Game 7
“Fuck this. I’m going out for air,” I said.
Despite being outside on the porch, I could still see the
TV— the hockey players scrambling back and forth on the ice. Despite there
being 11 minutes left in the third period, this game was over, done. Fucking
Bruins couldn’t even make a good game out of a game 7, I thought. I walked back
inside and sat on the couch to find the score had changed.
“They got one huh?” I asked.
Billy ignored me and stared forlornly at the TV. His playoff
beard would soon be gone until next year. In nine minutes the agony would just
begin. 8 minutes and then 7 and the countdown began at two minutes. Now the
nails were being driven into the casket.
The Bruins pulled their goalie, as they should have and I
counted down the seconds, dreading the thought of Phil Kessel celebrating a
playoff victory on Boston ice. I
looked at my phone and begin to text my friend.
“Lucic scores!”
I looked up at the TV, instinctively toward the game clock. 1:22 remained in the game.
“Figures. Too little two late again. Why can’t they play
like this all the time?”
Billy scratched his beard, rubbed his hands together and
then touched his lucky Bruins towel, absent from the last two losses.
The face-off ensued and they pulled their goalie again. We
were on the edge of our seats following every pass, shot and hit. Suddenly,
miraculously and magically somehow someway, by divine intervention or blind
luck, Patrice Bergeron tied the game and sent it into overtime. We jumped up,
hollering and high fiving. Now it was a new game entirely and the nerves that
had been absent since before 4-1 were alive and kicking all over again.
Billy looked at me. “Take my picture,” he said.
“Why?”
He handed me his cell phone set for camera.
“Mikey and Jones shaved their beards in the third. Hahaha. I
want to show them I still have mine!”
Well you all know what happened next. Bergeron won it, just
as dramatic and the two of us, me and Billy, two grown men screamed like little
girls in a fun house and woke the sleeping children. Certainly a great memory,
one to embrace briefly until the next series and a new round of blissful highs
and agonizing lows.
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