Five minutes before game time, two teams were engaged in drastically different pregame activities. The Grenades warmed up their goaltender with shots and skaters stretched to prepare for the Sunday evening skate. Opposite them was the Red Army, or what loosely resembled them. Only five players were there. Two of them hastily strapped goalie pads onto defenseman Tony Horton while the others skated idly passing the only puck that they had brought. Anyone watching would have thought this game was over before it began. Anyone watching... was in for the ride of their life.
The puck was dropped and the bench remained empty. It would stay that way all game. No help was coming. Yet somehow, with each attack the Grenades threw at Mother Russia, she was able to counter. The first goal of the game didn't come until over five minutes into the game. The Grenades slipped one past Tony. Moments later, on a beautiful drop pass from Pat, Mark was able to rip a wrist shot off the post and in. The game was tied, somehow. The Grenades pierced Tony one more time on his only soft goal of the game, and after the first period it was 2-1 Grenades. A score that left both teams scratching their heads.
"That first period was when we started to believe that maybe it wouldn't be a blowout." Forward Pat King said. "We were all thinking this would be a 12-1, 13-2 game. But Tony kept us in it and we started to play well together. We out-chanced them that first period. We just didn't know how much gas we'd have left in the tank for the second period."
Turns out there was lots of gas left in the tank. A few minutes into the period, after a kick save on a shot from Mark, Pat corralled the rebound and fired a shot top shelf. The score was 2-2. Moments later, Mark was fed a pass from Jerrod and flew down the wing behind the defense. His initial shot was saved, but Mark was able to fetch his own rebound and slip one short side on the goalie. The Red Army was ahead 3-2 in the second period, and the seed of doubt had been planted in the Grenades head. "That goal... was... huge." An exhausted Mark told reporters afterwards. "It really... motivated... hold on hold on (Mark began vomitting) Oh god... can you just interview me later?" The Grenades would knot the score at three a few minutes later. Yet, somehow, Red Army regained the lead on another Hendricks breakaway. After embarrassing and undressing two defenders, Mark waited out the goaltender and tucked it upstairs right where Mommy hides the baby Tylenol. Moments later the horn blared and the period ended. After 30 minutes of play, Mother Russia was beating the Grenades and hell was beginning to freeze over.
The third began all too soon, and the skating became harder. All of a sudden there wasn't enough oxygen in the world to fill up the deflated lungs of the Red Army, and a large part of rare power play was spent not moving, allowing the Grenades to hold the puck. With about ten minutes remaining, the Grenades fired a slapshot past Tony and tied the score at four. Less than a minute later, on a power play, the Grenades scored again. The dam was broken, this was surely the beginning of the unraveling of an incredible effort. There was no conceivable way that Mother Russia had one more trick up her sleeve.
She did.
Mark took a feed from Pat along the boards and unleashed a low shot that eluded the screened goalie, and with under five minutes to play, the game was tied. That is right. Forty minutes into a forty five minute game, with one team having over two full lines and the other just one and a rookie goaltender, the game was tied. It took the last five minutes of the game for the Grenades to put Mother Russia away. It wasn't because they were better, it wasn't because they were faster, it was because put simply, the soviets couldn't go any more. The Grenades potted two more goals, and the final buzzer rang. It was a 7-5 loss.
The locker room afterwards was quiet. It wasn't the usual chit chat about what went right or what went wrong. It was silent, a stunned, sort of disbelief silence. What had just transpired, the effort just put forth, was one that makes it onto the pages of Disney Scripts. No one was disappointed, no one was angry. Everyone was fatigued and exhausted, but there was pride- well deserved pride. Some of the soviets limped to their cars, and had aches in the muscles as they climbed the stairs to their house, but all of them rested well knowing that they played, quite frankly, awesome. If the game consisted of two twenty minute halves, they would have won. If they had one sub, just one sub, Mother Russia could have won... and it wouldn't have been close.
No comments:
Post a Comment