stan (fivehole) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2010-04-11 21:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | hockey |
Who: Hockey narrative, tiny bit of Figure Skating at the end.
What: Hockey didn't make it into the playoffs for the first time in at least a decade.
Where: Wachovia Center, Philadelphia.
When: Early Sunday evening, during and after this.
Warnings: Language, locker room nudity, the slight bending of RL events to suit my purposes (Rangers shoot out order).
Eighty two games, only broken up by watching Canada win the World Juniors over Christmas and watching Team Canada win the Olympics on home ice. Eighty two games divided into ninety second shifts, eighty two games of thrilling goals, elated wins, crushing victories, many near misses. Split lips, concussions, pulled muscles, sprained ankles, stress fractures, broken jaws and noses... eighty two games of taking physical punishment and doling it right back out, of playing with everything he had and never giving up, never admitting defeat, never going down without a fight. Eighty two games of bleeding, sweating, occasionally crying, of swearing and instigating, of everything that was right, albeit very tiring, in Hockey's world.
Eighty two games and it all came down to one shoot out. If the Rangers could pull it off, they would go on to the post-season. Of course, they would be playing the Washington Capitals and were likely to be knocked soundly out of the first round by the Ovechkin-led team, but it would be, at the very least, four extra games of play.
Hockey didn't let the hopefully looming spectre of the Capitals take his focus away from the first Philadelphia shooter. What was doubly frustrating about being in this position was the fact that he simply could not use his immortality to affect the outcome. It wasn't moral, it wasn't right, and, in a sense, whenever Hockey took the ice in the NHL, he was human. He was a natural, of course, and all the proper skills, movements were ingrained deep within him, but he was limited by the range of human capability. And as much as he could reach into the minds of the Flyers, twist them around, bend them to his will and make them fuck up in the worst - best, for Hockey - way possible, he simply wouldn't, just as he wouldn't flood power into Lundqvist so the Rangers goalie would be quicker on his feet and win this shoot out for them like he had so many times before.
So, Hockey, bound by morality, watched as Danny Briere scored on Lundqvist. He watched as Erik Christensen failed to score on Boucher. If Philadelphia's next shooter scored and the Rangers shooter didn't, they would lose the game and their ticket to the playoffs. Hockey held his breath, standing up slowly. Lundqvist beat Mike Richards; Pierre-Alexandre Parenteau beat Boucher. Second round over and the Rangers were still alive. But then Claude Giroux scored on Lundqvist in the third round and Tortorella clapped Hockey on the shoulder with only a few terse words of almost-encouragement before sending Stan Wayne, golden boy of NYC, onto the ice in the midst of heavy booing from the Flyer fans.
Eighty two games and Hockey cradled the hunk of rubber that symbolized the fate of his team's post season hopes in the slightly curved blade of his stick. If he scored, they kept shooting. If he failed, they were out.
He failed.
An outward observer, one who wasn't a Flyer fan, would have said that he tried his very damned best and was beaten by a superb goalie but the frantic cheers of the Wachovia Center erupted around him and Hockey, having curved off into the corner, stared at the black dot marring the white ice with shock, anger, and increasing guilt. It was marring the wrong fucking ice. It hadn't crossed the goal line; Boucher had closed his five hole too quickly for Hockey to be able to slip the puck through. In a daze, the roars of the crowd and the blurs of orange jerseys crashing together in a celebratory group hug, Hockey looked toward the Ranger bench.
Erik looked disgusted with himself. Chris had his head bowed. Tortorella already looked like he was trying to figure out who to blame this failure on in order to save his job. The rest of the team were staring at back at him; some simply looked dejected, others angry, others at least somewhat sympathetic at the position Hockey now found himself in.
To the sound of boos and Carcillo's jeering, Hockey gathered himself enough to skate slowly to the bench, Hank meeting him there from the other end and looking as guilty as Hockey felt.
But one god and one goalie almost good enough to be a god weren't enough to pull a mediocre team with a lacking offence into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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"Not your fault." Hank's voice, with that slightly Swedish tinge to it, broke through the rushing sound of ice water pounding down from the shower head to stream over the top of Stan's bowed head and down his back. Stan, Hank knew, took his shower last, after the press had left the locker room and after the rest of the team had showered communally. Perhaps it was to deflect attention away from the odd habit the starting centre had of always taking freezing cold showers. But, then again, Hank reflected, there were quite a few odd things about Stan; once, when Hank had been on the phone with his twin - Joel Lundqvist of the Dallas Stars - he had told a joke to his brother in Swedish. Stan had laughed before catching himself and saying that the language had just sounded funny.
But Hank wasn't stupid, although he did stand in a net and let grown men fire hunks of rubber at him. He had watched Stan after that and noticed that Stan listened intently whenever Artem and Enver spoke to each other in Russian. Still, it was just one more thing that made Stan as weird as he was and Hank leaned against the chilly tile and regarded the star of the Rangers intently. Stan didn't answer, letting the sudden tensing of his shoulders and lower back speak instead.
Hank sighed and repeated himself. "Not your fault, man." Stan's head tilted slightly, brown eyes - the colour of a hockey stick before paint, Hank thought to himself - focusing on the goalie with a strong, piercing gaze that Hank sometimes thought could see down into the depths of his soul.
The moment broke. Stan shrugged. "Not yours either." Hank gave his teammate a self-deprecating little smirk as he dropped the towel from around his waist and turned on one of the showers, two heads between him and Stan (the respectable spatial distance for two heterosexual men) and felt a few cold droplets of Stan's water break through the hot stream of his own shower.
Hank took a chance. His words came out in quick, native Swedish. "Does it help, the cold water?" He watched as Stan tensed up again, as the centre turned to look at him.
Hockey regarded the mortal carefully. Sometimes, in teasing Hank, he forgot that Hank was Henrik Lundqvist. The man had won an Olympic gold medal and had five thirty-win seasons since his rookie year, something that no NHL goalie had ever achieved. He wasn't a Great; he wasn't Dryden, Roy, or Brodeur, and, as such, didn't deserve the truth, but as Hank held his gaze, Hockey saw something in those intent, steady eyes, saw something behind the confusion and the courage; he saw understanding.
Hockey nodded to himself and turned back under the spray. "A little bit." His Swedish sounded as native as Hank's did and the goalie smiled softly as his suspicions were confirmed. Exactly what he suspected, however, he wasn't quite sure.
Hank took another chance. "You've got all the time in the world, though, right?"
Hockey laughed. Stan replied. "See you on the golf course this summer, Hank."
Stealing Hank's abandoned towel to dry his hair as he headed out from the shower, Hockey left Hank blinking at the ambiguous nature of Stan's response and, really, the ambiguity of Stan himself.
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Hockey had lingered; Hank continued to watch him closely from across the locker room, Chris and Marián had both had tried to uplift their teammate but Hockey had shrugged them off, Sean and Ryan came down from where they had watched the game, both injured and frustrated at not being able to affect the outcome, Vaclav and Michal had left, trying to lift each other's spirits by telling dirty jokes in Czech, Eric and Michael had left together with their heads bowed and even Brandon and Olli looked down. Finally, Hockey was alone. His body ached as eighty two games caught up with him, as over a hundred years of playing in professionally caught up with him. Eventually, however, when he was sure the reporters had left, he slipped out of the dressing room, wearing one of his game day suits and clutching the stick that had helped him cost his team the playoffs tightly in one hand.
He kept them all, sticks from games like these, whether they had helped or hindered him.
Keeping an almost too tight grip on the offending stick, Hockey twisted his way through the hallways of the belly of Wachovia Center. He certainly didn't have the affinity with this temple that he had with the Garden, but he knew enough to know the twists and turns that had most mortals confused and, eventually, he found what he was looking for.
Or, rather, who he was looking for.
The sight of Figure Skating, in female form as she always was when she came to his games, had him smiling just slightly before he remembered that she had been one of the thousands of witnesses to his failure. Hockey couldn't meet her eyes, just mumbled something disparaging about his performance that night and felt only slightly comforted as she fell into step beside him, seeming to know he didn't want to talk and Hockey was hugely grateful for the silence. The two gods slowly made their way out of the winding hallways of the Wachovia Center, Hockey replaying that failed attempt on goal over and over again in his mind as they grew closer to the outside world.
But he didn't want to leave, once they had arrived at one of the many hidden exits. Leaving would mean leaving the 2009-2010 season behind him. Leaving would mean admitting defeat.
Figure Skating, however, his beautiful, caring older sister, reached out to grasp his hand lightly. His large, rough, bruised hand dwarfed her delicate, dainty one, but he twined their fingers together nonetheless.
It was only when she squeezed comfortingly that Hockey was able to push open the door, admit to himself that he had failed, and step out into the evening air.
There was always next year. After all, he had all the time in the world.