Breakaway

Chapter 16 - Breakaway

And all of that meant I needed to be scoring, more so than ever before.

We were still right in the thick of the playoff race.

Somehow, Calgary was falling apart more than we were. They'd lost six straight and had pretty much been eliminated from the race. If Phoenix didn't pick up at least a point in every game from now until the end of the season, they'd be out, too. But we were still fighting tooth and nail for that eighth spot with Vancouver, Dallas, and Nashville.

All signs pointed to the final playoff spot not being decided until the very last day of the season. Maybe even the last game of the season. Which, coincidentally, we would be playing at home. By the time our game started, most of the others going on that night would have already been decided.

I couldn't let myself think too far ahead, though. I couldn't worry about that last game of the season when we still had four others between now and then. And we had Casino Night tomorrow.

"Don't forget, tomorrow night is not optional, and it is black tie. Brush up on how to deal blackjack, boys. And remember, it's about raising money. Let's make the fans happy." Scotty tossed a stack of pamphlets on a table near the front of the room—most likely containing blackjack rules. "Study up if you don't already know how."

It had been another rough practice. For a while, I'd thought Scotty was going to put us through a bag skate, kind of like that famous scene in the movie Miracle. I don't think bag skates ever have the sort of effect the movie tried to make you believe they could. At least none of the ones I'd ever been through had. Pretty much they just wear you out and piss you off. They're not really a way to bring a team together, but that doesn't stop coaches from thinking maybe this time it will.

It was too late in the season for that kind of thing, anyway. That's an early-to-mid-season trick coaches pull when teams aren't performing on the ice. With just a little over a week left in the season, it wouldn't make a ton of sense. But then again, it felt like Scotty was grasping at straws. It'd been a rough first year on the job for him, and it wasn't getting any easier.

Scotty cleared out of the dressing room, and the other coaches followed after him. They didn't seem to want to hear the groans coming from the guys. I couldn't blame the coaching staff for that. We'd been on a skid, lately, and the last thing some of the boys wanted to do was dress up and play nice for people. Yeah, it was for charity. It was for a good cause. But the timing was awful.

I made a mental note to talk to Jim Sutter about that sometime after we were done for the year. It would make a hell of a lot more sense to do the big charity events earlier in the season, when we weren't so beat up and broken down, sometime when we didn't need to conserve every spare bit of energy we could for a big push to the end.

Babs looked over at the stack of pamphlets Scotty had put on the table and sat down on the bench beside me. He started taking off his skates. "I've never played blackjack before. Don't have a fucking clue."

"You don't have to play blackjack," I said. "You just have to learn how to deal. It's easy. Besides, the people coming are there more to see and talk to us than they are to really play the games. Let 'em see your dimples, and you'll have the most popular table."

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. One of these days, the kid would have a clue. For now, it wouldn't hurt anything for him to not understand his own appeal.

It was an annual event here with the Storm—our big fundraiser for the Storm Foundation. We all got dressed up and talked and schmoozed for the night, and in return people paid a lot of money for the opportunity to be there. There were other things going on during the course of the night, too: a silent auction with things like getting to go on a road trip with the team next year, a video game booth where they could compete against a few of the boys, that kind of thing. Babs was auctioning a day where a kid could take him to school instead of the prom date we'd tried to talk him into. And of course, there was plenty of food and drink for everyone.