36
They Can and They Will
Ottavia
Nine months later.
The players had yet to take the ice, but a palpable anxiety lingered in the arena. Rock music blasted over the arena speakers, trying but failing to get the listless crowd pumped up.
“Euch.” McKayla grimaced. “You guys feel that?”
All of us WAGs (that’s hockey jargon forwives and girlfriends,and after nine months of dating Dakota, believe me, I’m now a walking rolodex of hockey jargon) hunkered down in our usual spots in the family suite. We were clad in our matching gameday uniforms: a glittery Vegas Sin “shirtsey” (that’s a portmanteau ofshirtandjersey,and no, I wasn’t lying about that lingo thing) with our man’s name and number on the back. The back of my shirtsey read17 Easton,and yes, I brimmed with pride whenever I donned it.
That’s because, despite being the team owner, I tend to think of myself as a WAG first and foremost. Not only was I immensely proud of everything Dakota has achieved this year, along with my role in supporting and helping him get there, butI also cherished my bond with the rest of the WAGs. They’re my absolute best friends in the world. Ilovethese hilarious, amazing, and let’s be real, totally crazy ladies.
Isabelle shivered. “Awfulvibes in here,” the captain’s wife said. “What’s going on?”
“They’re nervous,” I said.
“Pft.” Sofia rolled her eyes. “Have somefaith,people!”
I agreed with Sofia, but honestly, the fans had good reason to be nervous, too. When we won, it was because we managed to eke out a victory by a single goal. WhenBostonwon, though? They stomped us right out of the gate. This series had been a roller coaster of emotion with crazy highs and the lowest of lows.
Despite the uneven nature of the back-and-forth games, you have to give the Sin boys some credit: they’d snaked out a 3–2 series lead and had a chance to put the Brawlers away for good in Game Six. But Boston wasn’t an easy out—and with the Brawlers up against the ropes, they fought back hard and evened the series at three games with a decisive 6–1 victory.
Now, it all came down to this; Game Seven. Whoever won tonight went home with hockey’s holy grail, the Stanley Cup.
Thelasttime the Sin played a Game Seven, of course, was last year’s infamous first-round loss to the Dallas Devils. That blowout, and the embarrassing aftermath, seemed to linger on everybody’s mind …
But that was last year.
Thisteam was different, even though many of the faces were the same. Really, there was only one big change from last year’s team to this year’s team.
My gaze lifted to the owner’s box, a space once haunted by Dad’s looming figure as he menacingly paced back and forth during games. But that was in the past. Every game, we invited kiddos from the local children’s hospital to fill the box—and allyou could see up there now was beaming smiles from the bravest little souls I’d ever known.
It feels like the least I could do, since I wasn’t using the owner’s box—I preferred to sit with the rest of the girls, among the people in the stands, where we felt like we had our finger on the pulse of the game, and where we could do our thing.
“We gotta lighten the mood up in here,” I said.
The girls agreed. We set down our phones and our cups, and soon every last WAG in our suite was shouting and clapping in unison,
“Let’s go, Ve~gas!”
Clap, clap, clap clap clap!
“Let’s go, Ve~gas!”
Because if the boys were going to get this thing done and win the Cup tonight? They needed tobelievethey could do it. And if they believed they could do it, then we needed thefansto believe they could do it, too.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking:Whoa, Ottavia, hold up. They’re playing for the Stanley Cup?!
Yup! In my very first year as owner, Dakota and the boys went on anamazingrun, which has taken us right to the very edge of glory.
Dakota’s play was ahugepart of our success this season. He was always putting pressure on himself to be a goal scorer like his dad was—but coming into this year with a new mindset changedeverythingabout his game, and his reputation around the league.
Once Dakota stopped putting pressure on himself to be as good as his dad? He didn’t care about his stat line anymore. Hisfocus on the ice completely shifted from always thinking aboutgoals, goals, goals,to justwinning.As a result? Dakota not only accepted his role as a third-line center, heembracedit, and reinvented himself as a shutdown center.
(Shutdown center:a center whose primary role is to face the other team’s best players with the goal of suffocating their offense. A good shutdown center excels at his job by simply keeping the other team off the score sheet. Agreatshutdown center does that, but also chips in a point or two for his own team.)
