Game Day

 

Saturday 5:00am. Time to get out of bed and get ready. The usual flurry of activity and an uneventful trip in the early winter. He looked at his watch in the cramped confines of his mom’s truck -- 6:30 am.

He stepped out of the vehicle, shuffling along with a transport comfortable version of his hockey gear on. There was time to go from street clothes to hockey ready in the locker room, but it meant being on the road that much earlier and sometimes there wasn’t always a spare room in the middle of a tournament. Sometimes hockey meant getting the last of your gear on at the bench, five minutes before game time.

It wasn’t like that today, though the thought wasn’t unfamiliar to him. The coach said the usual things, up-building platitudes about playing and having fun, with the not so subtle hint that winning by pulling together felt really good too. There was a feeling in the locker room that today things would work out this weekend. Not just a vibe, or a streak of wins, but a familiarity that things were already in the bag.

It didn’t take long to figure out why. On his first breakaway he just knew the goalie would dive left, so he shot to the right. Goal.

He could see in his minds’ eye that the number 43 would punish an early goal with a barely legal check. So at the last second he looked up, saw him coming and dodged away toward the center of the ice. 43 barrelled forward, with nothing to cushion the crash, into the boards and went down heavily, substituting out.

43’s replacement was faster and more focused on the game, but closing his eyes for a moment he could see 23’s skating pattern on the ice. Neon streaks left a kind of weird afterimage of where his opponent would be and he nudged his skating pattern accordingly. 23 got the puck in a flurry of quick passes, but he was already there to stop him.

The rest the tournament played out in much the same way. Having a strong sense of where the puck would go off the last faceoff, he skated over to the empty space.

The game froze. With three minutes left in the third period of the final game, and up 5-1, he figured the contest would pretty much be over. He threw off his helmet and reached for a spot above his left eyebrow and pulled off a small box.

The rink vanished and he was back in bed holding a slick plastic cube with a slightly stinging patch on the side of his forehead.

The iHockey was never meant to be that powerful. It was supposed to simulate games for people that were injured, tricking parts of the brain into playing a kind of mental strategy match-up against itself. It would keep the mind active while the body healed.

He was already healthy though, and already played tournaments in his head. But that wasn’t all. He imagined it all in his mind, the drive to the arena, getting dressed in the change room, the coaches’ pep talks. And one more thing.

He looked at his watch -- Sunday 11:46am. He panicked for an instant, but it was still dark and he wasn’t physically tired. He set his watch back to the proper time, the iHockey blinked as linked device adjusted to the new time and date. It was the fourth time this week he had set his watch ahead while wearing the iHockey. He looked at his watch again, wondering if anyone else would figure it out. Saturday 4:43am. Game day.