Page 65 of The Bro-code

I square my shoulders, ready for this rendezvous, confident that Jagger has my back but… he fucking doesn’t.

As we fight USC for possession of the puck, all we can hear is our harsh breaths and the clashing of our sticks.

Jagger wins the struggle with the USC captain and passes the puck forward to Ryker, who in the meantime has gotten up and is coming closer.

What happens next is baffling.

I’ve been playing on Jagger’s same line since we were freshmen and I’ve practically never seen him overshooting.

He’s so precise in his stick handling and puck control that he’s almost surgical.

Just not today.

His pass is way too long and rather than reaching Ryker, it turns into an assist for USC.

We can only watch as one of the USC offensive linemen, who had skated here to support the breakaway, receives the puck and shoots it past Tucker with one hell of a slapshot.

It’s only downhill from that moment.

Jagger is completely out of sync with the rest of the team, putting Ryker offside more than once when he manages to make it forward to support the offensive line.

When another one of his passes gets intercepted, he reacts by chasing the USC left winger. I watch powerless as he pulls on the other guy’s jersey, shoving him against the boards to remedy the fact that he was too slow to take the puck fair and square.

He ends up doing time in the penalty box and I hate to say it, but we almost do better without his sloppy performance. Almost being the keyword here.

Being down one man doesn’t do us any favors and USC scores again. We’re barely at the end of the first period and we’re already down two goals.

The rest of the game doesn’t go any better. To be fair, Jagger isn’t the only player who offered an embarrassing performance, if you think that we’re the defending champions.

I’m as ineffective as a Bandaid on a cut that would require several stitches. Ryker is a world away from the most promising NHL rookie of next season. He slayed it at training camp, impressing the Heroes coaching team, but the man who stepped on the ice is uncoordinated and always offside.

To the point that Coach changes lines often, giving Corey some ice time and even Topher. But no matter who steps on the ice, our team seems cursed. Even when we make decent plays, our shots are too long or get intercepted by USC almost out of nowhere.

By the second half of the third period, we’re going through the motions wishing for the time to run out and put us out of our misery.

“That was the most embarrassing performance I’ve ever seen from any hockey team worthy of this name. My daughter’s peewee hockey team would have wiped the ice with you. Do we need to watch the second game?”

I hang my head. “No, sir. I’ve been watching both tapes non stop and I don’t understand what’s wrong with us. You know I’m not looking for excuses when I say that we look like a different team during training. I just don’t know what happens the second we step on official ice.”

Coach Harrison nods after a beat of silence. “You’re right. That’s exactly what doesn’t make sense. If I saw you guys slacking or not giving one hundred percent during training, I would make sure to whip you right back into shape. But that’s not the case. So I don’t think bag skating or speed drills or any other form of… punishment would be appropriate. I just have no clue what changes from training to game night and I need your help to figure it out. One thing is certain, if we continue on this path, we’ll be the joke of the entire league.”

Coach is right and as I drive back to the Gamma house, my mind is reeling about what’s causing this shocking performance. I mean, we’ve lost three key players when Luca, Blaze and Cash left us to go play pro hockey with the Bridgeport Warriors. But that fact alone doesn’t explain how badly we’ve been playing. Corey and the other non starters were much greener last year and they held their own when Coach changed lines to give us a little breather here and there.

I’ve already alerted our team’s group chat that there’s a mandatory team meeting in one hour.

We need to get to the bottom of this situation and like Coach Harrison loves to say, we win as a team and we lose as a team.

JAGGER

My phone beeps with an alert from the team’s group chat. I groan when I see that there’s a team meeting in one hour.

Between two practices a day, classes and some extra conditioning on my own time, every spare moment is precious to study.

I sigh as I close my laptop, well aware that I’m the biggest hypocrite on campus.

To the innocent bystander, I look like the epitome of the studious college student, with my laptop open and several text books open in my tablet.

In reality, I’ve been staring at the same screen for the best part of the afternoon, my mind otherwise occupied.

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