Saved by Jack Falla Read Free Book Online Page B

like children.
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    We beat the Isles 3–2 Saturday night and Packy canceled Sunday’s practice so he, the assistant coaches, and Madison Hattigan could trim the roster from thirty players to twenty-five. I suppose that’s when the Mad Hatter surprised everyone by announcing he was adding a player. The player was Cole Danielson, a mouthy twenty-year-old punk who wore his orange-dyed hair in a mullet, stood a well-muscled six-three, 225, had the acne and nasty temper of a steroid user, and carried a reputation as being some kind of fistic hell for the Johnstown Chiefs of the East Coast Hockey League. The ECHL is two steps below the NHL, and the only reason a roided-up moron like Danielson was within a hundred miles of an NHL camp was to audition as a goon. Well, that and to help the Hatter put pressure on Kevin Quigley.
    Quigley was in the last year of a three-year deal that paid him $575,000 a season, which is light money in this league. But Danielson—like dozens of other marginally talented hit men—would come even cheaper. And rumor has it that Hattigan gets to pocket 10 percent of the difference between the NHL salary cap and our team’s actual payroll, always a few million dollars under the cap. So Quigley is a guy forever on the bubble, only as good as his last fight.
    A fighter is like a nuclear weapon—you don’t have to use it but you’d better have it. Or as Packy said when we signed Quig five years ago after we’d been pushed around by Philly in the playoffs, “We should’ve bought the dog before the house got robbed.”
    Today’s tough guys have to be more than brawlers. They have to be able to play. Quig takes a regular shift on our second line.
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    There was no undercard that Monday at practice. We went right to the main event. I was skating around lazily before the coaches came on the ice when I saw Danielson come up behind Quigley and tap him on the left shoulder. “Hey, Quigley, just so ya know, I don’t start nothin’ I don’t finish,” Danielson said.
    â€œYou asking me to dance?” Quigley said real loud, so we all turned our attention to him. Quig slowed to a stop behind one of the goals and dropped his stick, helmet, and gloves on the ice, a silent invitation to Danielson to do the same. The rookie dropped his gloves and stick and then slowly—reluctantly, I thought—took off his helmet.
    There was no sparring. Quigley, who’s at least four inches shorter than Danielson but built like a mailbox, bull-rushed the rookie, pushing him backward across the ice and slamming him into the doors to the Zamboni entrance. The unlocked doors swung open and Quigley and Danielson went rolling down the ramp and onto the concourse, where they toppled a pretzel kiosk, knocked over a stack of empty beer kegs, and flailed at each other—Quigley getting all the better of it—until they slammed against a large blue trash bin labeled “ RECYCLABLES—INTERMINGLE. ” The truck-sized garbage can overflowed with plastic bottles and aluminum cans. By now Quigley had committed an assortment of atrocities on an overmatched Danielson. The fight should’ve been over except that Kevin doesn’t fight like Cam. Cam fights for tactical reasons, to redress legitimate grievances and to right miscarriages of justice. Kevin fights to hurt people.
    In an attempt at a grand finale, Quigley tried to throw Danielson into the recyclables bin, but the bin tipped over, spilling hundreds of cans and bottles onto the combatants. So Quigley grabbed Danielson by the shoulder pads and flung him into the now half-empty, sticky-wet, smelly container, emphatically ending pugilistic competition for the morning.
    â€œSorry about the recyclables,” Kevin said to the three janitors surveying the wreckage they’d have to clean up. “He should go out with the regular trash. He’s