Panic in Pittsburgh Read online

  Sarah dropped the puck as planned, and Travis picked it up, faking a second drop pass to Dmitri as they cut across each other’s paths. But Travis still had the puck and was coming down fast on Fahd, who was rapidly backpedaling, and on Nish, the other defenseman. Travis faked the shot and held, swooping around behind the net. He figured, “Why not?” and tried the scoop – and it worked! The puck was lying on his stick blade.

  Travis looped hard around the net, neatly sidestepping Nish at the same time. He saw Jeremy Weathers move in goal to take away the shot from Dmitri, presuming Travis would try a back pass.

  But Travis held the puck in the air, paused, then fired it back hard as if he were holding a lacrosse stick, not a hockey stick, and the puck flew into the side of the net just over Jeremy’s shoulder.

  “No fair!” Nish was screaming.

  “Illegal!” shouted Fahd.

  Travis and Sarah and Dmitri were all high-fiving and laughing as Jeremy dug the puck out of the back of his net. Nish, red-faced and glaring, was clearly upset at Travis’s trick goal.

  Muck came over, whistle dangling around his neck, his expression giving away nothing. It was impossible to tell if the coach was pleased or upset. Muck was always difficult to read.

  “Just keep something like that to practice,” he said to the three linemates. “We don’t make a habit out of humiliating our opposition.”

  Message received and noted. Travis looked back at his coach and nodded.

  And Muck winked.

  He had enjoyed the little trick as much as anyone.

  4

  Muck’s old hockey buddy had arranged a special rate for the Screech Owls, so for once they were put up in a hotel, three to a room, rather than being billeted out to families. Billeting had its good side – Travis had made several new friends that way – but being together was best. The Owls could eat together, hang out together, play together, and come and go from their games together.

  The hotel was in Station Square, once the location of an old railroad station directly across the Monongahela River from downtown Pittsburgh. Travis’s room, which he shared with Nish and Fahd, looked out over the water and the riverboat casino, and if they cranked the window open, leaned out, and looked to their left, they could see old Fort Pitt where Pittsburgh’s two rivers joined and, beyond that, the yellow bridges that took cars and pedestrians over to Three Rivers Stadium, where the Pirates played baseball in summer, and massive Heinz Field, the Steelers’ football stadium, where the Peewee Winter Classic would be played.

  Sarah, Sam, and Jenny Staples, the Owls’ second goaltender, had a room on the other side, facing Mount Washington. It wasn’t a true mountain, but it was still twice as steep as any hill around the Owls’ hometown of Tamarack, which had its own tourist lookout called the Mountain.

  Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington had an interesting feature – a sort of elevator that rose on a steep track all the way up to the streets and restaurants on top of the high hill. Another one came down farther along Mount Washington just across from the sports fields. Travis had seen one before, called a funicular railway, which slowly moved up and down the cliffs of Quebec City while passengers looked out and felt their stomachs churn. In Pittsburgh, they were called Inclines, and the Owls could hardly wait to travel on them, whatever they were called.

  Nish, as usual, wanted to be first into the room so he could stake out the best bed. Once the elevator stopped, he raced ahead down the hall of the recently refurbished hotel with his key card already out.

  Travis and Fahd arrived at their hotel-room door to find their friend red-faced and gasping.

  “I can’t find where the key goes in!” Nish whined.

  “Use your superpowers,” Travis joked.

  Nish sneered back at him, unimpressed.

  “It’s too dark,” said Fahd. He brought out his cell phone and selected the light app to illuminate the door.

  “There’s no slot!” Nish said.

  “We’ll have to go back down,” Travis said, trying to take a leadership role.

  “What’s up, boys?” a voice called from down the hall.

  They turned to see a large woman by an open door with a bundle of sheets in her arms. Behind her was a cart she was loading with laundry.

  “We can’t get in!” Nish said as if the world were coming to an end here on the sixth floor of the Sheraton.

  The woman laughed as she walked toward the three boys. She shook her head as if she’d seen this scene played out a dozen times.

  “Watch,” she said.

  She pulled a key card from her belt, a retractable line stretching as she passed the key over the handle with a sweep.

  The boys heard clicking and falling levers, then a quick buzz. The woman cranked the handle and the door opened like magic.

  “Neat,” said Travis.

  “There’s no slot,” she said. “The door recognizes your card and opens automatically. Brand new, just last week.”

  “Open Sesame!” said Fahd, amazed.

  “Wazzat mean?” asked a befuddled Nish.

  “Ali Baba,” Fahd explained, as if he couldn’t believe Nish had never heard the expression.

  “Who dat?”

  “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” an exasperated Fahd continued. “That’s how they opened the cave: Open Sesame!” He clapped his hands sharply to indicate it happened by magic.

  “Ali Baba had magic powers?” Nish asked.

  Fahd shook his head in disgust. “Obviously.”

  “Then the Iceman should know him …”

  5

  For the first match in the Peewee Winter Classic, the Screech Owls were scheduled to play a local team, the Pittsburgh River Rats, which meant there would be a good home crowd. Mr. D even said that the local television outlets would be there to interview players and shoot some of the action. The Owls were pumped.

  They were to gather in the lobby. Nish – having claimed the best bed, having turned his mother’s carefully packed suitcase upside down and dropped the contents all over the floor like a front-end loader dumping a load of dirt, having stunk out the bathroom and checked the window and the walkway below to see how it was set up for water bombs, having stashed his precious chocolate bar supply in a bottom drawer of the room’s only dresser, having combed his hair four different ways in an attempt to look like Elvis Presley – was finally ready, and the three teammates made their way to the elevator and down to the lobby, where other Owls had already gathered.

  “You are not going to believe this!” Sarah said when she saw Travis.

  She seemed super excited. Her blue eyes were flashing. Travis raised his eyebrows and waited to be told the news.

  “We think the Stanley Cup is here!” Sam practically shouted.

  “What?” Travis said.

  “WHERE?” Nish roared.

  “Data says that’s the guy who carries the cup,” Dmitri said, pointing over toward the front desk, where there was a short lineup to register.

  Travis thought he recognized one man waiting in line. He had seen him in commercials that had run all through the last Stanley Cup playoffs. Travis was almost certain he was the guy who put on white gloves and carried the trophy out onto the ice for the presentation. This was the Stanley Cup everyone recognized, but Travis, like the rest of the Owls, knew it wasn’t the original – that historic trophy was on permanent display in the Hockey Hall of Fame. They knew this because they had been there when thieves tried to steal it. The Stanley Cup carried by the man in the white gloves was a replica, with silver rings added below it to hold the names of the players on the teams that won the championship. It was this Stanley Cup that the players hoisted when they won, and this Stanley Cup that the winning players and coaches were allowed to take to their hometowns for a single day during the summer. Travis had often seen photographs of those visits, and usually the guy standing in line at the hotel reception desk was there, too.

  Travis saw Data wheeling in the Owls’ direction. He was alw
ays amazed at how quickly Data could move his chair. There had been a time after the accident when Data had needed help getting anywhere in it, but no longer. Data was as mobile as anyone on the team and still very much a Screech Owl, even if he no longer played.

  Data spun his chair to a sharp stop in front of Travis. He seemed very excited.

  “I found it,” Data said.

  “Found what?” Travis asked.

  “Come with me – but be quiet.”

  The small group of Owls, led by Data in his wheelchair, slipped quietly across the lobby to a luggage cart near the elevators. Across the top of the velvet-covered cart was a brass bar, and from the bar hung a plastic suit bag. Below it was a suitcase, and to one side was a large dark-blue box with silver handles, metal corners, and a heavy lock. Stamped on the box was “PROPERTY OF HOCKEY HALL OF FAME” complete with an address and telephone number.

  Beside the luggage cart stood a bellhop.

  Fahd couldn’t resist. “Is that the Stanley Cup?” he asked the bellhop.

  “No idea, young man,” the bellhop said. “No idea at all.”

  The Owls turned their attention back to the front desk. The man they thought they recognized had his room key now and was walking toward the elevators. The bellhop was opening the elevator doors and pushing the cart in.

  “Is that the cup?” Nish asked.

  “What cup?” the man replied with a big smile.

  “The Stanley Cup,” Sam said in a voice that almost seemed slightly impatient.

  “I don’t know,” said the man, still smiling. “What do you think?”

  “We think it’s the cup,” said Travis.

  “Ever seen it before?” the man said.

  “We saw it when we went to the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Sam said.

  “I’m the guy who saved the original cup – the one they keep at the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Nish shouted. “Wayne Nishikawa. N-I-S-H-I-K-A-W-A. I was in the papers!”

  The man looked carefully at him, puzzled. “Then what’s the big I for?” he asked, pointing at Nish’s superhero T-shirt. “Wayne doesn’t begin with an I – nor does ‘Nishikawa.’ Is it the name of your team?”

  “I’m the Iceman!” a red-faced Nish practically screamed.

  “Our team is the Screech Owls,” Travis told the man, who seemed oddly amused by Nish’s ridiculous behavior.

  “You must be in the Winter Classic, then,” the man said as he stepped into the elevator behind the scowling bellhop.

  “We are!” shouted Sam and Sarah together.

  “Well, then,” the man said. “Good luck.”

  “Is that the Stanley Cup?” Fahd shouted.

  “Maybe,” the man said with a wink. “Maybe it will show up at Heinz Field for the final. And just maybe the winners will have their pictures taken with it. But I’m not saying the Stanley Cup is or isn’t in this box.”

  The Owls screamed in approval as the doors shut and the man, the bellhop, and the mysterious blue box were gone.

  “Did we just learn that the winners are going to get to raise the Stanley Cup?” Dmitri asked. “Just like in the NHL?”

  “I believe so,” said Sarah.

  “I saved the cup!” Nish was shouting, his face about to burst with frustration.

  No one paid him the slightest attention.

  6

  The Owls took the hotel shuttle across the closest yellow bridge, wound through downtown, and then took another bridge across to where the baseball park and the football stadium stood side by side at the large Y where the rivers met.

  Muck had the shuttle driver stop in front of the baseball park and told the Owls to get out and gather on the sidewalk.

  “We’re a hockey team!” Nish protested. “Not a baseball team.”

  “Over this way,” Muck said, ignoring the whining defenseman.

  The coach led the way to a large bronze statue of a baseball player. It looked like he had just hit a home run, his left hand about to drop his bat to the ground, his legs already turned toward first base, his eyes watching an imaginary baseball sail through the sky toward the stands.

  “This is Roberto Clemente,” Muck said.

  “Never heard of him,” Nish muttered into his own shoulder. Muck still caught what he said.

  “Well, you should,” the coach said. “Fifteen times an all-star when he played for the Pirates. League MVP. MVP of the ’71 World Series.”

  “Wow!” said Fahd.

  “Impressive,” added Data.

  “But that’s not why we’re here,” Muck continued. “MVPS in sport are a dime a dozen. It’s MVPS in life that matter.”

  “Meaning … ?” Sarah asked.

  “Roberto Clemente died trying to help people,” Muck said. “He used his baseball fame and money to help his fellow Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans everywhere. He gave baseball equipment to kids too poor to buy gloves and bats and balls. He gave food to those who had none.”

  “How did he die?” Fahd asked.

  “There was an earthquake in Nicaragua,” Muck continued. “People were dying and desperately in need of help. Clemente chartered a plane and filled it with food and clothing, but it crashed into the sea right after takeoff. His body was never found. But his memory has never been forgotten, because he always put others ahead of himself. I want you to remember that. Now, back on the bus.”

  In stone silence, the Owls all walked back to the waiting vehicle. No one said a word. Nish, his face beet red and seemingly about to burst, was stopped from saying something stupid by a sharp jab in the gut from Sam’s elbow.

  As Travis took his seat for the remainder of the short ride to the frozen football stadium, he could not help but think of the man staring after the imaginary baseball. Roberto Clemente had everything anyone could ever dream of – fame, riches, the adoration of sports fans – and yet helping people he had never met from another country had been more important to him than all of that.

  Travis vowed if he ever became a superstar in hockey – a Stanley Cup winner, a playoff MVP – he would never forget the lesson of Roberto Clemente.

  Mr. D broke the silence as the shuttle came to a stop outside Heinz Field. “Let’s go, Owls. We got us a game to win!”

  7

  “Sixty-five thousand and fifty,” Data said, after Dmitri skated over and asked how many seats there were. “Six … five … zero … five … zero!”

  Data sounded a little impatient, almost as if he couldn’t believe Dmitri had forgotten. But Travis understood why Dmitri had asked: he hadn’t forgotten at all, he just wanted to hear it out loud and let it sink in. Sixty-five thousand and fifty…

  The Owls had played in front of big crowds before – at the Quebec International, at Nagano’s Big Hat arena, at the Olympic ice surface in Salt Lake City, at the world’s biggest minor hockey tournament in Ottawa – but you could take all those impressive crowds together and sit them in Heinz Field and you would still have seats left over. Travis could not imagine so many people. He wondered how many would come to see the final. For the early rounds, the crowds would be small, and they’d seem even smaller in such a cavernous arena.

  The Owls were already on the ice, Travis hurrying to pass Jeremy as soon as the little goaltender skated out ahead of him. Travis raced around, tapping the back of the net with his stick as he passed and digging in deep as he churned through the far corner. He could hear his skates roaring on the outdoor ice. He loved that sound. Different than indoors, always louder, almost as though the outdoor ice had a thin layer of brittle ice above an air pocket, where sound echoed as if in a tunnel. It was hard to describe. It was different, it was magnificent, it was magical.

  Travis watched as the rest of his teammates spilled out of the doorway, each with his or her own special move as they hit the ice. Dmitri with his little stutter step; Sarah with her deep bow, touching one glove to the ice and then to her heart; Lars Johanssen looking up as if someone might be watching from the rafters, or in this case the clouds; and Nish doin
g his silly spinnerama on his second stride out, twirling around completely as if he were in a ballet instead of a game of hockey. Only this time there was something different about Nish. Something only his teammates knew. Beneath the red Screech Owls jersey, beneath the big A on his chest for Assistant Captain and the number 44 on his back with the name “NISHIKAWA,” Nish was wearing his new superhero shirt.

  The Iceman had come to play.

  The Owls already had pucks in motion when the Pittsburgh River Rats took to the ice to the cheers and whistles of the crowd. The River Rats even had a high school marching band taking up three rows of seats behind their goal, and the band was louder than the fans.

  Travis was ready. He clipped the crossbar on his very first shot in warm-up. Sarah was ready. Travis had watched her, stick over her knees, bent over in the corner. He knew what she was doing: “envisioning” her first shift, imagining every single thing that would happen before it happened. Dmitri was ready. Travis slammed his stick down in salute as Dmitri went in, faked a shot, switched to his backhand, and roofed the puck over Jeremy’s shoulder. Dmitri was always ready.

  The referee blew his whistle for the starting lineups to come to center ice for the face-off. Travis felt a tingle go through his entire body as he took his position opposite the River Rats’ big right-winger. The player was supposedly fast and tough, and Muck had said Travis would have to pay particular attention to him if the Owls were to keep him off the scoreboard. Travis liked an assignment like this just as much as scoring a goal or setting one up for Sarah or Dmitri.

  Sarah looked at him, then at Dmitri, then back at Travis. He knew the signal. She would use a backhand swipe to try and send the puck ahead and to her left, onto Travis’s wing. If he could beat the big winger, he’d have the puck heading into the River Rats’ end.