Dallas caught the pass and faked a shot, convincing Mendez he was aiming for the bottom corner, but then he shifted toward his backhand side while pulling the puck laterally. Dallas, who had some of the best hands in the division, moved so quickly that Mendez couldn’t recover in time. No goalie could have. Dallas sank the puck deep into the opposite corner, evening out the score.

The buzzer was music to my ears.

“Nice one.” I gave Dallas a fist bump as we skated back to our bench.

“It’s a start,” he said, “but now we have to demolish them.”

* * *

As the second period began, we emerged fired up and ready to battle. Evening out the score had reinvigorated us and had shaken Callingwood’s confidence.

Strangely, after being whistle-happy in the first, the refs were letting more and more slide. Infractions piled up without being called. Subtly at first, but it became increasingly blatant as the game went on. Hit, hook, slash, spear, trip. Nothing.

Miller went off script and split the lines, separating me from Dallas. But maybe he knew what he was doing, because Dallas sank another goal past Mendez on his first shift without me. Then I added to the score with a goal of my own shortly after, a slapshot that brought the score to three-one.

With each goal, the Bulldogs looked incrementally more defeated.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving team.

I watched from the bench while Dallas assumed possession of the puck and brought it up the side, looking for an opportunity to pass to Martin in front of the net. Hope surged through me as Dallas wound up and shot it over to Martin. Four-one would look great up on the board.

Martin took a quick wrist shot that bounced off Mendez’s glove. A nice attempt, but no dice.

A good five seconds after Dallas executed the pass, Luke skated up and checked him from behind. Hard. Dallas crashed into the boards, shoulder first, and bounced off before falling onto the ice.

I nearly snapped my stick in two.

That dirty motherfucking Morrison.

My gaze cut to the refs, and I waited for them to call it, but they didn’t. What the fuck? The hit was so blatant, there was no way none of them saw it. Clearly interference, at a minimum, and possibly boarding if Dallas was injured.

Chest tight, I watched Dallas stand and shake himself off, then slowly skate to the net. He seemed mostly unharmed by the cheap hit, but that wasn’t the point. In addition to the official rules and regulations of the game, there were a number of unwritten rules that were implicitly understood—a major one being, we didn’t take dirty hits on clean players. And if we did, we expected to answer for it.

I was coming for those answers.