All-Star Pride by Sigmund Brouwer Read Free Book Online Page A

was near the window where Nadia had gone to get our tickets. And he was standing beside her, his hand on her shoulder, leaning down and whispering in her ear.

chapter eleven
    From the opening minutes of game three in St. Petersburg, I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger on skates. Nothing was going to stop me.
    I played a dozen hard shifts in the first fifteen minutes of the game. I banged Russians into the boards each and every time they so much as sniffed at the puck on my side of the ice.
    I knew I was doing a good job because every time I stepped onto the ice for anothershift, the Russian crowd began to whistle at me, their way of booing. It wasn’t the kind of loud whistling you do with your fingers in your mouth, but the soft whistle of putting just your lips together. With thousands of people whistling that way, it sounds almost scary.
    I ignored them. I knew my job, and I was doing it. Although we hadn’t yet scored, we’d kept steady pressure on the Russians, and they’d barely had a couple of shots on the net.
    I felt good too. I was sweating freely, my lungs were huge air pumps and my muscles were loose and relaxed. I stepped onto the ice for another shift. The clock showed just over three minutes left in the first period.
    The face-off was to the left of the net in our end, with our line the same as it had been since the beginning of the series. Jeff Gallagher was at center, Miles Hoffman at right wing, me along the boards at left wing. Nathan Elrod played left defense directly behind the face-off circle, and Adam Payne at right defense covered the front of our net.
    The ref dropped the puck, and Jeff picked it clean out of the air, pulling it back to Nathan. He took the puck behind the net. Klomysyk, the giant right winger, charged after him. I waited along the boards, open in case Nathan decided to pass it in my direction.
    He did.
    Unfortunately, Klomysyk—between Nathan and me—got just enough of the puck to slow it down as it went past him. The puck wobbled and skidded as it trickled along the boards toward me.
    Not good. I’d have to wait far too long for the puck to reach me.
    It gave the Russian defenseman time to leave his position on the blue line and flash toward me. I knew he was coming, but there was nothing I could do except swing my body around and try to trap the puck in my skates. Better to hold on for another face-off than try to do something fancy and risk losing the puck.
    I held my position at the boards and concentrated on keeping the puck trapped when the defenseman hit me. He bounced offmy shoulders and took another run. It wasn’t him I was worried about. I knew Klomysyk would return from behind our net and take a full charge at me in revenge for the hit I’d given him in game one.
    Nathan later told me that Klomysyk had the butt end of his stick out about a mile when he hit me.
    I didn’t see it.
    It felt like I’d been rammed by a rhino horn, followed by the rhino itself. Something brutally hard slashed across my right cheekbone, just beneath my protective visor. My head cracked into the glass above the boards, and I spun around and toppled face-first onto the ice.
    I pushed myself up. I couldn’t figure out why the ice below me was sticky and red. Then the pain hit, and I realized how badly I’d been cut.
    I saw more red. Not the red of my blood— of which there was plenty spurting from a gash across my cheekbone—but the red of the temper I tried never to lose.
    I roared as I scrambled to my feet.
    There was a confusion of players all around, and I bellowed as I flung them aside. Wherever he was, Klomysyk was going to pay. I saw him on the other side of the linesman who had whistled the play down and was skating in to see if I was okay. It was wrong. Very wrong. But I roared again and charged toward Klomysyk.
    The linesman put his hands up to stop me, then changed his mind and jumped aside.
    I must have looked like