Cheap Shot

one: wes

WES

The first game of the season was, hands down, the most important one. More important than any other game of the season, regardless of where you stood once it came time to see who would progress into the finals.

The first game set up the mood for the rest of the season. Would we go in positive and hyped up, riding the high of a win? Or would we go in doubting our starting line up, questioning our practices and plays, hesitant to come up against the next team in case of another defeat? The first game decided that and, therefore, decided the vibes of the rest of the season. And those vibes were crucial.

So the fact that we were tied against Minnesota State with three minutes left in the final period and I was bombing in goal was not providing me with a positive outlook. (Or vibes).

We hadn't managed to tie up the game because I was a star goalie who had blocked all of their attempts to score on us. We had managed to tie up the game because we had a wicked solid offense and I had been skating around the goal like a chicken without its head, letting in goals that I should've been able to block in my sleep.

"Focus," I muttered to myself around my mouth guard. The weight of my goalie gear was starting to really weigh on me and I was drenched in sweat despite the chill of the arena. "Focus."

I watched as Ben Demidov, our starting center, took a wrist shot that would've made its way past most goalies easily. But Minnesota had switched their starting goalie from last season, and I watched in horror as the goalie deflected the puck quickly and Minnesota's offensive player picked it up easily and swiftly began heading down our side.

The thing about being a goalie was being able to predict what a player was going to do before they did it. That's what made a goalie worth keeping in the net. You had to be able to watch the way they skated, the way they handled the puck, the way they attempted other goals, and use all of that knowledge to judge how they were going to try and score on you. Defense could only do so much. When it came down to it, the only thing standing between them scoring a possible winning goal was you.

Everyone was rushing down the arena, skates were slashing against ice, the clock was counting down, but, in that moment, nothing else existed besides me and the player with the puck.

I lowered myself, knees tense, ready to change positions at a moments notice. I gripped my stick in my right hand, left hand free to catch the puck if the opportunity presented itself. It was as if time slowed down; I could see the way the player was handling the puck, the way his eyes lingered on the net, the way he had scored on me previously, and, feeling confident for the first time that night, I knew exactly where I had to position myself.

I watched as he brought his stick back, as he made impact with the puck, as it went in a completely different direction than I had been anticipating and eased into the goal with zero interference from me.

The timer on the clock ran out, the buzzing alerting all of us that the game was over. Minnesota State had scored the final point.

We lost.

Everything after that was a blur.

It was a home game, but that didn't stop Minnesota fans from screaming so loudly they could probably be heard from back home. I knew that Coach Calhoun would have a lecture waiting for us in the back and I couldn't imagine the reaction of the team, but all I wanted to do was switch out my gear for regular clothes, go home, get in bed and watch Netflix and eat pizza and figure out what the hell had gone wrong.

I was in the middle of stripping down my goalie gear when the rest of the team made their way in, their expressions all a mix of how I felt. It was only my second year on the team, but I had seen the way the upperclassman berated the underclassman anytime they made a mistake in the game, and I knew what was coming. I had been a star goalie my freshman year, but that didn't matter when I had just effectively lost us our first game of the season.