glove side.” He gave Vlad a wink and skated back to the red line to taunt the other team for a bit.
Vlad took a calming breath and squared himself in the net. Warm ups were coming to a close as he banged his stick side-to-side to feel where the posts were. He got in a half-bent stance and urged his teammates to give him all they had. They fired shots at him left and right. Brandon tried to sneak another one in on his glove side, directly above his left shoulder, but even though he had already started going down into the butterfly, at the last possible second, he committed a little left-handed larceny and stole the puck out of mid-air. Vlad gave him a shit-eating grin. “Ha! Fuck you, Marcoux! I still got it.”
Brandon gave him a hearty laugh and a congratulatory slap of his stick on Vlad’s pads. “Good man, take that attitude into the game, and they’re toast!”
Vlad did indeed take that attitude into the game. At the end of the third period, the score was tied at one a piece with a minute left to go on the clock. The buzzer went off with the game still tied. No one scored in the five minute overtime either, so they were going to a shootout. It was one-on-one time—shooter versus goalie. Vlad loved shootouts. Shootouts were the reason he had one of the best poke check records in the league, but he had to remember that the shooters coming at him knew that.
The Sharks started with their best shooter. Johansson was a winger with a wicked shot. Vlad would not be going for a poke check on him. He couldn’t go too far out of the net with that guy. He also knew that Johansson usually shot high, and he focused on his body language. Vlad waited to see if he dropped his shoulder, usually indicating a high shot. As he got closer, there was no shoulder drop. Shit, what’s he doing? Just as Vlad slammed his knees together to go down and protect his five-hole, he saw the shoulder drop. Fucker! He scrambled quickly to his feet, but missed the puck as it sailed in high over his right shoulder.
The Scorpions’ first shooter was their captain. Keith didn’t waste any time with fancy skating. Grabbing the puck from the red center line, he charged ahead and went head on with Price to try and sneak the puck in low just past his right pad. It looked like a perfect shot until the puck hit his pad and bounced out in front of him, never crossing the goal line. Keith skated back to the bench, banging his stick in frustration as he left the ice.
The next shooter was the Sharks’ captain, Tommy Xavier. Vlad hadn’t faced him before in a shootout and wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Xavier took his time and skated the puck back and forth before taking his shot. He went high and the puck, once again, sailed in over Vlad’s right shoulder. Goddammit!
Next up was Spicer, a fairly new guy to the Scorpions with mad puck handling skills. When he tried to finesse his puck into Price’s net, and Price blocked the shot, things really got desperate.
Since Vlad had let the first two pucks in and the Sharks had denied the Scorpions’ first two shots, the next puck had to go in. Marcoux was up for the Scorpions. If he missed, it was over. His shot went high, hitting the post, and that was that. The Sharks had won in a shootout.
The team was understandably subdued as the players filed back into the locker room. Vlad pushed off his net to follow them and went down on the ice. He quickly looked around and got back up, but it wasn’t easy. His hip was becoming more of a problem. He didn’t want the team to suffer for any of his inadequacies, but he wasn’t ready to tell the team doctor about what he’d found out. He wasn’t even supposed to have been seen by any other doctors, so he was hoping to never have to say anything.
Back in the locker room, Coach DeLeon was addressing the team. “You guys showed a great effort out there. I’m not going to point out the things that went wrong. It was the first game, and you know what went