Page 24 of Home Ice Advantage

Instead, he said, “I understand,” and tried with all of his might to telekinetically punch Sullivan in the face.

In the intermission between the first and second, Sullivan did what he did best, which was wait ten minutes or so to give the guys time, and then go to stand in the middle of the dressing room and give a speech. He talked passionately about the lapsed defensive coverage, the way that they needed to playon topof the opposition, how you couldn’t give them an inch or they’d take a mile. It was hard to look away from him when he got like that, stalking around the room like some kind of big cat, doing half of the talking with his hands. It was no wonder the team would run through a wall for him.

“We just need to watch our sticks,” Sullivan concluded. “Stay out of the box. Come on, boys. You’ve got it in you, we just need to execute.”

Eric had never been one for speeches, either as a player or a coach. The few times he’d had to talk to the room during intermissions, he’d mostly focused on the video screen and talking strategy. It wasn’t that he was envious of Sullivan’s ability to just step in front of a group of people and starttalking, like every game was St. Crispin’s Day. If he ever wanted to become a head coach, he’d probably have to learn how to do it, even if it seemed ridiculous.

People didn’t respond to him the way they responded to Sullivan. That was a personality failing, maybe.

In the tunnel, as the team psyched themselves up to go back on the ice, Eric went up to Cook and Williams and Sinclair, all of whom were leaning against the wall and waiting. Cook bounced up and down on his skates, a wiggly little dance, and he looked up curiously when Eric approached.

“Hey, Coach?” Cook said, but waited for Eric to go on before following up on the question.

“Boys,” Eric said. “Specifically, when the Bears come up on the rush, you gotta cut to the middle immediately. That’s where the attack’s going to be focused. There’ll be the F3 high, but the D2 is the one you’re going to really need to cut off to disrupt things.”

Williams turned that serious gaze on him, his eyebrows raised a little bit. It was a curious, measuring look, open to what Eric was saying, but wary anyway. “That’s not what Coach Sully said.”

“Look,” Eric said, frustrated, three seconds away from grabbing his hair and yanking fistfuls of it out right then and there. “I want to win. I think you want to win, too. Sullivan’s always talking about reads and making your own decisions, so don’t you think you can make one goddamn decision if I’mright?”

Cook and Williams exchanged a glance, like they weren’t particularly sure about this, and Sinclair exhaled a long, slow breath. “I don’t wanna get in the middle of whatever—is going on here,” he said slowly. “But if it’s the right play...it’s the right play.”

Whether it was Sullivan’s locker room speech, Eric’s tactical adjustment or Davey the goalie turning on another gear and making a few key desperation saves, the team managed to slowly fight their way back into the game. Williams somehow sauced a ridiculous pass through traffic to Cook for an insanely bad-angled one-timer that nevertheless managed to glance off the goalie’s shoulder and into the back of the net. With screams of joy, the team converged on him, and just like that, they were back in it.

Eric could feel Sullivan’s eyes boring a hole in the back of his head from his vantage point on the bench, but he did his best not to look. Sullivan wasn’t stupid: he could see what the first line was doing, and he could see that it wasn’t what he had asked them to do. He was furious, that much was clear, his sturdy little body practically trembling with suppressed frustration.

Eric had no idea what the fuck his problem was, because they were fighting back into the game, weren’t they? And it was on the back of the adjustment. Sinclair had broken up three rushes since they’d made it, covering the D2.

By the time Afanasyev, who was practically a dinosaur in hockey years and slow as shit, managed to get a slapshot from the point on the power play that somehow lasered right through, everyone crowding the net to tie it up, Sullivan looked like a bomb about to go off. Eric had never seen him like this coaching before, only as a player. It was the kind of look that meant that someone was going to get a very embarrassing shorthanded goal scored on them.

In this intermission, Sullivan didn’t come into the room at all, he just paced in the hallway while Petey and Eric went over some video with the guys who needed it as the team changed and prepped for the third. It only got worse from there.

In the first thirty seconds of the period, the Black Bears scored in the middle of a nasty scrum in front of Davey’s crease. It was one of those situations where the call could have gone either way, probably. Eric wouldn’t have challenged: not when they were this close and risked opening up the lead even further. Sullivan, on the other hand, was practically apoplectic, signaling to the ref.

“Don’t do it,” Eric said, urgently.

“What do you mean, don’t do it? Number 67 was fucking laying on Davey’s leg. He couldn’t get across to cover. I’m making a challenge.”

“The review room callsnevergo in our favor. You want it to be a two-goal lead instead of a one-goal lead you could easily catch up to? Our penalty kill’s been garbage. There’s no way it wouldn’t end up in the back of the net.”

“Look at Davey, Aronson. Look at his face. We have to let him know that when this shit happens, we’ll back him up.”

“I don’t think—”

“I didn’taskyou what you thought,” Sullivan said, in a voice entirely unlike anything that Eric had ever heard out of his mouth before. It was the kind of voice that made Eric stand a little straighter. The kind of voice that made him feel the prickly about-to-fight feeling he used to love and dread, all at the same time. The feeling that was so close to something else.

Even after the goal was called back, he couldn’t relax. And when Williams scored what turned out to be the game-winning goal on an absolutely beautiful rocket from the right circle and then Davey shut the door for the rest of the game, Sullivan stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Jubilant at pulling off a gutsy win, the guys cellied on the ice, hugging it out and then skating forward to give Davey his taps and hugs. The baby goalie accepted them all, beaming, his sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, his cheeks red.

Sullivan was already off the bench, heading back to the locker room, and Petey glanced sideways at Eric with his eyebrows raised, as if to sayyou done fucked up.Which was fucking ridiculous:they had won the game.Eric headed back into the locker room himself, feeling absolutely murderous. If Sullivan was always going on about reads, then he should have been fucking happy that his concepts had worked. But that didn’t seem to be the way it would go.

During the presser afterward, Eric went out to watch, which he usually didn’t do. He stood in the back of the room, his arms crossed over his chest, as Sullivan answered questions from the beats.

Usually Sullivan was upbeat and even cheerful during the availabilities, cracking jokes and dispensing his little gems of wisdom to an admiring crowd, all of his charisma on display as the reporters ate out of his hand. Today he was curt and visibly pissed off, particularly when Kayla Lawrence, one of the writers from theGlobe, asked about the midgame tactical adjustment. Eric couldn’t even really make out the answer over the roar of frustration in his own ears, like an ocean wave.

He didn’t speak to Sullivan after the presser. He didn’t speak to Sullivan during the normal postgame routines, when the guys were showering and doing their cool-down workouts and heading into the kitchen to find out what meals the nutritionists and in-house chefs had provided for them. Eric was going to have to speak to him eventually. This wasn’t the kind of shit he could let go. Unbidden, his mother’s voice in his ear:You are so stubborn, my darling.

He would have to say something. He just had to wait to get Sullivan alone.

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