Face-Off (3 page)

“I also need hockey skates,” he said. “Size eight and a half.”

Fred lifted a box off the shelf and took out a sharp-looking pair of skates.

Scott tried them on. He stood on a rug with them. They felt great. “I’ll take them,” he said.

“You’ve got a good pair there,” said Fred. “Should last you through a lot of games. Whose team are you on?”

“The Golden Bears,” said Scott.

“Fine. I know your coach. Dick Roberts. Good man. Knows his hockey. Hope you
have a good year.” He handed the wrapped-up skates and stick to Scott.

“Thanks,” said Scott.

He was set now. All he needed was the uniform, and he’d get that from Coach Roberts.

At practice that evening the coach divided the Golden Bears into two teams and had them shinny for fifteen minutes to loosen
up their skating muscles. Next was a fifteen-minute period of skating from the blue line toward the goal and then shooting.
Then followed a “start and stop” drill during which all the players skated from one end of the rink to the other and back
again. Whenever Coach Roberts blew his whistle, the men would come to a quick stop, then start again when the coach gave another
blow on the whistle. This drill was supposed to toughen and condition the skating muscles, and develop the sudden stop and
start skill.

Scott saw that some of the guys skidded three or four feet before stopping. He didn’t. He stopped almost the instant he heard
the whistle blow, with both skates turned sharply at an angle, shooting up sprays of ice.

Learning how to bodycheck came next. A lot of the guys knew how already. Scott had seen it done during shinny, but had never
really learned the technique.

“Bodychecking is another name for shoulderchecking,” explained Coach Roberts. “Keep your body bent forward when you bodycheck
or you’ll be knocked flat on your back. Keep your legs apart and step into the man you’re checking with your shoulder striking
his. Make sure your stick is kept down. If it’s up you could hurt him. And whether you hurt him or not the ref could send
you to the penalty box for high-sticking.”

He dropped the puck on the ice. “Del, go after it,” he said.

Del did. The coach leaned forward. Just as Del passed the puck with his stick, the coach rammed into Del’s left shoulder with
his right, knocking Del back.

“That’s how it’s done,” he said. “Except that you’ll get hit much harder. Or, if you’re doing the bodychecking, you will
hit
much harder. Okay, Scott, go after the puck. Del, bodycheck him.”

Scott skated toward the puck as he had seen Del do. He kept shifting his eyes from the puck to Del and back to the puck, wondering
just how hard Del would hit him. Just as he reached the puck and struck it, Del bolted into him.

The surprise blow from the right shoulder instead of the left, and the hard contact, knocked Scott back. He lost his balance
and went down. The guys burst out laughing.

Scott rose to his feet, red-faced. Del grinned.

“Cut the laugh,” said the coach. “Scott, he surprised you by hitting you with his right shoulder. That’s why you went down.
You were also looking down and up from the puck to Del, waiting for him to bodycheck you. Now, listen closely. The time to
body-check a man is when he least expects it. Just when he passes the puck. Del,” he said, tossing the puck some five feet
in front of him, “go after it. Bodycheck him, Scott.”

Del went after the puck, his stick held out in front of him. Scott shot forward like an uncoiled spring. Just as Del’s stick
blade touched the puck Scott hit Del’s shoulder with his left shoulder, and stopped Del cold.

“Good work, Scott!” cried the coach.

Scott saw Del’s surprised look and turned away, a faint smile playing on his face.

“Boys,” said the coach, “once you’re in uniform I want you to work on bodychecking all you can. It’s one of the techniques
that helps
make a good defensive team. Okay. Let’s head for the locker room. Got something for you.”

What he had for them was in boxes piled up beside a row of lockers. He tossed a box to each man, whose reaction was a loud,
happy yell before tearing open the box and yanking out it’s contents—a gold uniform with black trim and white numbers.

Scott held his up proudly, then turned it around and looked at the number on the back of the jersey: 12.

“Pretty neat,” said a voice beside him. “Think you can earn it?”

Before Scott could answer, Del Stockton walked away.

S
cott remembered every one of Buck Weaver’s customers except the new ones Buck had picked up, and Buck had given him addresses
for these. The temperature was down around thirty-five on Monday, but the sun was shining.

He made the deliveries on foot and in two trips. The first trip was to the customers at the right of his house, the second
at the left. The total delivery time was one hour and fifty-two minutes. He kept track by his wristwatch.

That night was devoted to hard drills:
skating frontwards and backwards, shooting at the goal with long and short shots, quick starts and stops, bodychecking, and,
finally, scrimmaging.

He avoided Del as much as he could. He felt guilty doing so, since it was partly because of Del that he was on the Golden
Bears’ team.

Being close to Fat McCay bothered him, too. But Fat greeted him with a soft “Hi,” and Scott returned the greeting, hoping
that no rift would develop between them. He didn’t want to risk losing Skinny’s friendship over a silly argument with Fat.

Coach Roberts played Scott at right defense, Joe Zimmer at left defense, Bernie Fredricks at right forward, Skinny McCay at
left forward, Del Stockton at center on Line Two. Paul Carson was the goalie.

They started the scrimmage against Line One with Coach Roberts acting as referee.
Line One’s center, Art Fisher, was two inches taller than Del. But when the coach dropped the puck in the face-off Del showed
that what he lacked in height he had in speed.

He grabbed the puck with a quick flash of his stick, dribbled it past the red middle line, and snapped it to his left wingman,
Skinny McCay. Skinny grabbed it and dribbled it across Line One’s blue line. Bill Thomas, Line One’s chunky right defense-man,
bodychecked Skinny and sent him spinning. He then passed to his center, Art Fisher, who dribbled the puck a bit then passed
it across the red line to a teammate skating hard down center ice.

Scott saw the play coming the moment he saw Art looking for a receiver. The teammate was Buggsy Smith, Line One’s fast left
forward. Buggsy reached for the puck as it sizzled across the ice toward him, but he never got it.

Scott had hooked it with his stick. He brought the puck around in front of him, started to dribble it forward, and crash!
Someone struck him like a ton of steel. A shower of stars splashed up in front of him like a Fourth of July celebration and
he fell. He sat there, waiting for the stars to vanish. In a few seconds they did, and he saw Bill Thomas taking off with
the puck.

“Hurry up, Scott!” shouted Coach Roberts. “Cover your position!”

He clambered to his feet and sprinted toward the net. Left defenseman Joe Zim-mer was skating hard after Bill, and so were
the two wingmen, Del Stockton and Bernie Fredricks.

Bill shuffled the tiny black disk back and forth as he got near the net, then gave it a quick wrist-snap. Goalie Paul Carson,
jerking his large stick back and forth in front of the net to match Bill’s quick movement,
wasn’t fast enough to stop it. The puck sailed past him and into the net for a goal.

“H’ray!” shouted the Line One players.

Scott started to circle back to his position at right defense and saw Skinny McCay swing around in front of him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“All right!” yelled Coach Roberts. “Line Two, out! Come in, Line Three!”

Scott glanced over at Del as the six men of Line Two, including the goalie, skated off the ice. Del’s head was down. He seemed
deep in thought.

I know what he’s thinking,
thought Scott.
He’s wishing that he and Skinny had never asked me to play with the Golden Bears.

The scrimmage lasted another twenty minutes. The boys assembled in the locker room, took off their skates, and put on their
shoes.

“We’ll scrimmage every night this week except Friday,” announced the coach. “Most of you are pretty green yet. You need a
lot of polishing up. See you tomorrow night.”

He saw them the next night, the next, and the next. On Thursday night he had the team devote the evening to scrimmaging between
the lines. Line Two, on the ice with Line Three, got the puck from face-off as Del socked the disk across to his left wing-man,
Skinny McCay.

“Watch that hanger!” yelled a Line Three man.

Scott looked and saw Bernie Fredricks standing near the red line, a few feet behind and to the left of a Line Two defenseman.

The warning came in time. Skinny shot the puck to Bernie, but a second defense-man had spun about, intercepted the pass, and
was dribbling it back down the ice.

Scott sprinted toward him. When he was
within six feet in front of the puck carrier, the man brought his stick far back and swung it in a vicious arc at the puck.

Without thinking, Scott covered his face and closed his eyes. He waited for the sound of the stick smacking the puck. Instead,
he heard the quick scraping of skates. He dropped his arm and opened his eyes.

Where the defenseman had stood was now an empty space!

Scott glanced toward the goal, just in time to see the man sprinting toward it. Snap! Like a bullet the puck shot past Paul
Carson’s legs and into the net.

A yell rang out from the members of Line Three. They jumped and hollered as if this were a real league game.

Suddenly their voices died. Scott saw the guys look at each other, say something, then look at him.

“You freaked out, Scott!” Del yelled at him. “You really freaked out!”

Scott stared at him. “What?”

“What?” echoed Del. “You’re puck shy, that’s what!”

Scott stood as if frozen.

The league games hadn’t even started yet and he was already knee-deep in trouble with Del Stockton. Now something new had
sprung up to make his playing hockey that much tougher.

He was afraid of the puck.

T
he face-off.

Fat McCay, center for Line Three, beat Del to the puck and passed it to David Wink, his left wingman. David dribbled the puck
across the blue line and then the red line, then passed it to Fat who was skating hard down center ice.

Fat hooked the puck with his stick, shoved it to his left, and began to dribble it toward the corner.

“Get it, Scott!”

Scott recognized Del’s voice.

“Sure! Get it, Scott!” echoed Fat.

Scott saw the smile on his round, red-cheeked face. Fat was small and chunky, the exact opposite of Skinny. But his skill
on the ice was deceptive. He was faster than he looked.

Scott bolted after him, his stick stretched forward to poke check the puck. Just then Fat yelled, “Look out!” and pulled back
his stick to belt the puck.

Scott covered his face and closed his eyes. He couldn’t help it. He waited for that sound—the sound that would tell him that
Fat had smacked the puck.

Instead, laughter exploded close to him, followed by the sound of skates
phut-phutting
by. He saw Fat dribbling the puck toward the goal, no one in front of him except the goal tender, Paul Carson.

Fat zigzagged the puck as he headed for
the crease, the square in front of the net, then passed the disk to a man coming from the opposite direction.

Snap! Thud! Just like that the man snapped the puck between Paul’s left skate and the corner of the goal and scored.

Again there was a thunderous cry from the men of Line Three. And again Scott saw them looking at him. Looking and smiling
as they had done before.

And then he saw Del skate up beside him, his eyes like white rings.

“You did it again, speedy!” he blurted.

Scott blushed.

“When Fat motioned to swing at the puck you covered your face and closed your eyes!” said Del. “Fat saw you do that before
when somebody else faked a swing at the puck! So he did it and look what happened! He went by you and you didn’t even know
it!”

Coach Roberts skated up to them. “What’s the trouble?”

“No trouble,” said Del, and skated away. Scott headed for his position at right defense.

“Scott,” called the coach.

Scott swung around in a quick arc and pulled up in front of Coach Roberts.

“Was he talking about you covering your face when Fat faked a swing at the puck?”

Scott nodded, so ashamed he wished he had never seen a hockey puck.

“Well, don’t get sick over it,” said the coach. “It happens to some players. You’ll just have to condition yourself to stop
doing it. Okay. Go to your position.”

Scott wasn’t able to put himself entirely into the scrimmage after that. He couldn’t erase the expression of Del’s face from
his mind, nor those terrible words:
Puck shy.

He was glad to get home that night.

The next day he hated to go to school, but he had to. He couldn’t tell Mom or Dad why he wanted to stay home. They wouldn’t
understand.

Puck shy?
they’d say.
You must be kidding. You mean that you’d stay home because your friends would laugh at you for being a little afraid of the
puck? That’s ridiculous!

Grown-ups just don’t understand those things.

Time went by quickest during classes. It was the first day that he ever enjoyed classes more than study periods.

That night he rolled and tossed in bed, thinking about the game tomorrow and about Del Stockton. The Golden Bears were playing
the Grayhawks, their first game of the season. All he could think of was skating pell-mell toward a puck, then stopping dead
cold and covering his face as an opponent
pulled back his stick to take a swipe at the little black pellet. And of Del yelling at him. Humiliating him.