I was selected, for my second straight year, to the American Team for the International Ice Hockey Federation's World Under 20 Championship. We all just call it the World Junior Championships. The tournament is being held this year, like it is every year, from December 26th to January 5th. Except this year, it's in Philadelphia. Camp broke earlier today after the coach was satisfied with setting up four lines, three defensive pairings and naming our starting goaltender. So, what did I do when camp broke early? I packed up my room at camp, hopped on the first plane to National and when I got to D.C., I went home to shower, change and get ready to go to this winter dance at my former high school.
Now, right now, I'm in a cab on my way to that high school because I promised a very beautiful girl that if I could make it, I would make it. The cab pulls up and I sit in it for a few seconds watching the door to the gym. It's obvious that I'm a few minutes late. I may even be as much as an hour late but I've got a good excuse. See, I had to catch a bus from Lake Placid to Albany and then a flight from Albany to National, so I've had a pretty full day and I think the fact that I made it here at all is amazing. I throw a few bills at the cabby and climb out. I do up the two top-most buttons on my jacket and walk toward the gym doors. I can't believe I'm here; a part of me really doesn't want to be because that part has been going non-stop since training camp started at the beginning of September.
I wander around the gym getting random pats on the back from faces I vaguely remember and shaking hands with names I don't remember. See, one more thing happened before I left Lake Placid today, USA Hockey named me the Captain of this year's World Junior team, the only seventeen year-old to ever win the honour. And it was the story that led the local news tonight, so all the kids in this gym know. The crowd clears a little and I can see her through the maze of people. She's wearing this great green dress that perfectly accentuates her skin tone and drapes itself ever so slightly scandalously over her curves. The thin little straps rise over her shoulders to flatter that elegant neck.
I couldn't look anywhere near on par with her if I was given three days and a team of Hollywood stylists. I slowly strut over to her. Her back is to me. I lay my hands on her shoulders and she turns around to look up into my eyes. "I wasn't sure that you would make it." She whispers.
"I told you I'd be here if we broke camp early." I reply, giving her a big hug.
"Seven and a half hours ago, isn't exactly early." She's toying with me a little now.
"Earlier than planned." I reply. "But how late am I for this thing?"
"Two hours." She answers simply. "But I forgive you."
"Good to know." I chuckle. "How much time is left?"
"Just under an hour. But don't worry about it, I know you've got a curfew and we're all gonna be on a flight to Philly tomorrow." She's got this weird kind of glazed look in her eye that I don't quite recognize and to be honest, it's freaking me out a bit.
"How did you manage to get our families to spend the Christmas holidays together, I can imagine both my dad and yours fighting that pretty hard." I say because…well, as much as both of them get along, neither of them seem like group Christmas kind of people. Then I remember it doesn't matter if the dads aren't group Christmas kind of people, the moms are and the moms are the bosses……Wait a second, I get to spend the next two weeks in Philadelphia with Sasha in hotel rooms on the same floor. Considering what she's wearing right now, my ability to maintain self-restraint should be rewarded with a medal.
"It's very simple. I asked my mom and my mom thought it was a good idea, so long as dad gets to go to the Wall tomorrow. She talked to your mom, who also thought it was a good idea, and now we're spending two weeks in Philadelphia." She smiles at me fondly. "I don't get to see you that often, it's kind of nice to hang around with one of your friends."
I'm trying to pay attention to what she's saying, I really am but all I'm getting are these mental images in my head that involve me taking her to some far secluded part of this school, pushing her dress up around her waist, my pants down around my ankles and earning a XXX rating.
"Hey Brad, nice to see you, man." Jimmy Roberts comes over to see us with a bubbly little redhead hanging off his arm. "I heard the news on the radio on the way in, you're officially Captain America."
"I guess." I laugh nervously.
"Well congrats; make sure you take it to the Russians and the Canadians, alright?" Jimmy gives me a firm handshake.
"We'll protect the country's honour." I joke and then I feel a huge burst of air taken out of me as I'm tackled from behind. I look up from the ground and see Arleigh standing over me. He extends a hand to pick me up off the ground. "You gotta stop doing that."
"How the hell are ya?" He gives me a big hug. "What the hell am I asking? You've got 71 points in thirty-seven games with Kitchener and you just got named Captain of Team USA, I'd say you're pretty fuckin' good."
"Well, you're headed to Annapolis next year; I'd say you're in pretty good shape yourself." I give him a friendly punch to the shoulder. The old group gathers around me for a few minutes, and that few minutes turns into a few more and then a few more. Sasha and I never even dance
We're all on the plane on the way to Philly. I'm reading through the latest issue of The Hockey News and listening to music. Sasha's asleep on my shoulder. Mr. and Mrs. Rabb are in the seats behind us and my mom and dad are seated in front of us. It's like being uber-chaperoned. Mom glances back over the seat and smiles, because she obviously thinks this is cute. She taps my dad on the shoulder. He looks over his seat and chuckles. I feel a sudden jolt to the back of my chair that knocks Sasha's head off my shoulder and wakes her up.
"Sorry, turbulence." Mr. Rabb laughs and smiles for a second behind me and I have to raise my magazine to cover my face and hide the fact that I'm laughing too. I hear a soft tap that tells me that Mrs. Rabb just slapped Mr. Rabb across the arm.
The plane lands a few minutes later and there's a group of guys waiting for me at the terminal gate. I recognize all four of them because I play hockey with them on a regular basis and because they all made the American World Junior team with me. Carey Moore, Nolan White and Spencer Kraft all play alongside me with the Kitchener Rangers and Peter Ashby played on my line in High School and his Erie Otters play in my division in OHL.
"You duck out for fourteen hours the day before Christmas Eve without so much as a phone call?" Ashby taunts me before he gives me a hug. "I see you brought your own cheering section by the way."
"They're a small but determined group." I chuckle. Sasha steps forward and gives Peter a quick hug. Jack moves up and punches him in the shoulder. "As for everyone else, meet Nolan White," I point to Nolan who looks like he can't believe he's meeting my dad the President, "Carey Moore," Carey nods at my parents, " and Spencer Kraft." Spencer politely steps up to shake my parents' hands.
"When does Tim's plane get in?" Peter asks my dad.
"Should be any time now." My dad answers fondly. There really is no doubting that Jack, Tim and I are fraternal triplets. Jack's six-foot-four, I'm six-foot-three and Tim is maybe five-foot-eleven. Jack and I both look like athletes, Tim's pretty lanky. But you could put Jack's IQ on top of mine and the number still probably wouldn't be as high as Tim's.
The flight from Logan to Philly was due in about twenty minutes after ours. So the ever-expanding group of us sat and waited for a few minutes for Tim before departing for the Hyatt Regency hotel. Now, while this might seem like Philadelphia Vacation to some, remember that I've got to spend the next two weeks with Team USA, so the amount of time I will spend with my family in friends will be kept to a minimum. When we get to the hotel, I find out that the floor that the team is staying on is actually right below the one that my family and the Rabbs will be staying on.
"You're bunking with me and Ashby." Carey guides me toward the room. "We got Sweden the day after Christmas and they're gonna be comin' at us with all we can handle, you know that?"
"I know, the coach thought up a shutdown pairing to take care of Hedlund?" I ask as we push open the hotel door.
"He's thinking Schaefer and Sterling for defence against Sweden's big line, but he wants you, me and Carey playing against them up front." Ashby plops himself down on his bed. "We got two days to prepare."
It's the first game of the tournament for us. We've got the late game in Pool B today as the Finns and Czechs squared off earlier and the Czechs took the boots to the Finns in a 4-1 game. We've got the Danes tomorrow, the Finns the day after and then we have a one day break before we wrap up the round robin against the Czechs. Today though, we've got the Swedes and they're the heavy favourites. The Swedes top line is Magnus Hedlund who was last year's second overall pick to the Montreal Canadiens; Team Captain Viktor Grendberg who was a seventeenth overall pick to San Jose and Mattias Sundstrom who's last year's second round pick of the Vancouver Canucks. None of the players on our top line have been drafted to the NHL yet but all are highly touted prospects for this year's draft.
Playing defence for us, we've got big Marty Schaefer who went in the first round to Boston last year and is an Alternate Captain with the Peterborough Petes in the OHL. And we've got Devin Sterling who plays with the University of Minnesota. Grendberg and I go helmet to helmet on the wing, waiting for the face-off. I'm 6'6" on skates and Grendberg is 6'4", we're both Captains and neither one of us is going to back off in this game. Ashby wins the face-off and draws the puck back to big Marty Schaefer. Marty handles the puck for a second before flipping the puck up to Carey. Carey's got great speed and he's using it to fly up the left wing until a Swedish defenseman strips him of the puck.
The Swedish defenseman sends a twenty foot pass across over to Grendberg. The big Swedish Captain picks up his pace as he cruises up ice. After Carey got stripped of the puck, I turned around to back-check. I see Grendberg coming down the ice with his head down so I play him slow, like a predator waiting in the tall grass. Grendberg moves to cut into the centre of the ice and I step up and bury my shoulder in the middle of his chest, knocking him to the ice. I scoop up the puck and fire a ten foot pass up to Ashby who starts another rush toward the Swedish net.
Ashby slides a quick pass across to Carey. Carey pump fakes a shot and tries to streak around a Swedish defenseman who keeps him to the outside. He knows that the Swede is going to prevent him from getting a clear and strong shot on net so he looks back over his right shoulder and flips the pass to me. He knows that the Swede is going to set up like a screen in front of the net. I take two long strides, tee up a slap-shot and send a rocket on net. The puck sneaks just under the crossbar and into the net behind the Swedish goalie. 1-0 for Team USA. The 6,000 American fans in the crowd are on their feet and my line-mates mob me and pat my head as we head back to the bench. The American team is comparatively close. I played with most of these guys in the National Team Development Program but to compete in this atmosphere is a real thrill.
"Nice pick up, Cap'." Carey pats me on the back as we sit on the bench.
"That was a hell of a pass, man. I'll have to return the favour." I chuckle as we watch the replay on the jumbo-tron dangling over centre ice. We go through the rest of the first period trying to ride the high of getting the first goal until the Swedes reply with four seconds left in the period. It was a good period from both sides but the coach wants us to play a tougher game. He wants guys like me and Carey and Nolan White and Marty Schaefer to take the body to the Swedes and try to get them to back off. You force the Swedes to take their shots on goal from outside and our goalie has a better chance of stopping them.
Carey, Ashby and I start the second period on the bench as coach sends out our best shutdown line against the Swedes' top line. Our shutdown line is a bunch of American hockey players from the NCAA. They're good players, they skate well enough and they'd be serviceable playing with us in the O, but they're not superstars. After about fifty seconds, they head for the bench and my line hops over the boards for the first change of the period. Coach sends us over the boards for a total of about eight minutes per period. With two minutes left in the period, something in the air changes when we go over the boards. This 1-1 game has gone on too long. It's time for some old-time hockey. I grab the puck from Hedlund and go bursting up into the neutral zone. Only one of my team-mates is with me and that's Carey Moore.
I sail into the Swedish zone, my USA jersey billowing at my side. I fake the shot, Carey knows what I'm going to do and he heads for the front of the net. I move to skate around behind the net but as I come around behind the net, I flip the puck up into the air and over the net. Carey watches it come down toward him and just as the puck is about to hit the ice, he swings at it with his stick, batting it into the net behind the Swedish goalie.
I skate over and give Carey a pat on the back, he's the reason that Team USA is now ahead of the Swedes. We've practised that play in practice a few dozen times but we never get it just right. The fact that we got it right in a game is nothing short of outstanding. We head over to the bench to be congratulated by our team-mates. The hardest thing to do in hockey is play with the lead. If you're losing, you just let your natural competitive edge take over and you'll skate like a demon. If you're winning, you have to try really hard not to coast, and if the team looks like they're about to coast, then your coach and your Captain has to kick their ass.
We hold the one goal lead until the end of the second period when we head to the dressing room. I pull my helmet off and run my hand through a mop of sweat-drenched hair. "Good period, guys." I huff and look around the room. We've had the hell beaten out of us in what is expected to be the closest game of the round robin for us. "We've got them down on the floor and we've got our foot on their throat. Make no mistake, when we head out there for the last twenty minutes of this game, they're gonna thrash and gulp for air to try and maintain some kind of breathing room in this tournament. You cannot give them any. You've got to cut off their air, you cannot let them get their game going, we're gonna win and this is the only way how to do it." I look around the room and see a bunch of nodding heads. For the rest of the intermission the guys do random things while coach speaks to them. They'll tighten their skates or adjust their elbow pads or something.
The buzzer goes off in the rink and we line up to head back out to the bench. The rest of the team sits on the bench but coach sends my line out on to the ice. "Remember what you said, it's easy to put your foot on their throat but it's a whole other business to cut off the air. Cut off the air." Coach taps my helmet and points me to my position for the opening face-off. Ashby loses the draw to Hedlund and the puck is drawn back toward the Swedish defence.
The first shift passes pretty uneventfully with a lot of neutral zone action. We climb back over the boards on to the bench for about fifty seconds between shifts. About halfway through the period, the Swedes get a power-play when one of our defensemen, Cam Cross, takes a boarding penalty. We've got to withstand constant pressure now for the next two minutes. Ashby loses another draw and the puck goes back to the point for Sweden. One Swedish defenseman fakes the shot before passing it off to his defensive partner. The Swedes cycle the puck around the top of the zone for a few seconds trying to get a good shot off with enough bodies in front of the net that the puck might bank in.
We've set up in a diamond pattern to prevent cycling down low. The puck moves over to the right defenseman to winds up a shot and I'm about a step behind the play. I can only think of one thing to do. I dive feet first to block the slap-shot. The puck hits my shin guards at full force and ricochets back down the ice. I'll limp back to the bench for a line change but in a few seconds, I'll be ready to go again. We successfully kill off the penalty and we're back to full strength but trying to get the puck in behind the Swedish defence this period has proved a near impossible task.
There's five minutes left in the period and I've got the puck heading into the neutral zone. I see Carey ready to streak up ice on the left hand side and I lob a pass up to him. He takes it and tries to head in around the Swedish defence when one of the defensemen pulls his feet out from under him. The referee's hand goes up to indicate a penalty. The Swede gets two minutes for tripping and we go to the power-play. Ashby wins the draw and sends the puck back to Spencer Kraft on right defence. Spencer plays with the puck for a second before sailing a pass over to his defensive partner, Marty Schaefer. Schaefer fakes a shot before sending the pass back over to Spencer. Spencer sends a one-touch pass down to me at the half-boards. I handle the puck for a few seconds, manoeuvring and spinning with it in an attempt to shake my defensive cover. I fake a pass back to Spencer that the Swede, Sundstrom, seems to be tricked by and make a rush toward the corner of the net. I look over my left shoulder and see Marty Schaefer creeping in from the point. I flip a pass through the crowd in front of the net over to Marty who tees up a slap-shot and burns one into the back of the net. 3-1 USA. Marty slides on his knee pads to celebrate his goal, hamming it up for the crowd. His line-mates, including myself all mob him to celebrate before heading back to the bench to join the team.
The last three minutes of the game are played with slightly less intensity but our goaltender, Kevin MacMillan, makes some excellent saves in our end. The game ends with us winning 3-1. The two teams line up on the blue-lines at the end of the game for the player of the game presentations. The Swedes go first because they lost and Magnus Hedlund is named player of the game for Sweden. He shakes the hand of the head of USA Hockey who presents him with the award. It comes time to name the player of the game for Team USA and the announcer calls out Carey's name. That's a great pick. Carey got an assist on my goal, he scored the game winner and he drew the penalty that gave us the power-play that enabled us to lock up the game. Carey shakes the hand of the head of USA Hockey and Magnus Hedlund before heading back to join Team USA on the blue-line. We stand there watching our flag be raised to the rafter and as is tradition, sing along at the top of our lungs as our national anthem is played. One game down, five to go.
We return to the hotel like Napoleon parading down the Champs Elysees. The hotel staff applauds us as we enter the front door. Busboys are patting all the guys on the back as we head for the elevator. I veer off to speak with my family for the first time since last night. "Hell of a game today, son." My dad congratulates me.
"Thanks, pop." I grin, I'm a little tired but I'll try to keep my mood up.
"So, you've got the Danes and the Finns over the next two days, think you can take them?" Jack challenges me.
"I like to think so. By the way, Timmy," I turn to taunt my brother, "one of the guys on the team plays hockey for Yale and he says that he can't wait to haze you and the other members of the rookie class next year." I chuckle, but Tim's not amused. I laugh again. "Hey, Sash, can I talk to you for a second?"
"Yeah." She nods and heads over to speak with me in a separate elevator on our way up to the room. The doors to the elevator close and I pull the emergency switch. "You're not gonna go all porno scene on me now are you?" She jokes. Like I needed that, I can't think about sex right now.
"No, one of the guys on the team plays hockey for Harvard. His dad went to school with someone who's currently on the admissions board at Harvard. Anyway, I had him look into it and, now promise not to scream, you're about to receive early acceptance to the Pre-Med program at Harvard University. Congrats." I smile and give her a hug. This is a hell of a year for the group. Arleigh's going to Annapolis, he's got the grades and he's an All-American full back with three Virginia state championships; Tim got early acceptance from Yale for three reasons: first Timmy's got really good grades, second Timmy's a pretty decent hockey player in his own right and Yale wants to stay competitive, and third, it looks good for them to admit the son of a popular former President. And now, Sasha's gotten into Harvard. Really, it's only me and Jack that have no idea what we're going to do next year. In their preliminary rankings, NHL Central Scouting had me listed as the third ranked skater in the Ontario Hockey League, so I'm guessing I'll be drafted in June but I have no idea by whom. Jack has always wanted to go to Annapolis but both Boston College and Penn State have offered him full rides to play football because Jack's been a first team all-American quarterback the last two years and has two Virginia state championships. One thing's for damn sure, the world's gonna be a much different place for us by the end of June.
