Summary: Having a surrogate coach changes many things, as the Vikings are about to find out. AU for MD2. No romance this time, just a lot of fun with the boys from Iceland. Not related to my previous fics, but still featuring my OMC, Mikael Stahl. Rating for some language. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: No ownership or profit on my part, never fear.
Author's Note: Just a fun idea that I couldn't ignore. Again, the events of this short story are in no way connected to my earlier Sympathy Series, but it is my intention that Mikael's character and background remain the same as portrayed previously. Thanks for reading!
A Surprising Substitution
Chapter 1
"Hey, Mikael?"
Gunnar Stahl knocked softly on the door of his brother's hotel room only after the door was already open. That's what Mikael got for handing out the room's extra key; that's what he got for coming to Los Angeles, period. But the long, dark lump on the bed didn't stir.
The captain of Iceland's hockey team stepped further into the room, motioning for his longtime friend and teammate Olaf Sanderson to follow. They each took a seat on opposite sides of the bed, sharing an incredulous look when even that didn't wake the elder Stahl.
"Mikael, wake up." Gunnar shook his sibling by the shoulder. "Come on now, wake up!"
"What? What's going on?" Mikael's voice sounded like it had been dragged across a mile of gravel. He raised his head long enough to catch a glimpse of the clock and then groaned, clenching his eyes shut again. It was four o'clock in the morning. "Damn it, you guys…I've only been asleep a couple of hours. I am so jetlagged."
Granted, there was a nine-hour time difference between California and Germany, but Olaf still challenged that declaration. "Really, are you sure? Or were you just out too late last night?"
There was a pause before the answer grudgingly came. "Both. Now leave me alone so I can sleep."
"Hey, hey, don't fall back to sleep yet." Gunnar jostled him again to prevent it. "Mikael, will you coach us in the Championship this weekend?"
His brother's blue eyes cracked open again. "Huh?"
"Coach is in the hospital right now," Olaf began to explain. "He needs emergency surgery to have his appendix or his gall bladder removed…something like that. At any rate, he won't be recovered in time for the Championship, and he won't let the doctors put him under until 'substitute coaching arrangements' have been made."
"Uh huh. And which of you two idiots volunteered me for the job?"
"Neither of us; he knew you were here and thought of you all on his own. Don't you feel special?" Gunnar reached out to ruffle his brother's already-disheveled hair and very nearly got a finger broken to reward his efforts.
"Go away!" The besieged Icelander pulled an extra pillow over top of his head, trying to shut out the intruders.
"Just say 'yes,' and we'll be gone," Sanderson promised him. "That's all there is to it. It'll be fun, you bossing us around all over the place; just like old times. Come on, don't be such a grouch."
Mikael's face reemerged with a scowl. "Listen, Einstein – the Championship is tomorrow night. I just got here. I don't know anything about your competition, and I don't even know half the players on your team."
"So what? That's more than anyone else knows! As for competition, Marria's been scouting the American team with Coach all week; I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you everything she knows."
"Then why doesn't she just take over coaching for a couple of days?"
Gunnar stepped in now. "Because even though she's smart and she's a good trainer, she's not a hockey player at heart."
"Well, technically, I'm not a hockey player either," Mikael pointed out with a wide yawn.
"Not anymore, maybe, but you still know the game inside and out. You're like our only hope."
"Oh, shut up! Don't you dare go all Star Wars on me."
"Come on, Mikael," Gunnar persisted. "We really do need you, and it's only for one match. Please? Don't make me make Olaf beg."
The older Stahl brother groaned again, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. "How many team practices do you guys have left between now and the Championship?"
"Just our last one," his sibling supplied. "It's scheduled for this morning…at six thirty."
"Not if I'm coaching, it's not." Mikael heaved a deep sigh, defeated at last. "All right, all right, fine. You get today's practice pushed out to a significantly later time, and I'll do it."
Both teenagers jumped up, exulting in their success. "Awesome, thank you! Coach will be able to rest in peace knowing you've taken charge of the situation."
"Olaf, he's not dying," reprimanded Gunnar.
"He might be; you never know."
"And I want film, too!" their reluctant new coach called after them. "Of your games and theirs, as many as you can find."
"Okay, sure, no problem," his brother placated him. "You can go back to sleep now, Mikael, we're leaving. Sorry to bother you!"
Mikael just huffed. "Yeah, right." He punched his innocent pillow a few times for good measure, then rolled over and strove to forget that the past ten minutes had ever occurred.
Two young Icelandic hockey players burst into a hospital room occupied by a pained Wolf Stansson, an anxious Marria, and a couple of impatient doctors.
"I told you we could convince him!" Olaf announced jubilantly. "He says he'll do it."
"Just like that?" Marria eyed the team's star forwards warily, distrusting the apparent ease of their endeavor.
"Well, he does have a couple of demands," Gunnar acknowledged.
"Of course, he does." Stansson sighed, shaking his head and grimacing.
"First of all, today's early morning practice needs to be rescheduled."
"Fine, fine," the former NHL player acquiesced. "You all could use a little more sleep after this, anyway."
Olaf continued, "And secondly, he wants game tapes to study."
"Tell him to stop by the referees' office, down the hall from my own. They've got film, roster listings, anything he'll need."
"Yeah, we'd better find him some skates, too," Gunnar mused. "Practice won't go over too well if he doesn't have any."
"I'll go see what times are still open for the practice rink this afternoon," Marria volunteered. "You boys go back to your dorm now and get some rest. Your old coach won't be needing our company anymore today."
Coach Gordon Bombay clapped his hands to secure the attention of his players at their team meeting Friday morning.
"All right, guys, there's been…an interesting development that took place overnight. Apparently there is some sort of karma at work in the world, because Wolf Stansson went in for emergency surgery a few hours ago. I'm told everything went well, but now he won't be available to coach in tomorrow night's Championship."
His announcement was met with a mixture of laughter and shameless cheers; hardly an appropriate response, perhaps, but Gordon could hardly blame the kids.
"They'll have to forfeit without a coach, right?" Goldberg deduced excitedly. "Please say they have to forfeit, so I won't have to be their dummy for target practice again!"
"Actually, they kind of got lucky on this. It turns out Gunnar Stahl's older brother showed up here in L.A. yesterday, and he's going to be their substitute coach."
"But can they do that?" Adam Banks frowned, perplexed, as his teammates murmured amongst themselves. "I mean, is the guy even qualified to coach at this level? My brother sure wouldn't be."
"Yeah, mine neither," Russ Tyler concurred. It was still an amusing thought to consider, though.
Bombay shrugged. "All I know is that he used to play for Stansson back in the day, so he's got Wolf's full vote of confidence."
"Oh great," Ken Wu muttered. "So in other words, we shouldn't expect any change from them at all."
Team USA played with their beach ball later that afternoon, blissfully unaware of the audience they had just gained.
"Looks like we still have a scheduling conflict here," commented Gustav Uberjavik from where he stood with his teammates, looking in on a surprisingly occupied practice rink.
Marria bristled defensively. "They assured me it would be free now."
"Well, it wouldn't be a problem at all if someone hadn't needed to sleep in late," Olaf snickered.
"Hey," protested Mikael, "you know you all enjoyed the extra sleep, too. But it's all right, I'm sure we can work something out here. You guys do laps at this end to start warming up, and I'll go talk to them."
His players, accustomed as they were to being confrontational at every opportunity, met his words with resistance.
"Go on, skate!" he reiterated, shooing them out onto the ice ahead of him.
Their obedience was reticent, at best; and as the Vikings appeared, Team USA could no longer ignore their presence. Watching apprehensively as their bitter rivals skated half-laps, the Americans mustered together in a group on the opposite end of the ice. When he skated past the abandoned beach ball, Mikael used his hockey stick to toss it up in the air, then caught it one-handed. He pitched it easily back into Bombay's arms once the two of them had met close together in the middle of the rink.
Behind them, Connie nudged Julie with her elbow, remarking, "Hey look, it's an attractive Icelander who actually knows how to smile without looking mean; I didn't realize such a thing existed. That must be Gunnar's brother. How old do you think he is?"
"He's got to be at least eighteen, otherwise I don't think they'd let him coach," her teammate whispered back. "But he looks more like he's in his early twenties, if you ask me. Much too old for us, I'm sure, so don't be getting any funny ideas."
"Coach Bombay?"
"That's right." Gordon reached out to shake the younger man's hand, caught a bit off guard by the other's relaxed, friendly demeanor. "Coach Stahl, I'm guessing?"
The Icelander shook his head, chuckling a little. "No, not Coach – just Mikael."
"Nice to meet you, Mikael. So…it looks like we've got kind of an issue here with the ice time."
"Have you been here long?"
"No, just a few minutes."
Mikael sent a conspicuous glance back at the clustered American players, all of whom were dressed in casual street clothes. "Since you don't seem to be working on anything too critical, why don't we split the ice for another twenty minutes or so? That will be long enough for us to warm up without getting into any specific preparations for the game."
Gordon nodded in agreement. "Yeah, sure, that sounds fair enough. We'll get out of here in about fifteen minutes."
"Thank you. Although, you should still be careful with your beach ball. I cannot guarantee its safety if it comes over on our side again."
Mikael then returned to his players, choosing to join them in the remainder of their laps. It was the universal privilege of coaches to gloat from afar while forcing hard, tedious labor on their teams, but Mikael Stahl was still too accustomed to being a player himself to stand aside. More importantly, he simply loved being on the ice and relished every opportunity to skate – opportunities that had decreased drastically in recent years.
Olaf quickly caught up to him, looking disgusted. "Did you really just go and be all friendly with them?"
"Why not? Look at them; they already know they hate you guys. No sense adding fuel to the fire at this point. And who knows? If we play nice for a little bit, maybe it'll lull them into a false sense of security."
"Or maybe they'll just laugh at us, using only half a rink," grumbled Amssalik from behind.
Mikael turned around to face him, now skating backward. "Grow up, it's only for a few minutes; then they'll be out of here. Besides, they won't be laughing tomorrow night when they have to settle for a silver medal."
Meanwhile, the American players were equally skeptical about the arrangement.
"What, we're just gonna like…share the ice with them?" Portman made it sound as though stepping barefoot on a cactus would have been preferable.
"Hey, we should consider ourselves fortunate," Bombay countered rather sternly. "Can you imagine how badly this whole situation might have ended if Stansson had been here instead?"
The beach ball games eventually did resume, although with hardly the same volume or gusto as before. Frankly, it seemed as though Team USA was relieved to step off the ice when the time came; the Vikings experienced a similar relief, albeit for entirely different reasons.
For the bulk of their practice, Mikael had each player go at the goalie individually, with himself as the lone defender. There was simply no way he could pass up this perfect opportunity to hit the lot of them! Their instructions were to knock him down and then advance the puck to attempt a goal – if they could get past him.
A task easier said than done, as Mikael's exceptional skating allowed him to make adjustments going backward as fast as the younger boys could skating forward. He also gave them tips on maintaining balance through contact, after the vast majority ended up sprawled flat on ice themselves. Gunnar managed to stay upright past his brother, yet he still lost control of the puck in the process. Only Olaf, the biggest and most aggressive player on the team, was able to successfully knock their new coach off his skates.
"And that's how you do it," Mikael laughed as Weyden offered him a hand up.
Sanderson smiled wryly down at him. "That's also payback for all the bruises you've given me in the past."
Off to one side, Gustav sidled up next to his team captain. "It looks like your brother hasn't lost his edge over the years. Are you sure he doesn't play hockey anymore?"
Gunnar found it difficult not to let a little pride slip into his voice as he replied, "That's what he keeps saying…but I'm starting to think he still has some way of sneaking in a quick hockey fix every now and then."
Author's End Note: Coming up next, Olaf gets his hands on Mikael's credit card, and some individuals stay up a little too late studying the competition. Until then!