Page 133 of Breaking the Ice

They had about four good pushes towards the net. The last attempt was by far the best. Ivan set up the great way he always did, calm and steady, Brody and Ramsey on the back end of thezone, and Elliott grabbed the puck after a sweet little back pass and charged in.

In front of him, Zach felt Mal tense, and yell, “Shoot it, Ell,” and then he did, sliding around to the far side of the goalie and flicking the puck right in.

Mal leapt to his feet with the rest of the guys on the bench, celebrating, and if Zach hadn’t watched hundreds of hours of tape and practices and games, he might not have noticed that Mal wasn’t quite as happy as he might’ve been.

Even when they’d been sniping at each other, fighting constantly before they’d gotten together, Zach had never seen Mal be less than thrilled whenever Elliott found the net.

Gavin pulled him aside as they walked to the locker room in the first intermission. “What did you think?” he asked.

Zach didn’t roll his eyes. But he wanted to. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “That was all Ell, and we all know it.”

Gavin didn’t say anything, just made a humming noise, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Elliott might have done it even better if Mal was out there,” Zach said.

“Sure,” Gavin scoffed. “Better than that beauty of a goal.”

“Don’t tell him that, his ego’s already inflated enough.” Zach hesitated. “And don’t say it in front of Malcolm either.”

Gavin looked up at him, surprised. “Why not?”

“I told you, he feels that the root of this decision is you telling him he’s not good enough.”

“That’s crazy,” Gavin said. “He got moved to the second group so he could make thembetter. I told him that. Multipletimes.”

Zach nodded. He knew. He’d said it too.

But then he remembered the tenseness in Mal’s shoulders. The way Elliott occasionally made offhand comments in the locker room about Mal’s dad. He never said straight out that he was an unsupportive shithead, and clearly he wasn’t as bad as Morgan Reynolds either, but there was a pain point there. Some old wound that had never really closed, and then he and Gavin had gone and started pressing on it.

“What do you want me to do?” Gavin said with a resigned sigh. “I’m not gonna switch things around in the middle of a game.”

“Send them out first next power play.”

Gavin looked at Zach like he was crazy.

“We’re up two to zero, and we’ve got a really solid defense. It won’t kill you to give Mal that.”

“I don’t want to take our foot off the gas,” Gavin said under his breath.

“Then don’t. Send them out there with the motivation to put the pedal to the metal. Mal’s got plenty of fire. He feels like he’s got something to prove, now.”

Gavin looked like he was considering it. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

Zach nodded, knowing he couldn’t push any harder. It was his responsibility to put the special teams together and plan their execution but Gavin’s job to deploy them. He’d made his feelings clear enough and part of why he’d known Gavin would be perfect to coach this team was that he was willing to be unconventional at points.

Theywereup to two to zero, so Gavin only made a handful of comments in the locker room after they walked in. Zach went over and checked in with Finn, who seemed solid and totally locked-in.

Ramsey flagged him down. “How do you think it’s going?” he asked, under his breath.

“Seems like we got some juice tonight,” Zach said.

Ramsey nodded. “You gotta know—anyone could’ve been out there on that power play. That was all Elliott.”

Oh, Zach knew it. Him knowing it wasn’t the problem.

“I’m working on it,” Zach said.

“Are you though?”