this, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but now I get it. I know some of this will fly over your heads, but I think it all relates to what the coach is saying. Basically, the only moment we have is now, and there's no promise of tomorrow. I think what I'm really trying to say is that I love playing hockey and I hate bad architecture. We've got twenty minutes to do something here, something special, so..."
He paused, surveying the room for any sort of response, wondering if anything he had just said made any sense at all to the rest of the team.
Nothing.
So he screwed up his face into a mask of rage and tried a different approach.
"SO LET'S GO OUT THERE AND PUT ONE MORE IN THE NET BOYS!"
The room exploded into an adrenalized war cry. Like an army of jacked-up rats drenched in sweat and blood, the team grabbed their sticks and stampeded to the exit, nearly tramping Brulee and Ruby in the process.
"Ok, Ruby," Brulee said. "Let's go do this one more time."
From the moment the ref dropped the puck at the start of the third period, there was something different about the way the Razorbacks played. A work ethic that hadn't been there before was immediately evident. Passes found their sticks. Checks got finished. The game had a different tempo. Brulee smiled. His team was finally showing up to play.
A moment later, with the puck deep in the Thunderblade's zone, the Razorbacks found a scoring chance, easily the best one they'd had all night. Taco got open in front. No one on the other team saw him. Then Cowbell dumped the puck back behind the net to Sparrow, who somehow found Taco with a no-look backhand pass from along the boards. The goalie slid across the ice to cover the net, leaving a buffet of gaps to shoot at. Taco snapped the puck towards the goal as it found his stick, but it went just wide, missing its target by less than an inch. Taco cursed in frustration but Brulee screamed out onto the ice, offering encouragement.
"Nice shot, Taco! Keep it up boys, just get one!"
The Thunderblades took possession and worked the puck up to neutral ice, but quickly turned it back over to the Razorbacks, who dumped it back into the Thunderblades zone. Taco's line skated back to the bench, and the second line took their place, continuing the attack. Brulee leaned over the railing, screaming words of encouragement to the players on the ice.
"You have nothing to lose! Forget about the other team, you're up against condos!! You want to lose this game to a bunch of condos??"
Now the Thunderblades once again had the puck. They skated it out of their own zone, criss-crossing their way up ice as they passed it back and forth. But they were getting tired. Halfway up the ice, one of their wingers, exhausted and desperate to get to the bench, lobbed it into the Razorback's zone, but it hit a weird patch of ice on the way in, which slowed it down. Sometimes that happens in hockey. There are little chinks in the ice from all the skating and stopping and chipping and chopping, and the puck can get tripped up and change directions and what not. And it did exactly that - it bounced on its side, cutting short its journey into the Razorbacks zone, right as the Thunderblades were in the middle of a line change.
A moment later, Sharky picked up the loose puck and found himself alone on a breakaway. Rushing up the ice like a shooting star, he closed in on the goalie, cupping the puck on his forehand side. Brulee could feel the breeze as the man skated by. Time seemed to slow down. The crowd - sparse as it was - began to rouse itself, like a vexed populace right before a revolution. A wonderful energy filled the arena, an aural arpeggio of escalating excitement, almost endless in its emotional capacity, but surely finite - like that first moment on Christmas morning, right before the first present is unwrapped. Pure anticipation, pure possibility, all wrapped in a strange but wonderful alchemy of steel and rubber and ice. And then like all such wondrous moments, it found its conclusion in the most dramatic of ways.
"That's it Sharky!!" Brulee cried out as his man closed in on the net.
"Now put it home!"
Sharky made no mistake. He faked a shot. The goalie took the bait, flinching as he braced himself to absorb the nonexistent try, opening up a tiny sliver of space just over his blocker side. Then Sharky shot the puck for real. He shot the puck at that tiny sliver. No dekes, no fancy tricks. Just a clean, crisp shot, perfect and hard. In the blink of an eye it flashed though the air like a bullet. And the next second, it was in the back of the net. He let out a loud cry, a whoo-hoo, like a wolf howling at the moon, a sound of pure athletic exhilaration. Then the red light kicked on and the siren blared and the previously half asleep crowd of nobodies with nowhere else to go on a Friday night was yanked to their feet and the whole place was alive again, like some corpse revived, not with a defibrillator, but with a scorching wrist shot, top shelf, from just outside the crease.
3-1.
10:31 left in the 3rd.
Sharky skated to the bench and collected a teamfull of fist bumps and cheers. Brulee grabbed him by the shoulders, his eyes on fire.
"You got one. You did what I asked. You brought life to a dead place. You created life where there was none! You did the work of God, rousing the spirit of creation!!!"
He slapped Sharky hard on the back and then turned to the rest of this team. "Now I want someone else to do it, to go get one, just one more! But there are three things I want from you as a team in the process."
All eyes looked at him. All ears listened.
"One. That puck is to live at their end of the ice. You understand? I want the puck to live in their end, and I want you to make sure it stays there. They get possession and try to skate it out? You make their lives a living hell. Make them sweat blood for it. Make it the hardest thing in the world for them to leave their own zone with the puck."
Nods all around. Buy-in. Brulee smiled. There was electricity in the air.
"Two. Finish your checks. You've got a bead on one of their guys and he's got the puck? Flatten him. Staple him to the boards. Let him know you're there and scare the living shit out of him. Be a nightmare on skates, god dammit! Rattle those boards, the crowd loves it, you love it, the building loves it, and once this place is a tomb of condos, all the life from this place is gonna be gone, so let's pump it!"
"Three. Shoot the puck. Shoot it! Pass it, cycle it, fine. But you get a shot - take it! You never know what might happen!"
The ref circled around and nodded to Brulee. It was time to drop the puck.
"Alright, let's go get it!" Brulee said. Fresh legs skated out towards the face off circle. Then the ref dropped the puck, and from there on out, the game became an all out war. Small battles for the puck became exhaustive crusades. Checks were finished with tsunamic intensity, rattling the boards so hard that it felt like the earth was quaking. The Razorbacks dialed up their offense with an endless barrage of lighting-fast rushes, tape-to-tape passes and sizzling shots, matching the Thunderblades shift-for-shift with relentless intensity. And so it wasn't long before they found themselves with another brilliant chance, and this time it was Taco who scored, driving it past the goalie and into the net with a snap shot from just outside the faceoff circle with 3:31 left.
3-2 Thunderblades.
Again the crowd got what they paid for, jumping to their feet as the puck went in and the red light flashed and the horn split the air. The building was alive, soaking in the spirit, the energy, drinking it in like a man about to enter a desert drinks whatever water he can find. It was like the building knew its days were numbered, like some old man on his deathbed. And when you know your days are numbered, any taste of life is delicious, and all you want is one more sip. Maybe the fans knew too, even though the news of the sale hadn't gone public yet. But maybe they could feel it, maybe the just knew it instinctively, who could say. But they were riled up from that last goal and now they wanted one more.
Brulee wanted one more, Ruby, the team, all of them wanted it more than anything. They didn't even care about the game, they just wanted to score once more. To pump it, light the place up. To celebrate the losers, the castaways, the remnant. To juice this mass of meat and cheese and ice and concrete with life once again, just one more time.
The puck dropped. The game continued. The clock ran, and precious minutes became precious seconds. More checks, more shots, more war. Minor league hockey at its finest, that delicate balance of grace and brutality, of elegant locomotion and train wreck collisions, of near misses and golden opportunities and tragic mistakes. The building and the crowd and even the nachos were alive, breathing in the vigorous energy of the final moments of the game.
Finally - with less than a minute left - the Razorbacks found their equalizer.
Somehow a bad breakout pass from a Thunderblades player found its way right onto the stick of a wide open Sparrow cruising down the slot in front of the Thunderblade's goal. Sparrow stickhandled the puck like a magician as he closed in on the net, tic-tac-toe'ing his way towards the goalie. Then he threw out a hard move to the backhand to force the masked man to commit, and pulled it back to his forehand, where a wide open net welcomed his subsequent shot.
3-3.
Tie game. 0:45 left in the third.
Red light. Horn. Then, pandemonium. Even the grandmas in the nosebleeds were on their feet. And a mob of hugs met Sparrow as he skated past his bench, still glowing from his last minute triumph.
And with that, the final seconds of the third ticked to a close. The final horn blew, the teams regrouped, and the zamboni drove out to cut the ice for the last time. Then the ref dropped the puck once more for a quick sudden death tiebreaker overtime, to determine the winner of this game, the final game to be played in this strange arena.
It didn't really matter who won. But as fate would have it, one of the Thunderblades decided to finally close things out on their terms, winning the game 4-3 at 2:56 in OT on a snapshot from the point. But it didn’t matter. The fans, the players, and Brulee and Ruby all got what they wanted. That last breath, that precious gasp of air. A final burst of movement and kinetics and virtuous human action. Even the building, fully cognizant of its fate, was happy to have tasted its final sip of life in such a bacchanalian fashion.
Years later, long after the rink had been torn down and all the condos had been built, sometimes, when a person was sitting on their couch, binge watching one of those shitty shows written by shitty algorithms, sometimes that person would hear a loud boom and feel a loud shake, as if several people had just collided with a nearby wall. Sometimes they'd hear a loud crack, as if a rock had been shot out of a cannon. And sometimes they'd hear a strange horn, just for a second, accompanied by the sound of cheering. None of the tenants could explain it. Most of them just accepted it, because it didn't happen that often. But some people got so upset that they actually called the property manager.
But the property manager never got back to them, because it was Friday morning and they were off playing golf with Fishsticks Gibberone.
This story is my submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month we create something around a set theme. This month, the theme was “sports.” Consider joining us.