Panic in Pittsburgh (3 page)

“We think the Stanley Cup is here!” Sam practically shouted.

“What?” Travis said.

“
WHERE
?
” Nish roared.

“Data says that’s the guy who carries the cup,” Dmitri said, pointing over toward the front desk, where there was a short lineup to register.

Travis thought he recognized one man waiting in line. He had seen him in commercials that had run all through the last Stanley Cup playoffs. Travis was almost certain he was the guy who put on white gloves and carried the trophy out onto the ice for the presentation. This was the Stanley Cup everyone recognized, but Travis, like the rest of the Owls, knew it wasn’t the original – that historic trophy was on permanent display in the Hockey Hall of Fame. They knew this because they had been there when thieves tried to steal it. The Stanley Cup carried by the man in the white gloves was a replica, with silver rings added below it to hold the names of the players on the teams that won the championship. It was this Stanley Cup that the players hoisted when they won, and this Stanley Cup that the winning players and coaches were allowed to take to their hometowns for a single day during the summer. Travis had often seen photographs of those visits, and usually the guy standing in line at the hotel reception desk was there, too.

Travis saw Data wheeling in the Owls’ direction. He was always amazed at how quickly Data
could move his chair. There had been a time after the accident when Data had needed help getting anywhere in it, but no longer. Data was as mobile as anyone on the team and still very much a Screech Owl, even if he no longer played.

Data spun his chair to a sharp stop in front of Travis. He seemed very excited.

“I found it,” Data said.

“Found what?” Travis asked.

“Come with me – but be quiet.”

The small group of Owls, led by Data in his wheelchair, slipped quietly across the lobby to a luggage cart near the elevators. Across the top of the velvet-covered cart was a brass bar, and from the bar hung a plastic suit bag. Below it was a suitcase, and to one side was a large dark-blue box with silver handles, metal corners, and a heavy lock. Stamped on the box was “
PROPERTY OF HOCKEY HALL OF FAME
” complete with an address and telephone number.

Beside the luggage cart stood a bellhop.

Fahd couldn’t resist. “Is that the Stanley Cup?” he asked the bellhop.

“No idea, young man,” the bellhop said. “No idea at all.”

The Owls turned their attention back to the front desk. The man they thought they recognized had his room key now and was walking toward the elevators. The bellhop was opening the elevator doors and pushing the cart in.

“Is that the cup?” Nish asked.

“What cup?” the man replied with a big smile.

“The Stanley Cup,” Sam said in a voice that almost seemed slightly impatient.

“I don’t know,” said the man, still smiling. “What do you think?”

“We think it’s the cup,” said Travis.

“Ever seen it before?” the man said.

“We saw it when we went to the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Sam said.

“I’m the guy who saved the original cup – the one they keep at the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Nish shouted. “Wayne Nishikawa. N-I-S-H-I-K-A-W-A. I was in the papers!”

The man looked carefully at him, puzzled. “Then what’s the big
I
for?” he asked, pointing at
Nish’s superhero T-shirt. “
Wayne
doesn’t begin with an
I –
nor does ‘Nishikawa.’ Is it the name of your team?”

“
I’m the Iceman!
” a red-faced Nish practically screamed.

“Our team is the Screech Owls,” Travis told the man, who seemed oddly amused by Nish’s ridiculous behavior.

“You must be in the Winter Classic, then,” the man said as he stepped into the elevator behind the scowling bellhop.

“We are!” shouted Sam and Sarah together.

“Well, then,” the man said. “Good luck.”

“
Is that the Stanley Cup?
” Fahd shouted.

“Maybe,” the man said with a wink. “Maybe it will show up at Heinz Field for the final. And just maybe the winners will have their pictures taken with it. But I’m not saying the Stanley Cup is or isn’t in this box.”

The Owls screamed in approval as the doors shut and the man, the bellhop, and the mysterious blue box were gone.

“Did we just learn that the winners are going
to get to raise the Stanley Cup?” Dmitri asked. “Just like in the
NHL
?”

“I believe so,” said Sarah.

“
I saved the cup!
” Nish was shouting, his face about to burst with frustration.

No one paid him the slightest attention.

The Owls took the hotel shuttle across the closest yellow bridge, wound through downtown, and then took another bridge across to where the baseball park and the football stadium stood side by side at the large Y where the rivers met.

Muck had the shuttle driver stop in front of the baseball park and told the Owls to get out and gather on the sidewalk.

“We’re a hockey team!” Nish protested. “Not a baseball team.”

“Over this way,” Muck said, ignoring the whining defenseman.

The coach led the way to a large bronze statue of a baseball player. It looked like he had just hit a home run, his left hand about to drop his bat to the ground, his legs already turned toward first base, his eyes watching an imaginary baseball sail through the sky toward the stands.

“This is Roberto Clemente,” Muck said.

“Never heard of him,” Nish muttered into his own shoulder. Muck still caught what he said.

“Well, you should,” the coach said. “Fifteen times an all-star when he played for the Pirates. League
MVP
.
MVP
of the ’71 World Series.”

“Wow!” said Fahd.

“Impressive,” added Data.

“But that’s not why we’re here,” Muck continued. “
MVPS
in sport are a dime a dozen. It’s
MVPS
in
life
that matter.”

“Meaning … ?” Sarah asked.

“Roberto Clemente died trying to help people,” Muck said. “He used his baseball fame and money to help his fellow Puerto Ricans, and
Latin Americans everywhere. He gave baseball equipment to kids too poor to buy gloves and bats and balls. He gave food to those who had none.”

“How did he die?” Fahd asked.

“There was an earthquake in Nicaragua,” Muck continued. “People were dying and desperately in need of help. Clemente chartered a plane and filled it with food and clothing, but it crashed into the sea right after takeoff. His body was never found. But his memory has never been forgotten, because he always put others ahead of himself. I want you to remember that. Now, back on the bus.”

In stone silence, the Owls all walked back to the waiting vehicle. No one said a word. Nish, his face beet red and seemingly about to burst, was stopped from saying something stupid by a sharp jab in the gut from Sam’s elbow.

As Travis took his seat for the remainder of the short ride to the frozen football stadium, he could not help but think of the man staring after the imaginary baseball. Roberto Clemente had everything anyone could ever dream of – fame, riches, the adoration of sports fans – and yet helping
people he had never met from another country had been more important to him than all of that.

Travis vowed if he ever became a superstar in hockey – a Stanley Cup winner, a playoff
MVP
– he would never forget the lesson of Roberto Clemente.

Mr. D broke the silence as the shuttle came to a stop outside Heinz Field. “Let’s go, Owls. We got us a game to win!”

“Sixty-five thousand and fifty,” Data said, after Dmitri skated over and asked how many seats there were. “Six … five … zero … five … zero!”

Data sounded a little impatient, almost as if he couldn’t believe Dmitri had forgotten. But Travis understood why Dmitri had asked: he hadn’t forgotten at all, he just wanted to hear it out loud and let it sink in.
Sixty-five thousand and fifty…

The Owls had played in front of big crowds before – at the Quebec International, at Nagano’s
Big Hat arena, at the Olympic ice surface in Salt Lake City, at the world’s biggest minor hockey tournament in Ottawa – but you could take all those impressive crowds together and sit them in Heinz Field and you would still have seats left over. Travis could not imagine so many people. He wondered how many would come to see the final. For the early rounds, the crowds would be small, and they’d seem even smaller in such a cavernous arena.

The Owls were already on the ice, Travis hurrying to pass Jeremy as soon as the little goaltender skated out ahead of him. Travis raced around, tapping the back of the net with his stick as he passed and digging in deep as he churned through the far corner. He could hear his skates roaring on the outdoor ice. He loved that sound. Different than indoors, always louder, almost as though the outdoor ice had a thin layer of brittle ice above an air pocket, where sound echoed as if in a tunnel. It was hard to describe. It was different, it was magnificent, it was magical.

Travis watched as the rest of his teammates spilled out of the doorway, each with his or her own special move as they hit the ice. Dmitri with
his little stutter step; Sarah with her deep bow, touching one glove to the ice and then to her heart; Lars Johanssen looking up as if someone might be watching from the rafters, or in this case the clouds; and Nish doing his silly spinnerama on his second stride out, twirling around completely as if he were in a ballet instead of a game of hockey. Only this time there was something different about Nish. Something only his teammates knew. Beneath the red Screech Owls jersey, beneath the big
A
on his chest for Assistant Captain and the number 44 on his back with the name “
NISHIKAWA
,” Nish was wearing his new superhero shirt.

The Iceman had come to play.

The Owls already had pucks in motion when the Pittsburgh River Rats took to the ice to the cheers and whistles of the crowd. The River Rats even had a high school marching band taking up three rows of seats behind their goal, and the band was louder than the fans.

Travis was ready. He clipped the crossbar on his very first shot in warm-up. Sarah was ready.
Travis had watched her, stick over her knees, bent over in the corner. He knew what she was doing: “envisioning” her first shift, imagining every single thing that would happen before it happened. Dmitri was ready. Travis slammed his stick down in salute as Dmitri went in, faked a shot, switched to his backhand, and roofed the puck over Jeremy’s shoulder. Dmitri was always ready.

The referee blew his whistle for the starting lineups to come to center ice for the face-off. Travis felt a tingle go through his entire body as he took his position opposite the River Rats’ big right-winger. The player was supposedly fast and tough, and Muck had said Travis would have to pay particular attention to him if the Owls were to keep him off the scoreboard. Travis liked an assignment like this just as much as scoring a goal or setting one up for Sarah or Dmitri.

Sarah looked at him, then at Dmitri, then back at Travis. He knew the signal. She would use a backhand swipe to try and send the puck ahead and to her left, onto Travis’s wing. If he could beat the big winger, he’d have the puck heading into the River Rats’ end.

The referee checked both goal lights. At each end of the temporary rink, the lights flashed back to show that the goal judge was in position and ready. The referee then slammed down the puck and jumped deftly back, turning on one skate as Sarah clipped the puck ahead on her backhand. The play had worked perfectly.

Travis was under the big winger’s arm and away faster than the winger could turn.

He lost the puck temporarily but gathered it in his skates and kicked it ahead to his stick blade. The River Rats’ right defenseman was trying to squeeze him off as he came across the blue line.

Travis and Sarah had a set play for this moment, too. As Travis bled the defender off toward the boards, he used his backhand to drive the puck into the boards just behind him. It made a different sound outside than if they had been playing indoors, more like a rifle shot than a muffled crack. The puck bounced off perfectly, and Sarah, coming up hard behind him, picked it off just as she crossed the line.

She had a clear channel to the net. She came down two-on-one with Dmitri and faked a saucer
pass to her linemate, which caught the Rats’ other defenseman off guard. He fell, thinking to block the quick pass, but Sarah kept on, and in an instant, there was no one but the goalie between her and the net. One quick fake to go to her backhand and she swept around the goalie and neatly slipped the puck into the net just under the falling goalie’s right arm.

Screech Owls 1, River Rats 0.

“Nice drop,” Sarah said, when the line returned to the Owls’ bench.

“I thought you were going to pass to Dmitri,” Travis said.

“So did I,” Sarah smiled. “I meant to – so I had to score.”

The two friends high-fived each other on the bench, Travis just catching Muck’s disapproving eye as their gloves met. The Owls’ coach didn’t want to see any hotdogging, and certainly not from his captain.

Next shift, the face-off was in the Owls’ end. Nish was on defense with Lars. Sarah got thrown out of the face-off circle for trying to swipe at the puck even before it dropped. Travis came in to take
the draw. He won it cleanly back to Nish, who took the puck behind the Owls’ net. Nish surveyed both sides, deciding on his best chance. For a flickering moment, Travis thought he could see Nish scanning the distant crowds in Heinz Field, as if imagining what he must look like as the center of attention, his favorite spot. But it was only for the slightest moment. Nish skated out the left side, looking for a play.

It was a perfect opportunity for the “crisscross” play Travis and Sarah had been working on in practice. It would also put Travis back on his wing and return Sarah to center. Travis knew Sarah would see him start it and follow suit. Just as he passed over the Owls’ blue line, he cut hard in the opposite direction to the way everyone would be expecting him to go. He looked back, sure Nish would now try and hit him with the pass.