In the tunnel, we wait to skate out and the crowd is rowdy. I can already hear them slapping the glass and stomping their feet, I just know they are a few beers deep and the puck hasn’t even dropped yet.

I need to feel that noise and atmosphere in my blood, it has always been my favourite part of playing hockey. Instead of calm focus coming over me, the crowd makes me feel feral. Like every one of their jeers seeps into me and flows down through to my skates. I feel like a rabid dog waiting for some prey as Anders skates to the centre of the ice for the face-off.

The game is carnage, I think every player is feeling as out of sorts as me, or at least I hope so. I can’t be in this alone. Every nerve ending is firing on a hundred cylinders.

Not three minutes pass before my world is rocked.

A dirty check has me flying into the boards, but worse than that, he follows me over crushing me harder against the glass. Even with my helmet I feel the pressure against my skull from his weight against my back.

I snap.

The minute his weight is leveraged off me my fists are swinging. My stick lays forgotten on the ice, I throw my gloves beside it as I swing at the red shirt-wearing asshole.

This is what I have been feeling, my body knew there would be a fight, I just don’t think it expected it so soon. I have his jersey bundled in one hand as the other swings at him until he falls. I can’t seem to stop. I watch myself straddle him and watch his helmet fly off his head, his face is covered in blood as I feel his nose crunch under my fist.

It feels as though we fight for hours; him still getting some good hits in even from his disadvantaged position. I feel tugging on the back of my jersey as I am all but lifted off his body by Anders. The ref is sending me to the box but my adrenalin seems to evaporate all at once when I see a camera following me.

All at once I remember that Ellis and Jack will be watching at home. My sweet boy will have watched me beat a man for nothing more than a shove. It makes me sick.

His face would be looking up at me with confusion behind his eyes and I know Ellis will be disappointed that I didn’t keep my cool. In the past, she rarely ever sat right at the glass because if someone got checked in front of her she would hate it.