Olympic Fire [Miracle on Ice]

CHAPTER 11: Another Bloodbath

~KIMBERLY'S POV~

"Did you get lost on your way from the locker room, miss Mayfield?" Herb's cold politeness scares the hell out of me.

"No, coach. I am sorry I am late."

"Where are the others?"

Before I respond, coach Patrick comes back, followed by 26 guys in their gear and with sticks in hands. And going by the expressions on their faces, the bloodbath cannot be avoided. However, Herb seems to ignore the tensions between them and starts explaining practice plan.

"Coach Patrick and I will make four groups. When your name is called, skate forward and coach Patrick will give you a jersey. One more thing before we begin. Ten sprints after practice for being late."

A synchronized sigh echoes through the arena as coach's last words are spoken. That's one thing no one of us likes. Sprints. Or as we call them behind coach's back, Herbies. After the silence falls upon us, coach Patrick starts reading names: "First team. Johnson, McClanahan, Strobel, Christian ,Morrow and Ross"

Six guys skate to him and take the red jerseys he is handing them. Meanwhile coach Brooks calls up second 'team': "Harrington, Pavelich, Schneider, O'Callahan, Ramsey and Cox."

I get called into a third team along with Rizzo, Neal and Christoff as forwards and with Suter and Baker as defensive pair, while the fourth team consists of Les Auge, Jack Hughes as defence and Delich, Verchota, Wells and Silk as forwards.

Coach sends Buzzy Schneider in the second team, Ross from the first team, Rizzie from our team and Verchota from the fourth group along with Bruce Horsch, the third goalie on a bench until it's their turn.

After all of us have our 'team' jerseys on, coaches have us run the stretching, which is led by Morrow this time. I start getting bad feeling about all this when Jack stops next to me and smirks: "Hello again."

It takes every bit of my willpower to ignore him and continue with stretching. While doing that, my muscles are tense and I somehow expect him to pull some nasty trick on me to make me lose balance and make fool out of myself. But he doesn't. However, I can feel his glare on me and it's not nice.

After stretching, we line up on the goal line, preparing for hell. And when the whistle blows, the part I will never get used to begins.

~JACK'S POV~

I feel nervousness radiating from her and it's actually quite entertaining to see her tense like that. If I turn my head I can see how flexed are muscles in her neck as she is expecting something to happen to her. My glance jumps across the ice where Broten keeps small talk with McClanahan. Next I catch Coxy, Silky and Rizzo's glances and I have a felling they are trying to tell me not try anything.

After the stretching exercises and those suicide sprints, I join my 'team' and follow Herb's instructions while he explains the exercise we will be doing. The speed with which he draws the lines, which represent us, and talks about the strategy makes my brain hurt. How does anyone ever understand him? He sends the third team off the ice and has us and the first team run the exercise.

I watch notice how flowing the passes between the three offenders, Harrington, Pavelich and Schneider are, and how they don't even need to look where the puck is. They just find the way to make the play work, giving first team's defensive pair a hard job of stopping them. I admit, their style of playing is so creative, that they even finish their play with a goal, making Janny look like a kid. After quick fistbumps, it's time to run another play, this time with Ramsey and I trying to prevent the other team from scoring. I keep my gaze focused on the puck, not on the players, which turns out to be a mistake. I feel a force smack into me, sending me on the ice. I look up and see McClanahan standing near, a small smile on his face. In that moment I realize it was him who smacked into me, that little prick from Minnesota. When I smacked into him, I was the worst person ever, but now when he did the same...no one says anything. Why would they? Minnesotans stick together.