#my brother said what if Canucks lose when we go see

[sweetestcaptainhughes]

I’m just gonna leave this here…

[spine-buster]

peaceful easy feeling ft. b.boeser | one

A/N: Here’s the beginning of my new mini-series!  I hope you all enjoy it.  It will definitely be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, so be prepared!  There will be five parts!

SUPPORT MY WRITING HERE: https://ko-fi.com/spine_buster

CONTENT WARNING: parents with disease/sickness (Parkinson’s); swearing; sex; alcohol use; lots of emotions.

                                                                   *     *     *     *     *

Brock Boeser felt like he was at some sort of Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, with everybody around the circle introducing themselves and their similar predicaments.  The group was in a big meeting room at the local community centre, and when he walked in, he saw a group of dads playing basketball in the gym.  He sort of wanted to join them instead of being here, in this room, with all these people that he didn’t know talking about what they were going to talk about, but he’d done this back in Minnesota, at his mother’s behest with his siblings, and he was going to do it here, too, in Vancouver, to make her happy and ease her mind and to make sure that he was easing his own mind.  

“Um, hello everyone.  My name is Brock Boeser.  I’m from Minnesota, but I’m living in Vancouver.  And um, I’m here with you all because my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.”

“Hello Brock,” everyone smiled at him, and he smiled and nodded back.

“So it was your dad that was diagnosed,” the leader, a kind, older woman named Esther who had greeted him at the door and stuck with him until everybody sat down, egged on a conversation.  He knew she was doing it because he was new; everybody in this room probably already knew each other.  A part of him actually wondered if anybody knew who he was.  “When?”

“Um, he—he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2010,” Brock revealed, stuttering it out.  He knew he’d have to be open at these things – open so people could empathize with him, open so he could empathize with others – but it was still tough for him to do so.  “But he—it’s—it’s not just Parkinson’s.  Two years after he was diagnosed, he was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury.  In 2017, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He beat it but then in June it returned to his liver and chest.  In July, he had a heart attack and his heart stopped beating for 15 minutes.  I was with him and—I—it’s—it’s a lot, as you can imagine,” he tried not to start crying right then and there.  Imagine that – first meeting with a Parkinson’s Society of BC support group and he’d bawl like a baby.

“Goodness me, Brock,” Esther said.  “He has support at home?”

“Um, well, money isn’t an issue now, but when I was growing up my mom worked three jobs to make sure we were all taken care of,” he revealed.  “I’d pitch in too wherever I could, obviously.”

“But it’s been tough for a number of years.”

Brock paused.  It had been tough for a number of years.  It had been really tough for a number of years.  He nodded his head.  “Yes ma’am.  I try to take it day by day.”

Esther nodded as well.  “I don’t know if you pray, Brock, but I know a couple of members around the circle do, and, well – you’ll be kept in all our prayers.”

Brock saw a few people nod their head.  Another older woman, probably his mom’s age, clutching a rosary; a Sikh man dressed in a casual suit; a younger woman, probably in her thirties, with short blonde hair.  He appreciated the sentiment.  He knew that people took prayer very seriously – that people suffering took prayer very seriously.  It was, realistically, one of the kindest things somebody could ever say to you: “I’m praying for you.”  “Thank you very much,” he said, nodding his head once.

***

There was an arrangement of cookies at the end of the meeting.  Even after the 90 minutes of everybody talking about their experiences and emotions, they apparently liked to stick around afterwards as well just to mingle.  It didn’t all have to be doom and gloom, he thought.  It didn’t all have to be about Parkinson’s or about sick people or losing your loved ones all the time.  Maybe some people just wanted to talk about the news.  Maybe some people just wanted to talk about sports.  The weather.  Anything.  Anything to make a connection with someone beyond something so tragic.  

After stuffing an entire Fudge-O cookie into his mouth, he looked up to see a young woman staring at him, holding her trenchcoat in her arms.  She was smiling to let him know she was friendly.  He was embarrassed because he knew she just saw him stuff an entire Fudge-O into his mouth.  “Hi,” he said, his mouth still full of cookie, the sound of his voice reflecting that fact.

“You’re Brock Boeser, right?” she asked sweetly.  “You play for the Vancouver Canucks?”

“Yeah,” Brock couldn’t help but smile.  He swallowed the rest of the cookie even though he didn’t really finish chewing it.  “That’s me.  Are you a fan?”

“My step-brothers are more so than I am,” she said.  “But I’m a fan of the team, yeah.  I’m Grace Gillespie,” she extended her hand to shake his.  “God, they’re not gonna believe me when I say I met you.  They’re gonna freak.”

Brock couldn’t help but chuckle slightly.  “Do you—I mean, do you want a picture?  I don’t mind at all.  I’ll sign an autograph on a napkin if you want me to.”

“Well…it’s a bit awkward to ask you at a Parkinson’s Society of BC meeting, but we could go to the Starbucks down the street and I could buy you a coffee.”

Brock was slightly taken aback at her forwardness.  He shouldn’t have been.  Girls came up to him all the time.  All the time.  And they were most definitely not shy.  But he wasn’t exactly expecting it to happen here, of all places.  A bar, sure.  Out with Petey or any of the other guys, absolutely.  But not here.  “Yeah…yeah sure,” he stuttered out.

“Then we should go,” Grace smiled.  She turned to look behind her.  Brock saw Esther picking up a few Oreos.  “Thank you for leading another great session, Esther,” Grace said.  

“Oh you are most welcome Miss Gillespie.  How is Hamish these days?  You didn’t speak much today.”

“He’s been doing fine lately.  His caregivers have been working around the clock for him.  They just work wonders, don’t they?”

Esther nodded.  “They are angels on Earth.  Anyways – we’ll catch up next week,” she said, leaning slightly on her leg to look beyond Grace and to Brock.  “I hope to see you here again next week, Brock.”

“Thank you, Esther.  See you next week,” he said, realizing he made the commitment before he could even realize what he was saying.

***

“I take that was your first meeting?” Grace asked as she set down the two lattes on the table against the window where Brock was waiting.  

“Was it really obvious?” Brock asked.

Grace shrugged her shoulders.  She didn’t want to make him feel self-conscious.  “It was the stuttering that gave it away, at least to me.  I know I stuttered a lot the first few times I came to these meetings.  I wasn’t the most comfortable talking about my dad’s condition to a room full of virtual strangers.  But within just a few months I realized the people in that room are the kindest, most empathetic, most amazing people that I’ve ever interacted with.  So I became a lot more open.”

Brock was transfixed by every word that Grace was saying.  “So you’ve been coming here a long time,” he said.

Grace nodded.  “My dad got diagnosed with Parkinson’s when I was fourteen.  I didn’t start coming here until I was about eighteen, though.”

Brock knew he shouldn’t ask.  He knew he shouldn’t.  But his brain had ulterior motives, and his mouth – well, his mouth listened to his brain, because it apparently needed to know.  “Is your—is your dad like my dad?” he asked.  “Does he have, like, other problems complicating things?”

Grace shook her head.  “No,” she said softly.  “But the Parkinson’s is enough for him.  I mean he was diagnosed just short of ten years ago and he’s already on puréed foods.  It’s not—I mean, you know as well as I do that it doesn’t regularly develop that fast.  But that’s…I don’t know how you do it.”

Brock didn’t know either.  Some days he didn’t.  “I just take it day by day,” he said simply, just like he said in the meeting.  “If I think about it too much…that’s when it’s bad.”

“I hear ya,” Grace said, taking a sip of her coffee.  “But let’s…not talk about this for too long.  Do you like Vancouver?  Do you find it nice?”

Brock appreciated the change in topic.  “I love it here,” he nodded his head, smiling.  “The city’s great.  The fans are great.  My teammates – I mean they’re amazing.  What do you do?”

“I’m a dance teacher at Goh Ballet – little kids and teens, mostly.”

He wasn’t expecting that.  She was drop dead gorgeous, sure – Brock wasn’t blind – but he wasn’t expecting to hear she was a dancer.  “Do you, like, dance in the real ballet?”

Grace snorted slightly at his phrasing of ‘real ballet’.  “No.  I pursued it only up until a certain point.  I was good, but uh, I stopped when my dad got diagnosed.”

“Why?  Don’t they always tell people like us to have, like, an outlet or whatever?”

“They do.  But I loved my dad more than I loved dance.  And I would have rather spent the time that I was spending on dance with him instead.”

He understood where she was coming from, and he wasn’t there to judge her.  “And your brothers you mentioned, did they help too?”

“Oh no no no.  Sorry – I should have specified.  I’m an only child.  Like, the only child between my parents.  But they divorced when I was six and when my mom re-married I gained two step-brothers, Jasper and Theo.”

“How was the divorce?” Brock found himself asking.

“You ever see footage of a nuclear bomb exploding?” Grace giggled as she asked the question.  It caused Brock to laugh too even though the analogy she was making was dreadful.  “It was awful.  The type of divorce nobody deserves, you know?  I became a pawn, basically, and my parents would only speak to each other through lawyers.  Even stuff concerning me.  It was bad.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“It was.  But it’s the only life I know,” she said.  “He was lucky my mom ended up marrying another rich guy.  I mean, my mom only marries rich men,” she giggled slightly again.  “That’s how Jasper and Theo became my step-brothers.”

“So your family has money?” Brock clarified.  “What’s it from?  Dad a lawyer or something?”

“Not exactly,” Grace said.  “My dad and his brothers own a private equity firm that started like this,” she pinched her fingers together, “and went like…” she continued, spreading her fingers and moving her hands around her like a bomb explosion.  “Gillespie Brothers Investments.  I’m sure as a Vancouver Canuck you’ve heard of them.  I mean they wanted to buy the Canucks before the Aquilinis.”

Brock hadn’t heard of them, but he now knew he’d have to do some snooping when he got home. “I haven’t heard of them.  But I mean – sounds like they were successful.”

“Three billion dollars is pretty successful to me,” Grace quipped.

“B—Billion,” Brock sputtered out.  “With a B.”

“With a B,” Grace nodded.  Brock had no idea he was sitting across from the daughter of a billionaire.  She didn’t act like a billionaire.  Not like Brock knew what billionaires acted like.  He’d never met one before in his life.  Well, besides Francesco.  “But tell me more about what you like about Vancouver.  What about the nature?  I always kind of fine a good long walk along the Seawall or through Stanley Park really clears my mind from all…this.  What about you?”

Brock smiled.  “I find the white noise of downtown clears my mind.”

***

“You want my number,” Grace said as a statement rather than a question as she and Brock exited the Starbucks.  They were kicked out.  They’d been there for so long that they’d been kicked out because they were closing.  Their coffees had gotten cold.  They hadn’t ordered new ones.  And now they found themselves on the deserted sidewalk, jackets put on hastily, and Grace came up with that.

Brock looked down at her.  They’d been able to look into each other’s soul for the past few hours.  “Of course I want your number,” he said.  There was no reason to hide it.  No reason to deny it.  No reason to have to wait until next week to see her again as they sat around in a circle in a community centre talking about their parents.

He took out his phone.  She gave him her number.  He texted his name to hers so she’d have his.  When that dance was done, she looked up at him.  “I’m really glad I met you tonight,” she said, her voice sincere.

Brock nodded.  “I’m glad I met you too.  I—I really enjoyed this.  And I mean—I needed it.”

Grace smiled, nodding her head.  “I needed it too.”

“D’you—” Brock stopped, trying not to get too far ahead of himself.  “D’you need a ride home?”

“Oh no no, my driver is right there,” she motioned her head towards a black Mercedes waiting by the curb.

Brock hadn’t noticed the car until now.  “Chauffeur?”

“Billionaire dad,” she winked.  Brock understood.  She took a few steps back before smiling one more time.  “Call me,” she said, before flipping her hair over her shoulder and walking towards the Mercedes and getting into the backseat.  Brock watched as it drove off, making a right at the end of the street.

He would definitely be calling.

[saint-patrice]

thank you @kureally​!💛

pretty surprised that this isn’t one i’ve done already, but the day has come and i would invite you all to join me in delving into some photos of the canadian hockey spectacle known as travis konecny!

see here for other posts like this one! i am also taking requests for ‘em :)

this photo is a good one to start with, as it provides the essential information you need to understand travis konecny as a person. apparently his brother calls him a “city slicker,” but this is him in his true form - in camo, with fishing equipment and associated fish, looking objectively pretty fucking bad. the comment is from his teammate and certified best bud nolan patrick, who we will discuss more later. additionally, his instagram account no longer exists because he is diametrically opposed to having a social media presence, and throws his phone in an ontario lake for 4 months every offseason. presumably.

in addition to all of that, he is pretty fucking good at hockey. and yes, this is the same person as above, this time looking rather nice and representing the philadelphia flyers at this year’s all star game

(via @jakeoettinger​) from when he broke his tooth and we all were collectively screaming about it in our own unique ways until he got it fixed. this was right before the asg, and i remember the visceral fear that he might not do anything about it and we’d have to watch him do all the media stuff looking like a battle-scarred little rat. his fucking face, man

here he is, doing his very best impression of a cardboard cutout of himself. if you have any brain cells to spare, please send them philly-ward. this man is in dire need.

this is teeks with aforementioned Best Bud Nolan Patrick. this is a real photo of them at a real wedding (claude giroux’s, not their own), posted on nolan patrick’s real instagram, with the real caption “what a wedding date”. there is nothing else to be said.

although he is a great hockey player, tk has a reputation on the ice mainly for never shutting up. this is one of many instances of teeks running his little rodent mouth at the opposing team, and usually what he says makes little to no sense but we love to hear it anyway. the video of this is so delightful, i’d recommend giving it a watch

hockey talent must be inherent to the genome, as teeks is the second cousin of bo horvat (captain of the vancouver canucks). they are generally pretty different people but they look like two separate pieces of trash from the same dumpster here so… who’s to know?

(via @manybumblebees​) travis’ draft report listed him at 5′10, and he has continued to be recorded as such throughout his career. however, as just about  anyone with working eyesight will tell you, this is absolute fucking horseshit. oskar lindblom, with whom he is cellying here, is 6′1 for comparison. if that looks like a 3 inch height difference to you, i don’t know what to say 

5′10 or not, he is - by his own admission - a pretty small guy, so you think he’d generally try to avoid physical altercations, or mess with people his own size. on the contrary! here he is, having the time of his life messing with 6′3, 215lb mikhail sergachev (tk listed at 175lb). fuck it, ragdoll mode engaged.

i wasn’t kidding about the brain cells - how do you lose your shoes on a plane!!!

(via @gabelandeskog​) travis is the flyers’ “hockey is for everyone” ambassador this year, and this is him with pride tape on his stick for YCP warmies, which is like, real nice

can rats swim???

(via @chirpedtooth​) another thing of note is that he is like…. too small for nhl equipment apparently?? and so he tapes his sleeves with stupid fucking orange tape to make sure they don’t get in the way of his little raccoon appendages. whatever works, man

look at this fancy little child in his pea coat facing some adverse weather conditions!!! pre-2016 travis konecny is never not funny

(via @callejarnkrok​) despite his general shenanigans and tomfoolery, travis is perhaps a nice canadian boy at heart. here he is checking on nolan, who has been sidelined with a migraine disorder this season, at the team’s picture day. the more i think about it, the more this is unbearably fucking tender, actually. going to go lie down in a dark room about it. see y’all in a bit

this is his (nice? horrid? it’s up to you) little duck tattoo on his bicep. just thought this was important to include

this footage plagues my entire fucking existence. i measure my time in Before I First Witnessed This and After I First Witnessed This. it’s the last thing i think about at night and the first thing i think about every morning. and in between times, it frequently appears in my dreams. i cannot accurately verbalise how much i hate this

(via @for-that-cotton-candy​) just gently skating up to your pal,, hip-checking your bud to let him know that you’re there because he can only see you when he’s looking down,,,, just letting him know that you’re there and you love him a whole lot,,,,,,,, that’s hockey, baby

some would describe his face as “highly expressive” or “easy to read,” but i personally think “malleable” might be more appropriate. here he is 😛✌🏻ing with teammates travis sanheim and shane gostisbehere

(via @phillymyers​) is now a good time to mention that this little untoasted piece of bread didn’t know how to blow a kiss?

mandatory puppy photo!

(via @chirpedtooth​) literally no idea what the fuck is going on here, all i know is that he is wearing a pink scrunchie on his wrist, and that it is an awful lot to deal with

and that, my friends, is a brief introduction to travis konecny! i hope you enjoyed this in one way or another, and if you are currently thinking “i don’t get why everyone likes him” - just give it 3 weeks of mild to moderate exposure to tk content. you’ll see.

[csykora]

After ‘84, Igor felt the pieces were beginning to fall off the Red Machine. 

He hated being called a robot as much as he hated being called a soldier. He didn’t know what the world wanted the Green Unit to do on the ice or off it, how they had to behave, before someone would believe they had feelings. On the worst days they were too tired and numb to feel anything else.  

When he’d met Bobby Clarke, who he thought looked like a hockey angel with a blond halo and no teeth, Bobby commented about the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Igor didn’t know how to say that he’d definitely never been allowed to go to Afghanistan, and under the uniform he didn’t deserve to be a soldier, for good or bad. The national team was a tool of the Soviet government: at the same time it was a comfort for ordinary people in cold little apartments in mining towns where the players grew up and also a prop in the illusions that kept everything how it was. 

The illusion went skin deep: every time they left Russia, Igor was issued a snappy winter coat and brand-name Western clothes, so no one would think the Soviets looked poor.

[A black and white photo of the Green Unit posing, smiling except for Igor, in matching windbreakers with saddle shoulders and bold stripes. This was a hot look, about 10 years before the Soviet Union Costuming Department thought it was a hot look]

Underneath the coat or the beautiful red sweater, everything was a mess. At one point, at a tournament in Canada, a Canadian player would hit Igor from behind. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except the Soviet management hadn’t provided enough hockey pads. Igor was wearing a partial set he’d borrowed from a high school team that played in the host arena earlier that day. (Across Europe and Canada I bet there are grown men, still hockey fans now, who have no idea they once owned game-worn gear from the world’s top scorers. To Igor’s fans those pieces might be worth as much as he ever earned in his CSKA career.) He would play the rest of that tournament with broken ribs.

The only outsider he’d met who seemed to understand, however briefly, was their friend Vanya. Asked what it was like playing against those Russian robots, Wayne said, 

“Robots don’t hurt when they lose.”

By June 1985, Slava was recovering from that knee injury that had sidelined him for half the last season. He and his little brother Tolya, now a CSKA rookie, drove back for the start of training. Their car was hit, and Tolya was killed. Slava thought about leaving that season, but their parents told him to keep going, and just try to live for two people.

In November, the players at Arkhangel heard a rumor: someone had written an article, in a Soviet paper, that criticized the hockey program. Anything that wasn’t awe was criticism. Someone got their hands on a copy, and Igor, Vova, Sergei, and Slava huddled around their usual table that evening, hiding each other as they read it in turns. Igor reread it twice. He’d read Canadian and American papers that dragged the Soviet system, but never something like this, that got it--almost--right. It didn’t have all the details to understand the illusion--how they trained, how Tikhonov acted behind Arkhangel’s walls--but it guessed some.

Glasnost was beginning, a long rustling cracking thaw opening new streams of information and communication like Igor had dreamed. The Canucks drafted him that year, and then Vova. The Devils had dibsed Slava and Lyosha a few years before, and the Flames wanted Sergei. There was a place for them, waiting, if they could ever get to the NHL. But there wouldn’t be any thaw in Arkhangel as long as Tikhonov ruled it.

The ’85 World Championships were held in Prague, and ’86 in Moscow. Igor played both, and nothing else. For two years, no one saw him outside the Soviet Union. 

In December of ‘85, CSKA was supposed to tour North America. Igor was dressed and ready. Then he heard his passport, which he had used a hundred times before, had run into problems. Coach told him not to worry, but to stay behind in Russia and--how convenient--keep training for the championships in Moscow. Igor woke up at three in the morning to watch the games he was supposed to be playing. He learned that Canadian journalists were asking about him: apparently, he had tonsillitis. Igor wasn’t entirely sure where his tonsils were. 

Two months later CSKA played in Sweden. Strange, how his tonsils still weren’t better, and his passport was still missing. Two nights before they were set to leave Tikhonov called him into the office, in front of the team, and told him so. But the next evening Tretiak, now a more senior officer, came out to visit the barracks. He hugged Igor and promised him he would do what he could to get the passport by the time they were supposed to leave the next morning. Igor went to bed hoping. At 4:30 AM the coaches woke him just to tell him the passport wasn’t there yet, so the team really would be leaving without him. 

The third time it happened, he was told to go back to the passport office to file everything all over again--maybe he had fucked up his passport. He didn’t bother. Taking away travel had been one thing. But doing it in front of the team, in front of the Green Unit, so that he knew that they knew that he had let them down somehow, broke his heart. 

He was still allowed to play inside the Soviet Union. As long as he was with CSKA, the other Greens treated him the same as always. If they had known how bad things were going to get, Igor thought they would have done more sooner, but he knew that they didn’t understand what was happening. In between games, he spent his days in office buildings, being grilled about suspicious activities like listening to rock music, calling his mom too often, or kissing Canadians. 

“I was at fault all around. That I gladly gave interviews to journalists. That I liked the NHL...that I like rock music. That the living standard there impressed me. All this was raked up into a pile. I was the enemy. Because, you see, if I liked the American way of life, then in general I was an American by heart. All of this they said about me.

By nature, I am clearly a Russian. I do not like everything in America. It cannot be that somewhere is as in a fairytale, and somewhere else is total darkness.

Particularly, it seemed, my [friendliness] offended the preservers of government secrets….I also knew a little English. Therefore I had the possibility to rub elbows with whomever I might come in contact: hockey players, journalists and even immigrants. And, they assumed, to each of them I could give important information--everyone getting an equal share, no doubt, in order to be fair.”

He couldn’t talk to his friends from other countries, or his Russian friends either when they traveled without him. On the street outside between the rink and the party offices, none of his former fans would speak to him, except to ask or tell him their opinion if he really was a traitor.

He was wanted everywhere but home. Obviously, no other country believed that a 25 year-old athlete who had been the best in the world six months before had been brought down by tonsillitis multiple times in a row. There’s only so many tonsils a person can have. Obviously, every other country thought Igor must want to defect, the one thing he did not want and couldn’t convince anyone of. So each host on the international hockey circuit was bouncing on their toes, first Canada, then Sweden and so on, thinking maybe the Soviet Union would slip up and let him come to their tournament, he'd defect, and then they’d get to keep him. Obviously, the Soviets noticed that, and squeezed tighter.

Each time the team left on tour, he was told to spend his time alone training harder and hope. If he was good enough, maybe he’d make the next tournament. His body, always a battle-ground with Coach Tikhonov, became a hostage situation. The more Tikhonov told him to train, the less he ate. Eventually he was eating mostly fruit, and restricting his water intake. 

He stopped pretending to defer to anyone.  He used to be the sober one between his hot-head wingers, and now he egged every fight on. Sometimes he faked an American accent, calling Coach “Tikhonoff” the way American broadcasters had at the '81 Olympics.

One day at the rink he bumped into figure skater Lena Batanova, who “knew nothing about hockey and could not have cared less.” She had been through worse training than he had growing up, only to win two World Championships, and then be slighted from a third. They understood each other without having to say anything.

[Igor washing dishes in their Moscow apartment, turning to glance at Lena pressing up him.]

That summer he stayed up late talking with his friends, and realized he wanted to marry Lena. He asked her the next morning, and she said yes. Behind Igor’s back, Slava, Vova, Sergei, and Lyosha went to Coach Tikhonov’s office, and told him that they would play every other day of the year if they had to, but they would be going to Igor’s wedding. Coach wouldn’t allow the three days for a traditional Russian wedding, but he had to give Igor one.

Waking up the morning after the wedding, Igor checked the mail and found a summons to appear before the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His friends, who I imagine lying hungover on his and Lena’s new couch and floor, rushed for their unused books to help him study up on Communist doctrine, in case he got quizzed. This is presumably when Lena woke up, realized she’d married a whole line of hockey players for their one communal brain cell, and rolled back over. Igor reported the next morning, probably with flashcards Vova had made for him in his pocket.

The Party officials congratulated him on getting married and gave him the wedding gift they were sure no one else would have gotten: his passport. We have to guess the logic here, if there was one. It’s possible the Party thought he wouldn’t risk his wife, or that two years had just been enough to realize the team wasn’t working without him. 

But he was allowed to go to Canada for the Calgary Cup before the end of ‘86, and everyone had questions about his two years of tonsillitis. Igor, for the first time in his life, didn’t talk. But that just left the hockey world to gossip. Two months later it was announced he’d be in Quebec City for another tournament, and right before they arrived a Quebec newspaper printed a version of the night out with Gretzky--with quotes, they claimed, from Wayne. This time the tournament organizers called someone from every team up for a pregame presser. I imagine Igor shrugging at his KGB handlers and sliding away to the stage: nothing could stop him talking now.

Except the Canadian journalists. They wanted to interview Team Canada first. Igor stewed, and then looked up to see an oncoming Wayne. Someone had asked him about the alleged quotes in the article, which Igor had snagged a copy of to read the second they let him loose in Canada. Apparently Wayne hadn’t. 

“‘Believe me, Igor,’” Igor remembers Wayne blurting out. “‘I didn’t say what was printed in the paper. I’ll tell them it didn’t happen! But what is your position now?’”

“‘Do not worry,” Igor promised him. “‘Now, everything is okay.’”

“Oh, awesome,” (I’m assuming again) Wayne said. “So do you want to come over later and hang out in my mom’s basement?!”

“If the KGB pulls a gun, then call me.” --Wayne Gretzky

Weirdly, I’ve never seen this inspirational quote cross-stitched on someone’s wall. 

The next Canada Cup was held in August ‘87 in Hamilton, Ontario, which is like, basically next door to Wayne’s parents’ house. So the afternoon before the first game, Wayne sent his dad Walter to the hotel where the Soviet team was staying. Walter asked in Ukrainian if he could chat with Igor, who had to come down to the hotel lobby to meet him, since visitors were absolutely not allowed to wander up to players’ rooms. Walter invited his son’s friend over for dinner. Igor cut eyes at the KGB agent in the corner, and said he had to go upstairs and ask Coach. Tikhonov said no before Igor started talking.

Igor came back downstairs and apologized to Walter, who thought hard for a minute. He told Igor to ask what if the whole Green Unit went to Wayne’s house for team bonding? Coach Tikhonov considered, and said no, and Igor went back to Walter. 

Walter hitched up his suspenders, and announced to the KGB that he would talk go to Coach Tikhonov now.

He told Tikhonov he would be honored if Coach came to dinner at his house that evening, and if Coach felt like it, he might bring the boys over too. Tikhonov said he’d love to. 

Tikhonov, Igor, Vova, Sergei, Slava, Lyosha, and a KGB operative spent a delightful half hour packed in a car together driving to the Gretzkys' house, where Walter and Phyllis were throwing a cookout. Walter and some of his local buddies had barbecue and corn on the cob on the grill, and Phyllis had quizzed her son about his Moscow trip before throwing up her hands in despair and making a big batch of her mother’s Polish dumplings and sausage.

Nothing makes me happier than the image of Wayne Gretzky, beaming from ear to ear, handing famously fussy little Igor Larionov a piece of barbecued corn on the cob. Igor had to explain that yes, they had corn in Russia, but they ate it on a plate and not like squirrels. Walter offered him a beer, and Igor looked to Coach Tikhonov before saying no. Tikhonov allowed the players to have a soda.

Wayne started asking him how everything had been since the last time they hung out, and didn’t get why his friend wouldn’t talk to him at first. Igor might answer one question, and then act like he didn’t understand. Sergei and Vova really didn’t speak English, and kept elbowing Igor to explain what was going on and why Wayne was smiling at them like that, but Igor was still pretending he only spoke Russian and hesitated to translate for them. Finally Wayne realized Igor was clamming up every time Tikhonov got within earshot.

Wayne went to Walter to change the game plan. Walter would use his Ukrainian to ask Coach Tikhonov about his many amazing accomplishments, while Wayne told the whole party he wanted to show the other boys his medals, which were all down in the basement. Unfortunately the Gretzky family’s basement was very small, and housed Wayne’s many, many medals, so only two people could possibly fit down there at a time: one Gretzky, and one Russian. Tikhonov thought about it, decided he didn’t care about someone else’s medals, and gave the okay.

 Just in case, Wayne deputized his dad’s buddy Charlie, who did not speak Russian or anything like it but was somebody’s dad from suburban Ontario, to chat up the KGB agent.

So Wayne began to escort the Green Unit, one by one, down to his family’s basement. At the bottom of the stairs, he handed them a beer. The two of them chugged their beers together, trying not to take suspiciously long or laugh too loud, and then ran back up to change out for the next boy.

Nothing happened that night. It didn’t change anything, except that Tikhonov never found out. The Greens had been able to get one over on him, because they didn’t have to do it alone.

Main

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[boeserbby]

Only Time Will Tell- Brock Boeser 1.3

about/request: I really wanted to explore a relationship where you are ‘the other woman’ this is the result of that. I’m not sure how long this will end up so…. sorry.

warnings: cursing, i think that's it??

authors note: Sorry I took such a long time bringing this out, I didn’t know if anyone actually liked this or not. Remember that a lot of details in this story are made up or changed. Make sure to check out parts one and two, I fixed some mistakes and made some corrections. 

timeline: march 2017

word count: 2614

    Hockey used to be a life for not just me, but my whole family. Three nights a week we would hop in my dad’s old work truck to cruise over to wherever Charlie, and in turn Brock, played. Often times we would meet up with the Boeser’s to grab the best seats right by the ice. Here my mom would yell to “Shoot the puck!” or boo at whatever call she felt didn't fit the crime. My dad would grab a couple of beers while talking to some guys he knew from his work. Small towns mean most people there he knew so he would rarely sit with us the whole game. Sometimes I would sit by my mom and Brock’s mom and sisters. Sometimes there would be kids from school or members from the team who were scratched I would sit by instead. Wren was often the one scratched. He never made it to practice on time and when he did he would spend more time talking to guys on the team then practicing. He was nice and seen grew to be one of the guys on the team I felt fully comfortable with. He understood what it was like to be the younger sibling and live in the shadow of our elders. His older brother Josh was team captain and lead them to 3 state titles in a row.

    After the game, all of us would go out to eat. The Boeser’s and the Y/L/N’s and whomever joined along from the team. Dad would tell Charlie what to do better, of course Dad knew what it was like to play hockey. He played for the University of Minnesota until a really bad accident his sophomore year took him out. Charlie, and me too (at least for a little bit), just wanted to impress him. Often times dad would rag on Charlie until they got into a mini fight. Charlie would hitch a ride back with Brock and his family. My dad would then spend the whole drive home complaining that Charlie was never going to be as good as him if Charlie didn't take his advice. 

    Although the bad seeped into the good. The hockey rink was were my family was one. We all would come together to scream when number 6 would skate out. Cause no matter how awful things were going at home, the rink was a time of escape. It was when hot chocolate would warm cold fingers in the late second period or the high of sugar rush from skittles in the second intermission. It was a time to giggle at the little kids they brought out between periods. They wouldn’t yet be comfortable on skates so they would slip and fall or miss the puck completely. I couldn’t remember what it was like when Charlie and I were that young playing, but I like thinking we were better than that.

    After he had died, I didn’t go to many games. There was no more hot chocolate or skittles high. No little kids falling or scoring on their own net. We never went out to eat after the games. There were no more arguments between dad and Charlie. The nearby rink which once held the best memories was purposely avoided at all times. Life went on, but each day seemed to hold some emotional punch of remembrance. Like one day, about 3 months after he died I came home from school and my mom had cleaned out his room. Neat piles of his clothes and pictures were placed in bins labeled “attic” or “giveaway.” His first skates, his autographed Detroit Red Wings Steve Yzerman jersey, and so much more was packed away to be set aside. His posters, CDs and other trinkets were thrown out or donated to a thrift store. I remember yelling at my mom that this is his room. She told me she needed to heal and that dad had been asking her to do it for two weeks. It was time to move on.

    Since moving I had gone to no hockey games. And the Vancouver Canucks were not a bad team. They had just been having a difficult time in recent years. That didn’t make city pride for them any less. Any game night and the always crowded downtown streets turned into an obstacle only the bravest could handle. I never purposely put myself in a position to make the drive down to the stadium in the past 2 years of living in Vancouver. Occasionally I was invited to games by friends and classmates. I managed to get out of it every time too, but somehow escaping this invite seemed impossible.

    It was Brock’s mother’s last night in the city before she had to fly back down to Minnesota to care for Brock’s younger siblings. I was extended an invite due to my ‘gracious’ hosting, my mother called me and told me how Laurie, Brock’s mother, raved how I grew into such a beautiful and caring young woman. So there I was crammed in Rogers Arena with 18,000 or so people. Laurie was on one side of me wearing a new Boeser jersey. I, even though I lived there awhile, owned no such fan gear and instead dressed in a thick sweatshirt. Natalie tried to get me to wear her old Trevor Linden jersey, but I high tailed it out of there before she could fish it out of her closet. 

    I loved hockey growing up, but standing here made me feel so out of place. Life had changed so much in the past two years. I was no longer the little tomboy with scraped knees and a messy ponytail. I longer wanted to play hockey. Now, I had put hockey out of my life so much that welcoming it back in right now felt traitorous to everything I had done to avoid coming here. Laurie was cheering and dancing. I guess there is nothing quite like the debut of your child in the NHL. Warm ups had just started so every guy was on the ice. It was easy to spot him in the white 6 with the dark blue background. I got chills the first time I saw it. Boeser was spelled out in big letters across his back. I imagined at that moment seeing Charlie out there. He would mess around and probably fall trying to impress some girls he would see on the front row. But he would be here, and he would be happy.

    “I’m gonna go grab a beer, want one?” I asked his mom. Canada drinking laws are sort of amazing. I remember getting carded at a bar when I first turned 19. There was a split second of panic before I remembered I didn’t really need to be 21 up here. 

    “No, hun, I’m going to facetime the girls so they can see Brock on the ice,” she said grabbing her phone.

    People were still pouring in from the front doors. Lines were long for everything even the escultors. I recognized some people from college and waved. They sported brand new jerseys and held in their arms peanuts and beers and popcorn. “We are gonna win!” They all said. People were invigorated with the call up of Brock. I was invigorated to get a beer in me that's for sure. Fifteen minutes and 16 bucks later I carried my two beers back to our spot. Laurie was finishing up her call to Jessica and Paul, Brock siblings along with Duke. I waved and said hi to everyone. 

    “Kid, you gotta come back more often,” Paul said. Paul was Brock’s oldest sibling and he always acted like he was so much older than the rest of us. Add on to the fact that I was the youngest in our family friend group, “Kid” has been my nickname well into my early teens. 

    “I will soon, I have just been super busy with college and all.”

    It had been mine excuse through out my time here. For the first 8 months my parents begged me to come home. At this point they didn't even call me anymore. I guess it's far cause I don't call them up much too. 

“Okay, I just wanted to make sure everything was okay back home,” Laurie said. “Are you guys staying up to watch the game?”

“Only for a little bit, I work early in the morning.” Jessica said. West coast games ended way too late to stay up watching them in Minnesota. While it was only 7:00 our time it was 9 there so the game could last until 12 or 1 am. 

We all said our goodbyes as the lights dimmed. The Canucks opening video was being shown on the big screen while music blared in the arena. This was pump up time. As our guys skated out people cheered loudly. This game was supposed to be good. The Ducks always had a little rivalry with us. Add on to the fact that this was Boeser’s first home game and we were on a two-game losing streak. The team, and the fans, were hungry for a win.

    Unfortunately moral lasted until the ducks scored for the third time in the first period. Add on when Montour scored to make it 4-0 in the second, people began realising that not much has changed even with Brock. As the zamboni entered the ice for second intermission, Laurie turns to me. 

    “So, your mom told me your in college,” she started. God, she was fishing. Mom’s think they are clever trying to get information by stating the conversation at a wide base value and steer it to the cavity in the situation. 

“Yep, I go to the University of British Columbia for journalism,” I said sipping water I got after downing both beers in the first period. 

“That must be a lot of work, what do you do for work?” she asks.

“I actually write for Vancouver’s newspaper, they pay pretty good, and I do work study, so they pay for so much of my tuition that isn’t covered by my scholarships and then I get some of the money”

“What do you do for work study?” she asks.

“My English professor needs an assistant. I’m basically his gopher. If he needs a book from the library or a coffee I go get it. I transcribe his lectures for any kid who misses class. Sometimes I will tutor kids or help them find good sources for their papers. It’s not too bad, maybe three or four hours per day and I get like 6 credits towards my English major.”

“Gosh, that's a lot. He needs you to do all of that?”

 I shrug, “It sucks sometimes but the professor is nice so…”

“Your mom said that you haven’t come home since moving here.” They way she phrases the end of it is hard to respond to. It's not a question, more of a statement. She didn't sound mad or upset like my mom does when she says it. Laurie just sounds concerned. Her voice feels like a hug.

“It’s just soo much,” I start. “Charlie’s gone and mom and dad are splitting up. Mom met this new guy and he is so proper. Dad hasn’t even called me in two months because I said I’m not coming home for his huge labor day party. Plus I just got so much going on.”

“It’s okay to be hurt by what's going on, but don’t hide from it. Your parents love you a lot. They just don’t know how to love each other with so much hurt.”

“I don't know how to love them with so much hurt.” I mutter.

    Everyone is buzzing as the crowd makes its way out of the arena. We may have lost, but Brock put one in the beginning of the third to excite the crowd. Laurie and I hang back to give Brock time to get ready. The team could have lost 10-1 and she still would have been glowing with excitement for Brock. His life was changing, and he was no longer the little boy who fell over on the ice. Where most parents would have been freaking out, Laurie handled with grace, something she has done her entire life. No matter the situation Laurie put on her big girl pants and muddled through.

We meandered our way to the locker room, showing our passes to the security guard. In the hallway we waited as different guys from the team joined up with their wives or girlfriends. They all hugged Laurie telling her how wonderful her son is. Everyone loved Brock. Well almost everyone.

    Brock finally made his way out. His hair was still wet from what I was hoping was a shower and not sweat. He and Laurie hugged when he reached us. It was an awkward second or two while we figured out if we would hug or not. Wrapping my arms around him felt weird, almost as weird as the time we kissed. Yet there was a nostalgia in it too; we went always so awkward. In fact I remember a time in my life where I never thought we would ever be strangers. I remember once when I was about 12 and Brock was about 13, I had a dream that Brock and I were dating. The next day I remember being shy and awkward especially when he called me “Kid”. I went all pink and Charlie would not let it go for a whole year. Finally, when Brock asked a different girl to the joint 7th-8th grade dance Charlie let it go. I spent the whole night crying and accepted Thomas Miller’s invite. He had braces and dark hair and spent all night trying to kiss me. After the second slow dance song I joined up with my friends instead. The next day I heard a rumor going around that he said not only had we kissed, but that I let him touch my boobs. Charlie had been mad and cornered me about it. When I admitted it false, he said he taught Thomas a lesson. The next week someone “anonymously” shared a picture of Thomas at a birthday party sucking on his thumb with a stuffed animal. From there rumors spread he wet the bed every night.

    We always had each others backs. It made we wonder how things ended up so differently. We all walked out together. As I reached into my pocket to order an Uber, Laurie offered to have them drive me back to my apartment.

    “It’s too late for a young woman like you to hop in some random mans car.” she insisted.

    “”I couldn’t bother you guys,” I said.

    “No bother,” Brock said. “Might be nice to see more of the city anyway.”

    Thirty minutes later I lay in bed without make up and in an old, ripped up shirt from Natalie’s older brother that he left here. Natalie was already deep asleep when I got home with one of the Harry Potter movies on full volume. With school for both of us the next day, it was important to get as much sleep as possible. But as I laid there all I could think about was Brock’s hair and his cologne. I wished things could have ended better for us all those years ago. Maybe there’s time for change now. A girl could hope.

    As I finally started to drift asleep my phone’s ping jolts me awake.

Brock Boeser has texted you.

Thanks for coming tonight. I hope to see you soon.

    God, it’s going to be a long night.

[broodyauthor62]

This the first chapter from my first book “Baker’s Dozen: a Fantasy Novel”. Available quite cheaply on Kindle worldwide.

Prologue: Goin’ Over Town

 In a reality not far from our own...

 Paul Baker Colson speaks:

 I was heading down Cedric Street, “goin’ over town”, as my late mother would have put it, and stopped on the bridge. It was a hot, extremely muggy afternoon and I was surprised to see a large number of people (mostly men and boys) fishing from the bridge and the shores of the river. This was strange: the Clarke River is not a clean stream; its dark waters are polluted by a paper-mill upstream. “Town” water was taken from Lake Ontario, not the river.

 I quit counting the catches at 30. Most of the fish seemed to be bass. I looked west, down-river, and something caught my eye. Amid the coloured T-shirts and shorts, a spot of black-on-white showed: a figure sitting on one of the benches by the river. It appeared to be an old man, black from broad-brimmed hat, severe suit, and pants, white from shirt and skin.

 I felt drawn to this figure... I couldn’t explain why at the time. I took the stairs to the shore at the south end of the bridge. I walked down the boardwalk to where the man was sitting, dodging excited fishermen as I went.

 The oldster sat quite still, a large, dark green book on his lap. He looked, I remember now, like the old-time preachers you would see in Westerns. Oddly, something made me uneasy. This was even before I had a good look at him. His shirt was bright white and the wrinkled skin on his hands was hardly a shade darker. Looking at him, I could sense, somehow, his great age and youthful intensity at the same time. These two conflicting emanations seemed to cause me to want to talk to him. His hat’s brim shielded his eyes from mine as I stood before him.

 To his left sat a teenager in a Jays’ baseball cap, white shirt, blue jeans, and black high-tops. I couldn’t see his eyes, either. He sat very still, his dark hair forming a duck-tail at the back of his cap. He sat so still I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

 The elder of the two tilted his head back, gazed at me with pale blue eyes, and croaked: “Have you read from the Book?”

 I figured he meant the Bible; probably that was what he was holding on his lap.

 “I’ve cracked it open from time-to-time,” I answered, glibly.

His eyes hardened at that.

 “Not this Book! This is that which you can’t handle lightly!” he hissed loudly.

 His breath stank of decayed fish. The young man flinched at the outburst. Then he looked up at me.

 Bad drugs, I thought. His skin was paler than the old man’s... if that was possible. His eyes were brown, dilated, blank, and staring.

 “Darrel, here,” said the senior in a more-normal tone, “has read from the Book. He is one with us!”

 “Darrel” flinched again.

 “My name is Ezra Marsh, out of Innsmouth, Massachusetts.”

 “Paul Baker Colson.”

 Okay, I thought, Introductions made. Still, I felt I was getting out of my depth with this conversation so I had to ask: “Okay. So what is this book?”

 “The Hymns of Dagon!” he answered, triumphantly.

 “Dagon,” I repeated. “Who’s he?”

 The wasted face brightened.

 “He is the Render the Seas! The Bringer of the bounty! The Father of the multitude, the Deep Ones!”

 He became agitated, again; he almost fell flat on his face as he snarled the last sentence out.

 I grabbed his slender shoulders to steady him. His suit was damp with sweat. I looked around but the anglers hadn’t seemed to notice his outburst. He had staggered up off the bench; I steadied him back down. Darrel had jerked several times during the man’s rant.

 “I apologize for my zeal... but if you knew... if you knew ... ,” he spoke, thickly; he sounded like he was losing his voice. For a moment, I thought the old guy would have a stroke right there, what with the heat. After a moment, though, he seemed to calm down and his breathing normalized. Marsh looked up at me, a sly look on his emaciated face.

 He asked, “Would you like to hear one?”

 I looked at my watch: almost 4:00 pm.

 I replied, “Well. Okay. You’ve made me kinda curious.”

 I sat down on the bench beside him, to his right. The smell of fish increased incredibly: it was as if he should be covered in scales, flopping by the feet of one of the nearby fishermen. He opened the book on his lap. There were no musical notes that I could see, just script that I took to be Arabic or close to it. I could read Arabic script but the words seemed meaningless to me.

 He began to “sing.” His voice hissed, moaned and gobbled.

It made no sense to me (although I did hear the name “Dagon” in his sighing and sputtering tune). He went on like that for a few minutes, never raising his voice. From the other side of him, I could hear Darrel humming atonally.

 When Marsh was done, he turned to me square and asked, “What do you think?”

 “I think... I hafta go!” I replied. I stood up and added, “Good luck spreading the word! Bye, Darrel!”

 His “song” and Darrel’s moaning undertone had really bothered me. The sun had seemed to dim and the cooling air had given me goose flesh. I hurried away, back up to Cedric Street. I heard Ezra Marsh call after me. I made out the word “again” over the noise of the crowd...

 “Dagon,” I mumbled that night as Andy, my 16-year-old brother and I cleaned up the supper dishes. They didn’t amount to much as we had ordered out for pizza, a habit we were indulging in probably more often than was good for us.

Andy looked at me.

 “‘Dagon’? Have you been into the Old Testament or lookin’ through my library?” he asked. He looked puzzled but amused.

 We’d been getting along well recently, so I replied mildly, “Neither. Just some weird old guy I saw today.”

 I set the last washed plate in the right sink for him to dry.

 “He used that word or name,” I finished.

 “Really!” he responded. “Hmm... the only ‘Dagon’ I know of was a god of the sea worshiped by the Philistines in the O.T... They used to sacrifice people to him for more fish. And... . oh, yeah! He was also a nasty critter from some of those books of mine you refer to as ‘simple horseshit’.”

 “Which horseshit?” I demanded of him.

 I hated it when he knew more about something than I did! He held up his palms in mock-defence.

 “Okay, okay!  In my collection of H. P. Lovecraft stories, Dagon was a god of the sea, too. He was a deity for some humans on land and for his ‘children’, the Deep Ones, under the water. Was this guy an H.P. nut or sumthin?”

 “No... I don’t know!” I growled.

 I was angry with myself for feeling strange about the whole business and mad at my brother for making light of it. Should I tell him that Marsh had used those strange names as if they meant something real to him? I wouldn’t be able to face his knowing smile: Go on, Bro. Have another rum and cola!

 I drew in a breath and said, “Okay. Maybe he was just a senile, old ‘H.P. nut’. That’s probably how you’ll end up, too, if you don’t watch it!”

 I smiled at him; being nice was something we were working on, too.

 We finished the dishes and, as usual, he went to his room in the back of the house to go on-line and I sat down in the living-room to watch the Jays on the 54-inch. The Jays were having a better season than those past, the games were usually good... but Ezra Marsh was still on my mind.

 As the game progressed, my mind wandered. A rum and Pepsi would go good right now, I thought. I shook my head fiercely; I was trying to dry out! Going on the straight-and-narrow! I felt myself getting angry. The Jays scored a run. I inwardly studied my feelings. All my frustrations came from one source: Andrew. My parents had tried to leave it all to him... with the proviso that he looked after me! It turned out that wasn’t legal. But Andy’s lawyer was trying to set some kind of precedent, so...

 So what if I’d alienated my parents by joining the Armed Forces at the fresh-faced age of 16? So what if the bottle had been holding me instead of the other way? So what if they couldn’t practice birth control in their 40s? I guess I wasn’t enough of a son for them! So what if... it was an endless litany that I indulged in often... and it wasn’t a good habit. There had been times since I had left the Forces that I had considered seeking medical help, because I felt the feelings I had were unhealthy. I wasn’t a strong believer that mental illnesses really existed, so I never acted on that idea.

 Mom and Dad had been livid when I signed up but I felt at the time my country needed me... that, and I hated school. Plus, about ten years earlier, the Canadian government had decided to beef up the military. The Nazis hadn’t made any aggressive moves in almost fifty years but the consensus was, “Why take a chance?”

 The Americans were such isolationists and ball-less wonders... at least, as far as I was concerned. They couldn’t be counted on for protection. The government had passed what had been widely known as “Pierre’s Choice”: at the age of sixteen, you stayed in school, got a job (there were few of them) or joined the Armed Forces (you weren’t thrown into the fray immediately; there was a two-year training period) so I headed off to learn how to be a soldier. The infantry was my trade of choice as it had the easiest entry requirements. I had become very good at killing and other “nastiness” over the years. The League of Nations continued to limp along, trying to maintain the peace. They quite often called on Canadians to do the dirty work (I think many of the European delegates considered Canucks quasi-barbarians): clandestine operations that usually occurred in European nations not totally under Nazi control. I took all the right courses that could fit into my schedule and moved up the ranks quite quickly. I was a bit of a wunderkind and my superiors were very happy with me. Ironically, during my career, it was pointed out that an education would be a definite asset. I applied myself, put in many long days, and came out with college equivalence. Of course, there was also a slight drinking problem. My brother had sidestepped the Choice... later governments had liked it a lot... by starting university early, on-line. He was now working on his second year of his Bachelor of Science, majoring in physics. He was a genius.

 The game ended at ten pm. It had been a slug-fest, 10-6, with the Blue Jays winning in the ninth. The news came on: apparently, the princess-in-exile was in trouble with Revenue Canada... again. This bored me. I took a Pepsi out to the front porch (no rum, damn it!), looking to cool off on the chaise lounge. The soggy night heat then wrapped around me like steam in a sauna. The moon was high in the sky, nearly full.  The air’s moisture had placed a faint ring around it. I watched it rise while I drank three cans of cola. Midnight came on and I decided to go to bed.

 Might as well, I thought. Have a whole day of hanging around to do tomorrow.

 I had it in my mind, then, that the scream I heard from the north was wordless. In my dreams, now, it is a pleading negation: “Not me!” or just “NO!” I stood straight from the comfortable chair and dropped my half-full pop can. The shriek sounded like it came from the park by the river. A few dogs in the neighbourhood responded to the sound by yelping but all fell quickly silent.

 I was a block down the street, running in my moccasins before I thought: What are you doing? But I kept on. The park was fronted by the boardwalk where just eight hours earlier I had met that strange man. And Darrel. I cut through the park between the wide-spaced trees, moving on the wet grass as quietly as my military training could supply.

 When I got to the wooden planks, I noticed this first: one of the benches had been smashed in half. There was a coppery smell in the air. The moonlight spotlighted a dark object lying on the dewy, trampled grass. It was a black high-top running shoe.

 I picked it up and was surprised by the weight. I realized the ugly truth... I’d seen it in Czechoslovakia: the foot was still in it. The anklebones stuck out, splintered. I threw it from me with an angry cry of disgust. It hit the water with a loud splash.

After that sound, there came a loud churning of the water’s surface. It became apparent that someone or something was swimming toward shore. I crouched down, going into what I call my “war-mode”. I was ready to fight, weaponless as I was. I only wished that the lights along the walkway had been lit that night.

 Two bright ovals of light caught me in that position.

 A voice yelled out, “Hold it right there!”

 “Okay, okay!” I shouted back.

 I slowly dropped to my knees to put the yeller at ease. The noises from the river ceased.

 Oh, good, I thought.

 The policeman and the policewoman, Drury and McAvoy, were from the O.P.P. Clarkesville didn't have its own policing anymore. They inquired what was going on, had I broke the bench (though they quickly concluded that I couldn’t have done it by myself), and why did I have blood on my moccasins. That question startled me.

 Blood! I said to myself. That smell; I should have recognized that smell!

 In short order, they had me handcuffed. McAvoy held my left arm tightly. I did the smart thing: I did not resist. Drury went over by the busted bench and found where the blood was on the grass. He stood up; put his mike to his lips and contacted headquarters (I supposed), getting info from my wallet, and using the cryptic language police use while so doing. Another patrol car pulled into the park, blinding me with its headlights.

 The next few hours rushed and dragged, alternatively. We rocketed to the HQ. We flew by the front desk, stopping long enough to remove my belt and keys and get my fingerprints. They indicated I was probably going to be charged with mischief (nothing was said about the blood at the scene). We went zooming to the holding cell, which was mercifully empty. They left me there and time slowed to a crawl. It seemed like hours before one officer came back with a portable phone so I could call Andy.

 “I’ll call Sade,” he said and added, “I’m very disappointed with you, Bro.”

 A very large man in a grey suit looked in on me. He held up a detective badge for me to see.

 “I’m Detective Jimmy Cochrane. Let’s talk.”

 He wanted to know what I’d been doing in the park so late at night. I told him about hearing the scream, finding the foot. He sniffed.

 “Divers will find it. We got your ID from your prints. Got them from the Ministry of Defence. You’re some kind of hero, eh? Had a bitch of a time getting anything about you... except awards.”

 “I’m no hero.”

 “Well, you do have a lot of decorations and medals on file... it even says you were a Regimental Sergeant Major.”

 I looked down at my bare feet. “Any fool can win medals! Look. I haven’t done anything. Won’t you guys let me out?”

 “Yes, they will!” called Yvan Sade as he walked up to the cell. “Are you charging Mr. Colson with anything? Substantial?”

 Cochrane replied, “We were originally thinking of mischief but it looks like we need more evidence.”

 Andy’s lawyer smiled his shark’s smile.

 “Then I think we’re done here! Come on, James, that’s a good fellow!”

 They let me go. The short, burly Mr. Sade led me to his car.

 “Cheaper than a taxi!” he enthused.

 During the short drive home (Sade drove like a maniac), I told the lawyer my story.

 “Shouldn’t have chucked that foot away! Evidence, my boy! Evidence!”

 We pulled into my driveway. I asked Sade if he wanted to have a coffee but he declined. “Busy day tomorrow! Or, I guess it’s today!”

 Yvan Sade always spoke using exclamation marks. He wheeled out and was gone in a spray of gravel. I walked into the house in my bare feet, my leather moccasins, bloodstained as they were, being held for testing.

 Andy was waiting for me in the kitchen. It was 3:00 am. He asked me if I wanted to eat, that he was making something for himself.

 “Just wanna go to bed... feel like a bag of shit.”

 “You look it, too.”

 “Screw you.”

 “Just kidding!” he said. “You okay?”

 “Will be... ”

 That said, I went to my bedroom, climbed on my bed and fell asleep without even undressing. Fortunately, I hadn’t any blood on my clothes.

 My dreams were fierce. The worst one had Andy being torn apart, his bones cracking like dry kindling, by something huge and dark, eyes like egg-shaped, glowing prisms. I heard Marsh’s voice screaming in triumph, “Dagon! Dagonnn!”  I could hear waves crashing in the background and smell the ocean. It turned its blazing eyes on me...

 “No!” I shouted as I jerked myself upwards into full wakefulness.

 I was sweating and felt ill. A cool breeze blew fitfully through the west window but all it did was chill me.

 Change in the weather comin’, I reasoned.

 The front doorbell rang. I looked at the clock: just past nine. I got up, knowing Andy was probably asleep, and only the Last Trump could wake him. I straightened my clothes as much as possible and went to answer the door, shaking my head to clear the cobwebs left by my short sleep. Jimmy Cochrane stood outside, his detective’s badge in hand. I’m 183 cm. but the man had a good head on me and probably 25 kilos, too. He extended a large hand to shake.

 “May I come in?” he asked, as I accepted his hand.

 I let him inside and showed him to the kitchen. He pulled out one of the crafted wooden chairs and sat down slowly. You could tell this fellow had broken chairs before then; I worried about my brother’s investment. I offered him a cold drink (“No, thanks”), then a coffee (“Yes, please.”). I went about setting up the coffee maker and we talked back and forth about the heat, the cooling in the air that a.m. and the Jays. Finally, we sat across from each other, coffees in hand.

 Cochrane sat back slightly.

 “Tell me again about last night. Don’t leave anything out.”

 I told him, in detail, all that had happened late Friday night and early Saturday. I spoke with some heat about having nothing to do with the broken bench or the blood. I made a point about mentioning the shoe and the noises from the river again.

 “What does the noise from the river suggest to you?” he asked.

 “I, I don’t know. It was as if I was in shock. Most of the night seems like a blur.”

 “Does the name 'Darrel Spencer' mean anything to you?”

 Darrel! “No. Why?”

 “He was a young offender who had given a DNA sample a few months ago. It was his blood at the crime scene. They dragged the river there, too.”

 “What did they find?”

 “I’m not at liberty to say.” He gave me a cryptic look. “It’s beginning to look like a homicide, though. You’ll be relieved to know you’re not the prime suspect. The lab boys found your footprints in the blood but no other physical evidence. So you shouldn’t worry.”

 He gave me a smile which showed missing teeth, a boxer’s smile. It clashed with his fine, grey suit. He ran his left hand through thinning, red hair.  

 “Sorry to have troubled you. Actually, this news might have made you feel some better.”

 He gulped the last of his coffee and stood up.

 “I’ll let myself out. And, yeah, I know this sound’s hokey but: don’t leave town for the next few days.”

 He grinned at me and patted me on the shoulder as he left. I heard the door open and shut.

 That was weird, I thought.

 I felt strange after Cochrane left. Lassitude flooded over me, leaving me sitting there at the table as my coffee cooled down to undrinkable. The effects of arriving at the scene of Darrel Spencer’s slaughter had unnerved me more than I had realized. Had I been away from action... from war and death so long that this occurrence shocked me into immobility?

 And why, I wondered, haven’t I mentioned Ezra Marsh?

 Sacrifice, Andy had said. For more fish.

 Not tonight! I thought. I won’t let it happen again!

 As I stood up from the table, I appraised my life briefly. I said to myself, I’ve done... questionable things, even evil things. It’s time to balance things out.

 Later, in the early afternoon light, with thunder rumbling in the distance, I went to my bedroom and began my preparations. I wasn’t sure for what I was getting ready but I was sure it involved death... and death was something I knew.

 I knew Andy still slept so I quietly entered the closet in my room. I was quiet because the bathtub in the bathroom next door would act as a sound conduit right into Andy’s room. I didn’t want to take the small chance of waking him, yet. I removed the collection of shoes and boots from the closet floor. Once the floor was cleared, I removed the piece of carpeting, exposing the trapdoor to the crawlspace.

 I opened it. The smell of fresh damp earth surrounded me. Reaching down, I found the waterproof box. I felt around for the handle on one end and picked the container up. Carefully, still trying to be as quiet as possible, I pulled it up through the square hole. I set the heavy box on the floor just outside the closet and worked the combination lock.  

 The khaki combat uniform was still folded neatly. I removed the clothing to get at the smaller box under it. The box opened revealing a GLOCK 37 pistol and several clips of ten .45 calibre hollow-point bullets. I inspected this then closed the tin and set it aside. Farther down in the main box, I found two sticks of camouflage paint.

 There we go, I thought, feeling complete.

 I slid the smaller box, the paint, and my uniform under the bed. The bigger box went back under the floor. I then laid down and waited...

 The storm that struck later that afternoon was intense. Clarkesville hadn’t had one like it all summer. The lightning flashed almost continuously followed by cannonades of thunder. The wind blew up a gale. The power went off twice but neither time lasted more than a few moments. It was bad enough to make me think a tornado was in the works.

 I could hear Andy awake in his room yelling at the more brilliant displays: “Jesus! Holy fuck!”

 The storm rolled its way eastward, leaving cooler air in its wake... plus a few relieved citizens. It was 5:00 pm. so I went to the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry but Andy was always a bottomless pit when it came to food. I began to prepare some spaghetti, using slices of fried sausage in the sauce (Andy’s preference).

 I was quiet during supper. Andy was, too, sensing my mood. The noodles and sauce could have been paper and water as far as I was concerned but my brother enjoyed it. Due to his efforts, there wasn’t any left to be refrigerated. He helped me clean off the table and grabbed a bagel from the fridge. I told him I would wash and dry the supper dishes later. He looked surprised.

 “What’s with the sudden generosity?” he asked.

 “Maybe I went and got religion.”

 He chuckled, stuffed the bagel in his mouth, and went to his room, a can of Pepsi in hand. Excluding forays for more cola and trips to the bathroom, I knew I had probably seen the last of him until morning. I went back to my room. I knew I had some hours to wait.

 What was I going to be facing? A band of cultists of some kind, likely. Marsh couldn’t have butchered Darrel all by himself. Could he? My mind raced.

 I somehow knew that Ezra Marsh and his followers (how many?) would have another victim there by the river tonight. Sixth sense? I didn’t think so. It was just one hunter reading the heart of another.

 I knelt beside the bed and pulled out the box and the uniform. The “COLSON” name-tag stared up at me from above the left breast pocket. I looked at the Regimental Sergeant Major insignia’s lion and unicorn. I sighed and opened the box and took out the GLOCK. Dominic, my supplier, had told me I’d like this weapon. I’d only test-fired it five times while back at the old farm. I pulled the slide back and gazed at the cleanliness of the breech. I sighed again. I set the automatic pistol aside and took out ten clips of ammunition.

 A small voice inside me cried, Tell the police!

 I ignored it. I'd decided to treat it as a “The Black” op but this time I was certain of the ethics of my target(s). I laid the uniform beside me on the queen-sized bed. I put nine of the clips in the pant-leg pockets, four on one side, the rest on the other. I loaded the last clip into the GLOCK and clicked the pistol’s safety, putting it under my pillow. I put the tin box back under the bed. I then reached over to my alarm clock and set it for 11:00 pm.; four hours to wait. I wondered if I’d sleep.

 I stared at the clock until 10:30. I climbed off the bed and stripped to my shorts and put the khaki on. I tucked the shirt in, reached under my pillow, and got the pistol. I stopped for a second; I’d forgotten the holster. I shook my head in disbelief and corrected that by getting the metal container out again.

 As I pulled the holster out of the very bottom, I thought, I had better get a grip or I’m going to die tonight.

 The holster held the pistol under my left armpit. I placed the GLOCK gently, barrel first, into the leather. I then took the camouflage paint out. I didn’t need a mirror. I had done it so many times before. It took a minute, using both shades of green. To finish, I put a camouflage baseball cap (from my collection of caps on the wall) on my head. I then went into “war-mode” and moved like a ghost out of my bedroom. I could hear Andy clicking away on his keyboard but he didn’t hear me. I opened and closed the door to the breezeway silently and in a moment, I was outside.

 There was a stiff breeze blowing from the southwest, pushing fitful clouds ahead of it. I circled the south side of our house and headed north.

 I crouched, crawled, and slid behind the neighbours’ houses on Sandra Street until I reached Babcock Road and the south side of the park. I crossed Babcock like a shadow. The light from the almost-full moon waxed and waned with the passing of the clouds. Gravel pressed against my bare feet, followed by the kiss of cool, wet grass.

 Passage through the conservation area was tricky: some branches had been blown down. As I approached the boardwalk, I saw the path’s lights were lit this night. The bench had been hastily slapped together and was festooned with crime-scene tape. I was rather surprised that any repairs had been done. Two figures were seated there. One of them was Marsh; I could tell from his black hat. I couldn’t tell who the other was. I waited.

 Ezra Marsh stood up. He was wearing a black robe instead of his suit. He held out his hand to the other, who was female. She took his hand and stood up. She was slim with long, dark hair. She was clothed in jeans and a denim jacket. She moved slowly, stiffly... as if she was in a trance. The old man walked her to the side of the boardwalk away from the water.

 “Stay here, Nicole,” he said quite clearly.

 He walked to the water’s edge. I could tell he was singing one the Hymns of Dagon without the book this time.

 Probably has them all memorized! I thought inanely.

 Marsh reached the river’s brink and turned and faced the girl. He dropped his robe, exposing his scrawny, hairless body. He turned back to the water and raised his arms to it.

 Seeing him naked and then vulnerable, I stepped out of the shadows, brandishing the GLOCK and yelled, “Forget it, Marsh, you ass-hole! It’s over! Let the girl go!”

His response was a maniacal cackle. He swivelled his head to look at me.

 “You cannot stop what has been started here! Dread Cthulhu will curse you if you try!”

 He looked back at the water, arms still outstretched.

 “Caleb! In the name of Dagonnnn! Rise up!” he roared, body quaking, the volume of his voice giving a lie to his weak-appearing form.

 Just in front of him, the water erupted and something leapt ashore. The first thought I had was, The Creature from the Black Lagoon!

 Then Nicole started screaming and collapsed into a quivering ball of fear. This was real! The sea animal, half-human thing; it let out a blubbering squeal and moved toward the terrified girl. I acted, filled with rage.

 “No, you don’t scumbag!” I screamed and aimed.

 Marsh saw this and bellowed, in return, “No!”

 I put the laser-sight right on the monster’s chest and fired. It moved sideways incredibly fast but the slug still connected. The right shoulder disintegrated into a cloud of flesh, scales, and bone fragments. The beast howled, the remains of its right arm hanging loose. Marsh yelled out in anguish.

 I ran up to the young woman. I was 5 metres or so from “Caleb”. I grabbed her left flailing wrist and pulled her to her feet. She resisted but I lifted her up with fear-fuelled strength. She looked at me with shock-dimmed eyes. She looked past me and saw the thing and almost withdrew into her ball again. I slapped her hard. Her eyes cleared and she looked at me sanely for just a moment.

 I hollered in her face, “Run! For fuck's sake, run!”

 She turned and scampered south, toward Babcock Road. She cried out as she ran. Answering cries came from the west.

 I felt a heavy impact on the ground behind me. I whirled around. Mortally wounded, the beast stood before me, taller and wider than a normal man could be. It had jumped the five metres! I brought my pistol up and it hit me with its good hand... with claws. Pain splashed through me and I was raised spinning in the air. My right side was aflame and I was sure I was leaving my intestines quivering in the air.

 In that second I thought wildly, Don't drop the GLOCK! Don't drop the GLOCK!

 I hit the ground, bone-breaking hard. I didn’t drop the GLOCK.

 I rolled to my back and looked between my feet. Caleb was now twice as far away. I tried to raise my right arm. Pain! I reached across my chest and took my weapon from my injured right hand. I aimed the pistol with my left, putting the little red dot on Caleb’s chest. Marsh saw this as he stood by the monster and flung himself across the creature in its defence.

 I thought, Get one of you!

 The round hit the old man in the head, taking the back of it off. His body dropped like a stone. Caleb looked down wildly, his eyes like wide green prisms, the gore on his chest now with the addition of Marsh's brain-matter.

 “Poppa! Poppa!” he howled.

 He picked the elderly man’s corpse up with his left hand and turned back to the river. I aimed shakily with my left hand and unloaded a shot at the back of his head. Then everything went black...

 Through waking and losing consciousness, I saw much:

 A tall, wide-shouldered, middle-aged man with a full grey beard bending over me and saying, “Well done.”

 A harried-looking policeman, dripping-wet from rain, yelling, “EMS! Right now!”

 Lightning flashed before my eyes, turning the raindrops silver...

 I laid swaddled in a bed in the ICU of the County Hospital. Worried-looking nurses looked in on me from time-to-time. Andy was by my bed much, holding my left hand, careful of the IV. Doctor Alder was there several times. He looked concerned, too. Over it all was the smell of seaweed. I decided I was dying.

 There came a time, though, when I was alone. I started to close my eyes and enter oblivion once more when movement caught them. The middle-aged man with the full beard entered the room (no other patients were there) without hindrance from the nurses. He walked to the head of my bed. I rolled my eyes to look at him.

 “Well done,” he repeated, reaching into his grey robe. He pulled out a vial filled with clear liquid. He uncorked it and reached over, holding it to my lips.

 “Drink,” he said.

 Dumbfounded, I followed his command. It was bitter but somehow soothing. I noticed the seaweed smell ebbing. The pain in my right side eased markedly.

 “In two days you’ll go home.”

 He walked out of the ICU with the same silence as when he came. I drifted off to sleep.

 Two days later, I was sitting in front of the 54-inch with a Pepsi in my hand. The wounds and infections had cleared up... just like that... after the antibiotics had failed at first.

 Doctor Alder called it jokingly, “A medical miracle.”

 You could see the puzzlement in his eyes.

 I sat there on the LayZeeBoy, with the ounce of rum in my cola taking the edge off the itch in my right side (Andy had agreed one ounce wouldn’t hurt). The sutures were still in but would be dissolved in a few weeks (or less). The Jays were winning on the tube and life was good...

 In the next few weeks of healing, I found out a few things. The girl whose life I’d saved was Nicole Troyer, a friend of Andy’s. I had met her before but under much more relaxed circumstances. She’d actually come screaming to our door. Andy had taken her in and called the O.P.P. and the ambulance. They thought someone had tried to rape her (I was briefly accused of that!). Nicole couldn’t remember anything after the first bad storm. Some teenagers had been smoking marijuana over by the bandstand: they saw everything, they said, but their stories, interesting (and close to the truth) though they were, were dismissed. Any blood and brain tissue had been washed away by the second storm that had occurred right after my meeting with Marsh and Caleb. The river was dragged but no bodies were found.

 Finally, I think the official story ran that I had stopped in the park and rescued Miss Troyer from two attackers. One of them had been in some type of costume, perhaps a wet suit and mask. I had fired at both but they were able to get away. They had, however, had time to stab me repeatedly before leaving. The police then arrived to find me bleeding to death in the rain. End of story.

 My pistol was confiscated, being illegal in Canada. There were a few other charges against me, mostly firearms-related, but Sade was able to have them dropped.

 Most of the information came from Cochrane who showed up one day to see how I was doing.

 Since he had AB- blood, Andy had donated some of his to make up for what I’d lost. This brought us closer together and made us friends for months.

 To make a long story short: I healed well. I still walked, using a cane to help with the pain on my right side: ribs had been broken as well as the gashes and bruises. I walked around town, looking for the middle-aged man with the full grey beard... but I never saw him. After a few months, I gave up, about the same time as I stopped using the cane. In a town the size of Clarkesville, you would see anybody that time.

 I was “goin’ over town” quite a bit during that search. I’ve talked to the anglers (there weren’t many) as I passed, going north or south.

 I was told the fishing sucked...

[flauntpage]

Hak Job: Five Takeaways (from the coach!) from Canucks 5, Flyers 2

Please support the exclusive sponsor of our Flyers posts, COZZI JEWELERS, located in the Edgemont Shopping Center in Newtown Square. 20% DISCOUNT OFF ALL JEWELERY by mentioning CROSSING BROAD now through BLACK FRIDAY! Before shopping for your girlfriend or wife, shop CozziJewelers.com! $500 off CUSTOM MADE ENGAGEMENT RINGS TOO.

  When you follow sports long enough, you learn that you always have to expect the unexpected.

Sometimes a game will change thanks to something that you swear you’ve never seen before.

None of that was the case for the Flyers on the ice last night.

Nope. Things were pretty much just what we’ve seen before:

Lots of shots, not enough goals, mistakes, untimely penalties, bad goaltending and a fifth straight loss, this time 5-2 to the Vancouver Canucks.

But, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something unexpected that took place off the ice.

It wasn’t from the players, who all were sounding the same frustrated tone you would expect. No one kicking over tables, or spitting fire and brimstone at the state of the team.

So as we trudged down the long hall to the coach’s press conference area, which on most nights feels like walking the Green Mile since we are usually on our way to an interview death sentence, the premise of this takeaways piece was starting to formulate.

This team is broken. Their failures are systemic. It needs a new look. A change of some sort, personnel-wise or otherwise. This team plays like shampoo directions – lather, rinse, repeat.

But then it happened, without warning, and it came so far out of left field that it put aside all preconceived notions about how Tuesday’s loss to Vancouver was going to be forever chronicled.

Dave Hakstol provided frank and accurate insight.

For once, the coach didn’t come across as smug, or as bothered by the questions being fired at him. Instead, he told you what was happening. What was wrong. He identified mistakes being made. He called out his goaltender. He questioned his own coaching decision. He was as as blunt and honest as I’ve ever seen him.

Does this mean he’s turned over a new leaf? That we can expect a change from stubborn stoicism to something more Ken Hitchcockian (more on him later by the way)?

No.

But we want to celebrate this version of Dave Hakstol so much that we’re going to turn over these takeaways to him.

That’s right. Today’s takeaways are brought to you by Dave Hakstol (as well as Cozzi Jewelers).

Take it away, Dave!

  1)  “Tonight it’s not about the offense side of the game it’s about the hardness without the puck.”

Amen Brother Hak! Preach to the congregation!

It’s easy to sit back and watch a game of hockey, track scoring plays, chances, and puck possession. What’s not as easy to track, and sometimes not even easy to see – especially if you watch the game on TV – is what guys do when they don’t have the puck. And that’s where a lot of fault lies with the Flyers.

It’s not going hard to the net and taking away the goalie’s eyes, knowing you run the the risk of getting hit with a shot or get a stick to the small of the back. Just ask Wayne Simmonds.

“We got to get in front of the goalie,” he said. “If the goalie sees it, he’s going to stop it. You got to battle for second and third opportunities. That’s how you score in this league. You take one shot the goalie is going to see it and stop it. I take a stick in the back every power play. If I’m going to be there, I have to be willing to take physical abuse. That’s the way it is.”

To the heat map:

Look where the Flyers were shooting from and look where the Canucks were shooting from. Big difference eh?

But it’s not just in front of the net either. The Flyers lose a lot of board battles on 50/50 pucks. That’s more about determination than anything else. That’s the old “look yourself in the mirror” type play.

The Flyers need to play with an edge sometimes. They used to always play with an edge, but never had the team speed to keep up with the opposition. Now they have decent speed, but no edge. Take Simmonds out of the mix, and who’s the edgiest player in the lineup? It was Radko Gudas, but he’s out of action for three weeks after being over-suspended. Maybe the next guy is Robert Hagg? And he’s as level-headed as they come.

And don’t confuse an edge with intensity. The Flyers have a lot of intense players, from the Captain on down, but they don’t play with any physicality and it’s noticeable. And when it’s this noticeable, they are an easy team to play against.

  2) “Our biggest issue is that we give up too many easy opportunities…”

Shall I show them some examples Dave?

There’s this:

#GottaSeeIt: Daniel Sedin gets a breakaway and shows off his 37 year old hands! http://pic.twitter.com/5PQlwuwOy6

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) November 22, 2017

and this:

Jordan Weal's turnover leads to a Boeser goal. http://pic.twitter.com/l5mKDBOOwg

— Sons of Penn (@SonsofPenn) November 22, 2017

On the first goal, Brandon Manning and Shayne Gostisbehere have a miscommunication and both are out of position which allows Daniel Sedin to have his breakaway.

Frankly, that Ghost Bear-Man Dog was a bad pairing of half-animal nicknamed defensemen all night.

On the second goal, yeah, Weal turned it over, but the mistake here is both defensemen changing at the same time. You just can’t do that, right Hak?

“Obviously you just have to have one D to get the change you can’t have two guys going,” Hakstol said. “That is just the reality of it. So yeah, if we get the puck deep it doesn’t matter as a group of D back there you just have to have one guy come and make a smart line change there.”

Whether that was on Travis Sanheim or Mark Alt is not certain as you can see by the video they both went at the same time, but it appears the Flyers are going to put it on Alt.

Alt was carrying his own equipment out the door after the game as he heads back to the Lehigh Valley. Sam Morin has been recalled and will likely make his season debut tonight against the Islanders.

But it’s not even about individuals, these struggles are team-related and need to be addressed.

“These are just bad judgement I guess,” Simmonds said. “If a D is pinching the forwards have to be back and we have to be back for our D to pinch, so it’s bad judgment.”

  3) “Somewhere, fairly or unfairly we need a save from our goaltender.”

I already miss the days when the hoi polloi of Flyers Twitter were screaming for Michal Neuvirth to start regularly for the Flyers.

Michal Neuvirth has had some good games this year. And he’s had some terrible games this year. While I wouldn’t count last night as terrible, it certainly was on that side of the sliding scale.

Look, the Flyers make so many mistakes that they put a lot of pressure on their goalies. But hockey is a game of mistakes and a lot of times goalies need to erase those mistakes with a save. Some of those chances were tough for Neuvirth last night… but he’s got to make a save from time to time. Hakstol is right.

“I wasn’t as good as I need to be, so the coach made a change,” Neuvirth said.

But, before that he said this:

“It’s difficult not skating and having three days off over the weekend and only having one practice. It’s difficult, but I need to be better.”

He was sort of hinting the time off is what caused him to not be sharp, wasn’t he? Looking for an excuse, wasn’t he?

“That one was on me,” Hakstol said about waiting too long to pull Neuvirth. “I should have done that after the third goal to give our team the best opportunity. Once it gets to four it’s tough to get out of that hole. Our guys tried in the third period but I think the change after three would have been, maybe would have been the spark that our team would have needed. Hindsight is 20/20.”

I’m betting Neuvirth doesn’t get a start for a bit here….

  4) “We have to put the work ethic, the preparation and the togetherness back into our game.”

Hakstol actually said this twice – which means it’s important enough to him that he notices it’s missing.

But really, let’s break down what he’s saying:

The team is lacking work ethic – that’s an indictment of the highest order. It’s suggesting they aren’t playing hard enough. It’s a suggestion that the players are more apt to be passengers on a bus that nobody seems to be driving. That’s pretty damning.

The team is lacking preparation – that’s on nobody but the coaching staff. Hakstol needs to get his own house in order. If a team isn’t prepared, then it’s all on his shoulders.

The team is lacking togetherness – When guys are going rogue in hockey and not pulling on the same rope, that’s a major issue. Teams that aren’t buying in to each other don’t succeed.

The fact that Hakstol said this twice is the most damning thing from an ugly game. Usually when these are issues in sports, major changes are made. I’m starting to wonder if Ron Hextall is doing his best Nero impression and simply fiddling while Rome is burning.

Thanks for all the insight tonight Hak. It looks good on you.

  5) Loose pucks

Matt Read cleared waivers and was sent back to the Phantoms. Replacing him is Danick Martel, who was the Phantoms leading scorer. Unlike Read though, I don’t expect Martel to be sitting in the press box at games. He’ll likely make his NHL debut tonight in Brooklyn.

Ivan Provorov and Jake Voracek scored the goals. That means with the exception of the top line, Flyers forwards have just one goal in the past six games.

Brock Boeser is a heck of a player for Vancouver. Hakstol recruited him to North Dakota, but never had a chance to coach him. So, the Flyers coach does have an eye for young talent.

My favorite story of the day was this gem from Dallas Stars coach Ken Hitchcock. It’s just one small example as to why I tell people all the time that Hitch was my favorite coach to cover in my nearly 20 years being around this sport. He’s blunt. He’s honest. and sees through all the bull crap the league tries to submit the public too.

  Hak Job: Five Takeaways (from the coach!) from Canucks 5, Flyers 2 published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

What if ... the Blues had drafted Jonathan Toews instead? (NHL Alternate History)

(Ed. Note: It’s the NHL Alternate History project! We’ve asked fans and bloggers from 31 teams to pick one turning point in their franchise’s history and ask ‘what if things had gone differently?’ Trades, hirings, firings, wins, losses, injuries … all of it. How would one different outcome change the course of history for an NHL team? Today: Brad Lee of St. Louis Game Time on the St. Louis Blues, in an ode to the great QUANTUM LEAP. Enjoy!)

By Brad Lee

[A flash of light, and suddenly the silhouette of Jarmo Kekalainen is filled with shiny cosmic-looking stuff. When it fades, he’s replaced with actor Scott Bakula (St. Louis native) playing the role of Dr. Sam Beckett. Jarmo (Sam) is sitting at a conference table in the bowels of the Savvis center. Men in golf shirts with winged musical notes surround the table.]

[It is June 23, 2006.]

John Davidson: This is our final meeting before tomorrow’s draft. We need a plan. And I believe we need a defenseman. We’ve got a lot of impact forwards in the pipeline. I have high hopes for the foreign kids from 2002, Alexei Shkotov, Andrei Mikhnov and Tomas Troliga. I like David Backes from 2003. Carl Soderberg I see being an impact player. And that Oshie kid, he’s a real spark-plug.

Larry Pleau: Are we sure Erik Johnson is the guy? He’s set to go to Minnesota for at least a year. What if he likes college? What if he falls in love with golf and drives off in his cart for four years? We’d be wrecked. Let’s go forward. A center. Can never have enough centers. Our plane leaves for Vancouver this afternoon. Of course with a connecting flight through Dallas and another in Las Vegas. So time is short. We need to decide.

JD: Jarmo, what do you think?

Sam Beckett: Well…I. Uh. Oh boy

(Theme music plays)

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”

Sam: Can we take a break?

JD: We just started.

Sam: I need to go to the restroom. (runs out)

(In the bathroom, Sam’s holographic companion Al arrives)

Al: Sam, Sam! Welcome to St. Louis. And the professional hockey team. Now you probably don’t know this because your brain is Swiss cheese from all the leaps you make, but you’ve helped other sports teams. The Cubs. The Cavaliers. Tom Brady’s entire career. You looked good in that hoodie, by the way.

Sam: But I don’t know the first thing about hockey. And is my name really Jarmo?

Al: Yes! You’re Jarmo Kekalainen, the guy in charge of drafting amateur hockey players for the Blues. And Sam, you have the No. 1 pick tomorrow! You have the chance to reshape a franchise that’s never won the Stanley Cup. EVER.

Sam: Ok. Tell me who to pick.

Al: Well, Iggy isn’t so sure on this one. In history, the Blues took Erik Johnson. And he’s a disappointment. He gets hurt and misses a year. He isn’t the same impact player after the injury. He ends up getting traded and has a mediocre career.

Sam: Well that sounds easy, who should we pick other than this Johnson kid?

Al: The computations are astronomical. Determining the record of the Blues with a different player on a roster that puts 12 forwards and six defenseman and a goalie on the ice at the same time is nearly impossible. Even for a super computer. Win a few more games, a few less games and draft position changes every year. And suddenly a talented Russian isn’t available or maybe the team is a little worse and takes a player it feels is better than the guy the team would’ve taken otherwise. The ripples from one change are exponential.

Sam: I have to go back in there. They’re going to look to me to make a decision. HELP ME!

Al: Ok. Here are your options. You could take Jordan Staal. He comes from a hockey family. He’s big and talented. He bounces around a little bit in his career. Or you could take Nicklas Backstrom. Now he’s European. And hockey in North America is very protective of their turf. He’s really talented, but in the NHL he’s played with one of the greatest natural goal scorers of his generation. So you could argue he’s just played with good teammates. There’s another American Kid who likes hot dogs. Or you could pick Jonathan Toews. He goes on to win three Stanley Cups as a captain with his team. He’s a lock for the Hall of Fame. He transformed his team from a perennial loser to a contender every season even when they lose other key players.

Sam: Hey, that kid sounds perfect! Jonathan Toes.

Al: Toews.

Sam: Whatever. Thanks Al. This will be an easy assignment!

(fast forward to the NHL draft stage in Vancouver the next night)

JD: Thank you to everyone from the Canucks organization making this draft night such a pleasure. And the citizens of Vancouver, you’ve been great hosts. We’d like to say hello to all our fans watching back in St. Louis. I’d like to bring up Jarmo Kekalainen to make this historic pick for the St. Louis Blues, the only first overall selection in team history. Jarmo…

Sam: Uh. Hi. With the first pick in the 2006 NHL draft, the Blues select….Jonathan Toes. I mean Taves, North Dakota.

(A gasp goes through the crowd. The television cameras zoom in on a shocked Erik Johnson who thought he was the surefire pick. Al suddenly appears next to Sam/Jarmo on the stage)

Al: Good pick Sam. History is already rewritten. Jonathan Toews doesn’t win three Cups for the Blackhawks in Chicago. They don’t win any of those three. And….wait. This is odd. According to this, the Blues don’t win any either.

Sam: But I thought you said this kid would win the Cup. Wasn’t I here to help win the Cup for St. Louis?

Al: Apparently it takes more than a time traveling scientist doing the work of fate or whomever is controlling your leaps. It will literally take an act of God. But don’t worry, apparently he didn’t want the Hawks to win after all. Bye bye!

(Sam glows and disappears, reappearing in a different body, time and place)

Brad Lee is the editor of St. Louis Game Time. Toews image by @HitchsHat.

PREVIOUSLY ON NHL ALTERNATE HISTORY

What if … the Islanders never hired Mike Milbury?

What if … Dallas drafted the other Lundqvist brother?

What if … Jonathan Drouin’s Tampa time wasn’t so chaotic? 

What if … Minnesota Wild hired Pierre McGuire as GM? 

What if … Florida had traded Roberto Luongo for Joe Thornton?

What if … the Martin Gelinas goal counted for Calgary?

What if … the Oilers never traded for Chris Pronger?

MORE FROM YAHOO SPORTS

[boeserbby]

Only Time Will Tell- Brock Boeser #1.1

about/request: I really wanted to explore a relationship where you are ‘the other woman’ this is the result of that. I’m not sure how long this will end up so…. sorry.

warnings: cursing, cheating, mentions of death

authors note: Let me know any mistakes you see. I can use as many tips with my writing as I can get.

word count: 1996 words

I decided the day I got my acceptance letter that Vancouver was my future. June had held lots of ups and downs that year. To be honest, getting that letter had been the highlight of my summer. It was the first time since my brother Charlie died that I had felt semi-normal. Writing that email back to the dean made everything feel a little more ordinary, at least it did for a little bit. Telling my parents was a little harder. They seemed happy, as happy as you can be to have both children leave within a year of each other. Of course there was a huge difference between me and my brother leaving: mine wasn’t final. I guess they were just glad to see me a) going to college, especially after turning down that full ride from University of Minnesota; b) I was acting more like myself from before the accident; and c) that I hadn’t- as my therapist says- ‘gone into the drugs path that claimed so many others who lost their twins’. Bullshit if you ask me.

    The day I got the letter was the same day that my brother’s- my dead brother, that is- best friend got drafted. Brock Boeser was one of the guys my family “adopted” in (my brother’s friends became like family not too long after he befriended them). They were always together which in turn meant I was always with him, but Brock was always different from the rest. He never treated me like a little sister like so many other of Charlie’s friends had. To him I was his honorary best friend. I held that title whenever Charlie was sick in bed or, the more often the case, they needed someone to be goalie. Growing up I was just happy to be with them. Some of my old friends always said their siblings held them at arm's length. Charlie and I were different. We were best buds who happened to be friends with the same people. 

    Brock getting drafted was bittersweet. Of course it was happy times, Brock and my family had remained close in the year span between Charlie’s passing and the draft. It was also a reminder of what could have been. Before the accident, Charlie was ranked #65 in the world. People had been coming from all over to watch him play. Scouts from universities, OHL team, NAHL teams, and even a few from NHL saw him play some of the best hockey. They had talked to both him and my parents about his playing and how far he wanted to go. 

    “All the way, baby,” he would say with that awful frat boy smirk. Those scouts thought that’s exactly where he would go too. They told him they saw him rising higher up in the draft come time to be picked. 

    It was hard seeing Brock getting selected by the Canucks. For one, that was where I was going to spend the next couple years going to college. I was going 1,400 miles away to escape people from my town, yet here I was going to the exact same place as the person I most wanted to escape from, next to my mother and father that is. But Brock had already committed to North Dakota all the way back in February. Plus Vancouver was a big city, it is 7 times larger than my hometown of Bloomington. There was no way we would see each other. 

    At least that had been my hope, and it had worked for nearly 2 years. Until my mom did what she does best and messed it all up.

    “Mom? It's only-” I paused to check my watch, “- 3:15. Why are you calling so early?”

    “Honey!” she said in her cheery voice which meant I was in for some trouble. “You’ll never guess what happened yesterday.”

    I sat down on my chair ready to hear about another stupid thing Brenda did at work or how my father sat on a fish hook again, “What?”

    “Brock got called up!” she exclaimed.

    “Wow,” I said my voice was mixed with actual excitement and that of what you would say to your children’s “wonderful” macaroni art project. This wasn't news to me. I had seen all over Instagram and had gotten the notification from the NHL app I had on my buried deep within phone. 

    Even if she heard the tonality of my voice my mother ignored it, “I know! Jess and him are flying up tonight I told them you could show them around.” The way she said it seemed like I had no choice in helping out Brock and his mother. Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t busy or anything but it was hard seeing him right away after the accident and even now. It was like Charlie’s death had been the axe splitting the log that was our friendship in two. 

    But if there was anything that growing up in Minnesota had taught me it was that being nice made things a hell of a lot easier. “Of course,” I said. “What time are they flying in?” I didn't live too far from the airport, maybe 20 minutes.

    “ They should be flying in about 4:10 in Gate C,” she stated. I check the time again noting I had about 30 minutes.

    “Okay, I’ll text Brock and tell him I’ll pick them up,” I said getting up from the couch. I grabbed my coat from the closet by the door and scooped out my keys. Winters here weren’t as bad as back home but the cold still gets to you. 

    “Alright, I’ll call you later?” she voiced.

    I said yes and hung up as I walked out of the elevator into the parking garage. As I slid into the seat of the car I texted Natalie, my best friend and roommate, to let her I know I would be out until late and one to Brock letting him know I would be waiting by Gate C when they arrived. The cold inside the car was enough to make me wish I used that remote car start my friends installed for me for Christmas. I sat shivering as the car’s heat slowly made the temperature inside a little more bearable.

    I had only been inside Vancouver International a total of maybe 7 times. Once  when I got here, 3 or 4 times picking up my parents when they came up for a visit and the rest for when old friends needed a tour guide on a layover. The thing about airports though is that they are almost all the same. The outside may make you think the insides would be different but nope. All have the same look and feel, and maybe the same carpet,. It was annoying, but also super helpful. I sat waiting for Brock and his mom to get through customs.

    Part of me worried that we would have changed too much to recognize each other when we did meet up. It would make things awkward to hug someone you hardly recognized and sit there pointing out all the differences in each other. Another part of me, the larger part, worried that we wouldn’t have changed at all and that I would have to look into the eyes of my deceased brother’s best friend’s eyes. Now that’s a heavy thought.

    “Oh my goodness,” I hear a voice say behind me, “Y/n, you… you look so grown-up!”

    It had been about two years since I heard seen Laurie Boeser, but I could recognize that voice from 10 miles away. I got up from those awful plastic airport chairs and turned to give my second mother a hug. Stepping back I saw the boy who still looked like the kid I spent most of my time with growing up. Now though he looked bigger, tougher and more like a hockey player. He still had that blonde hair he got from his dad Duke and his smile shown identical to that of Laurie’s. I gave him a hug as he struggled with holding bags of all sorts. 

    “Hey guys,” I said, politely smiling. “How was the flight?”

    “It was amazing!” Laurie starts. “Brock got us into first class so the flight attendants are all ‘Could I get you sparkling water and warmed nuts, Ms. Boeser?’ and getting us blankets.”

    “I mean you do look young enough to be Brock’s sister,” I say.

    Laurie playfully swats in my direction, “Oh please stop.”

    After catching up a bit more I offered to take some of the bags Brock was holding and showed them to the car. I could see from the corner of my eye Brock looking at me as we made our way through airport parkings and even as we strapped in the car. I think he too was worried about thinking of what to say, especially with how we left things before I left. Lets just say Charlie wouldn’t have been happy with what had happened. To be honest I wasn’t too happy with what happened. 

    Laurie and Brock were staying about 10 minutes away from my apartment. We dropped off their luggage and I showed them a little bit of downtown Vancouver. It was fairly late by the time we grabbed food at a hole in the wall pizza shop and walked a bit of the boardwalk by the ocean. I dropped them back off at the hotel room with a promise to Laurie we would go get breakfast when Brock went to morning skate the next morning. By then the car company will have delivered the rental car to the hotel so I wouldn't have to drive Brock there and pick him up.

    When I got back to the apartment Natalie had claimed the big sofa and was watching the mini marathon of Harry Potter movies. 

    “What were you up to?” she questioned.

    “Nothing?” I said grabbed a handful of chips before flopping on the loveseat.

    “Who was it? Was it that weird guy from Chem? Nick.. no David?” she prodded. One thing to note about Natalie, she's intense and everything that is yours is hers too. 

    “You mean Arnold? And no it just someone I used to know. Isn't this the one where Harry kills the big snake at the end?” I said trying to deflect.

    “It's called a basilisk. Hold on, you’re trying to change the subject,” she said. “Which means that you don't want me to know who it is, harsh.” 

    “I’m not doing anything. And it's not that I don't want you to know who he is-” I started.

    “So it’s a he, huh” she interrupted. “Wait its that Bruiser kid isn't it?

    “It’s Boeser,” I corrected.

    “So it is him!” she said sitting up a bit more.

    “I…. um,” I tried to say.

    “Y/N it's okay,” She slinked over to me. “Did you talk to him about Charlie yet?”

    I slouched a little in her arms. Natalie knew a lot more of my demons then most people. She knew some of the struggles I went through losing Charlie, she knew the pressure I put on myself after he died and she knew how poor my relationship with my parents is. I let her in on more things then I usually feel comfortable with but there was something about her that made opening up really easy. “No, his mom came up with him to help him get settled so I haven’t really gotten to talk with yet.”

    “Maybe you should see if you two could meet up tomorrow to talk, let some off your chest,” she soothed. 

    “We’ll see, I think for right now though I’m just going to leave it,” I said. “At least until he gets settled in more.” I promised myself I wasn't going to let this go, once Laurie left we were going to talk out everything that happened, including the kiss we shared.