Overtime by Unknown

A week after the Spitfires fell to the odious Asheville Ravens in the Kelly Cup playoffs, general manager Jack Belsey called Isaac into his office and told him to close the door.

    Isaac was convinced he was about to get traded.

    What he got instead was a credit card, a set of tickets and a hotel reservation in Asheville, North Carolina. It took Isaac a few seconds to work out that the Spitfires’ general manager was sending his players to cheer against the team that had knocked them out of the playoffs.

    The Jacksonville Sea Storm were up two games to none in their series with the Ravens, and Isaac was giddy at the idea of watching their rivals lose on home ice.

    “Drake, this is one of those things you don’t tell Coach Samarin,” Belsey said, holding out an envelope and what appeared to be an American Express black card, which until that point Isaac thought was just an urban legend. “You know how he is.”

    Isaac had agreed not to tell Misha, even though he felt a bit like he was making a deal with the devil. Although the devil was supposed to be hot, wasn’t he? Belsey was more like Hell’s middle-management. If that.

    At any rate, Isaac took the mysterious magic credit card, the envelope full of game tickets and started calling his teammates.

    *  *  *

    The game didn’t go well for the Ravens, and midway through, Isaac had conflicting emotions of feeling really smug about that and also kind of awful that he did  feel so good about it.  

    Part of that was because of Xavier Matthews, who was a decent guy and who looked miserable playing for the Ravens when they were winning , much less getting their asses kicked by the Sea Storm . Isaac and Xavier had hooked up a few times the season prior, and it had been fun but Xavier was firmly in the closet, and besides. All of Isaac’s ability to commit was being channeled into his team and his goaltending.

    Not all of the guys had elected to go on the trip to Asheville. Isaac’s back-up goalie, Anthony Lathrop, had retired at the end of the season and they didn’t have another one signed yet. Shawn Murphy, one of Isaac’s best friends on the team, was on vacation with his girlfriend. Matt Huxley, Isaac’s other best friend and former roommate, was there, but a lot of the guys had already gone home for the summer.

    Still, there were enough Spitfires there that the Ravens had to notice -- their fans certainly did. Isaac and his teammates weren’t dressed in anything with the Spitfires’ logo on it (and they might be cheering for the Storm, but there was no way they’d wear anyone’s logo but their own -- especially since the Storm’s was so ridiculous), but it probably didn’t take a genius to know they were all hockey players. They watched the game like they watched it on the bench, standing and pointing and yelling en masse .  
    Like a squadron. Goddamn, Isaac loved his fucking team.

    The Ravens lost the game, 4-2.  Cheering felt cathartic, like the lingering anger Isaac was carrying from that last Spitfires-Ravens game was pouring out of him, drained by his unabashed glee in his hated rivals’ defeat. The Spitfires had a pretty great party that night, and unfortunately the Storm couldn’t join them because they still had to play the next day -- in a game that would hopefully result in the Ravens’ being swept right out of the playoffs.

    At the game, Isaac sat next to Ethan Kennedy, a former enforcer for the Sea Storm who was there to cheer on his boyfriend, goalie Riley Hunter. Ethan was a scrappy guy with a buzzed haircut and a lot of tattoos, who talked in a thick New York accent around a straw he was chewing. It was an attempt, he told Isaac, to finally quit smoking. Next to Ethan sat a serious dark-haired girl who hardly looked away from the ice and kept muttering, “I’m pretty sure that was goalie interference,” every time someone got too close to the crease.

    Her staunch defense of the goalie won Isaac’s heart, and Ethan