Busted. Again.

Danny Wilde peered down at the ice, where a men's hockey league game had just begun. From the bar overlooking the rink, the lazy north-south pace resembled beer pong in the geriatric ward. No passion.

"Mr. Wilde!"

"Present." Danny turned and tried to straighten up, his unlit smoke tumbling from his lips and down into his crotch.

"Mr. Wilde, if you please?"

"Right. Sorry." He placed the butt behind his ear and shuffled his chair back around to face the three-member disciplinary committee, such as it was. The portly president of the league and Danny's teammate, Arthur Murray, was stoic and silent. His narrow sidekick, Chuck Taylor—or Toothpick Taylor—was equally disengaged. Both were beer league hacks.

The one doing the talking, referring to him as "Mr. Wilde," was the brains of the operation, president of the girls' league and a former star of some stature, said to have played as high as the national level. Peggy Bonaventure. No Hayley Wickenheiser. But up there. And now, brought in to oversee Danny's lynching so these two dolts could look impartial. She perused a file Toothpick handed her of Danny's many league violations. After three suspensions, the rules said he needed an in-person meeting to get back on the ice.

It wasn't looking good. The men's league had been trying to get rid of him for years. He'd likely have to move, maybe even to Toronto. Well, why not? The water was warm, if you threw in his pending court date for an inflated mischief charge and the bogus non-contact order Vanessa laid on him, which had forced him to move into a unit in a five-storey, dormitory-style storage locker. Plus the near total collapse of his contracting business due to a minor on-ice altercation with one of his top customers. Duster. Worst of all, thanks to the non-contact order, the only way he could communicate with Carly was text, and whether she would ever respond was an even-money proposition. Teenagers. At least he was able to swing a deal with the storage rats, trading a place to crash for refurbished hockey sticks, a craft he'd learned from Fred the hockey guru when he lived across the river from Ottawa in West Quebec. He glanced back at the game, sombre and defeated.

"Mr. Wilde … Mr. Wilde!" He spun around again. "Our understanding is that your latest, and perhaps most egregious, infraction, meriting your third multiple-game suspension this season, involved elbowing the head of a defenceman that removed two of his teeth and actually knocked him unconscious." She dropped her glasses on the table for emphasis and shot him a stare. "Do you have anything to say about that? He's thinking of pressing charges."

Good grief! More charges! Danny swallowed and responded the only way he knew how. "He was crowding the crease, Ma'am."

"Mr. Wilde, you knocked him out."

"Ah, it was only for a minute. I picked him up. Dusted off the snow."

"He spent the night in the hospital," she charged determinedly.

Danny burst into laughter. "He didn't have to stay at the hospital. I saw him at the bar after. The word is he stayed out so late, he went to Emergency to avoid getting busted at home."

"That's hearsay," Toothpick asserted, speaking for the first time, fixated on getting Danny out of the league in order to protect his wussy teammates. Sneaky lawyers.

"Actually, there are eyewitness accounts backing Danny up," Murray threw in, manning up ever so slightly. "And just before that hit, Danny got cross-checked square in the shoulder blades."

"That's right, now I remember." Danny smacked a fist on the table. "It was, like, you know, retalitory. He went for me but I ducked. Only then did I pop him. Fair's fair. Say anything about that in there?"

"Speaks to intent to do harm," Toothpick chirped. Moron.

"It was somewhat of a back and forth," Murray explained. After the game, everyone on Danny's team corroborated his story. Everyone on the opposing team corroborated their injured player's story.

"Gentlemen!" Peggy Bonaventure was getting frustrated. "The point is he was concussed. It says you almost broke his jaw, so I can't see how that makes your actions merely retaliatory." She inexplicably hammered down on the last word for emphasis.

"Almost broke!" Danny raised his index finger victoriously. "Not broke."

"Whether he went to the bar doesn't matter," she continued, "because concussion symptoms can appear days later. He is lucid. But he still gets headaches. He is a family man. He has a job to go to. This isn't professional hockey."

"Hey, whatever he wants to do in his spare time is none of my business," Danny protested, earning an encouraging smirk from Murray.

The argument seemed entirely lost on her. "You show no evidence of remorse, Mr. Wilde. The man can't work. Apparently, it bothers him daily." She resumed reviewing the doctored game sheets. Get serious. Who crowds the crease without expecting to get nailed? Any self-respecting goalie who wasn't so lame would've slammed the attacking forward in the family jewels with his stick. Just like the pros. Then Danny never would have had to intervene. Their regular guy, Alain D'Artagnan, was out with the flu that night, or more likely moonlighting for a team in a higher division. Danny was merely helping out the dimwitted call-up, showing solidarity and being responsible.  

He looked down at the ice. Things were getting interesting. A pair of dusters had inadvertently collided at the blue line, and one now had his knee rammed into the other's chest as he lay on the ice, others hurrying to pull him away. The referee leaned on the boards, oblivious. Good call. Let 'em play. 

Peggy Bonaventure looked up from the paperwork. "For the offence that got you your first suspension, you slammed the door so hard the glass shattered. You also caught the leg of one of the other players who was getting off."

"Wasn't quick enough," Danny explained absentmindedly.

"It was their door, not yours. It wasn't yours to close. You were on the wrong bench."

"Had to go to the can. It was closer. Anyway, the gate always has to be closed," Danny replied. "For safety."

"He broke his ankle."

"There you go."

She stared at him. "There I go? How so?"

"If he was quicker, the gate wouldn't catch him. Now he knows. It's a safety thing, for his own good."

"Then can this be right?" she asked rhetorically for impact. "You started into it with players on their bench. And people milling about in the stands?"

"Yeah, I remember. Like the Shoe Brawl," Danny joked. "They had it coming."

"I don't know the reference." Murray told her about the infamous altercation in 1979 when Boston Bruins players, in a game against the New York Rangers, scaled the glass to fight fans at Madison Square Garden. Peggy was suitably horrified. 

Down on the ice, the scuffle had broken up and the referee resumed the game, dropping the puck just in time for one of the centremen to cross-check the opposing centre below the chin, spilling him. The game was gaining momentum.

"Anyways," Danny thought out loud, his eyes still glued to the ice surface, "glass smashing is just bad luck. I seen guys do way worse. I saw a guy take the hinges right off the penalty box door," he laughed. "You can't evict me for that."

"Suspend."

"What?"

"Suspend. Not evict. We're suspending you further. Or considering it."

"Sure, suspend me forever. Hang me from the rafters. Retire my number and hang that too. Can I show up for the ceremony or am I banned?" Danny burst into gut-wrenching laughter. They weren't impressed.

Peggy Bonaventure studied some more forms. Murray and Taylor played on their phones. Danny was dying for a drink. It was almost 6 p.m., well past happy hour in the contracting business. They usually started the workday around 7 a.m., long before the bureaucrats blitzed downtown by car, train, bus, boat, bike, and on foot to peddle the tax dime, and knocked off around 4 p.m., well after the crats had scurried home, the roads clear. Since then, he had already spent two hours behind a buddy's garage replacing spark plugs in the truck. At 20 below. And now this sneak-attack disciplinary hearing, which was dragging out and could cause him to miss that night's pick-up game. If he would even be allowed to play anymore. And he still needed to fetch some lumber for a small sunroom job he was doing in the suburbs.

The server had taken their order ten minutes ago, but never returned. Danny scowled at Murray who had billed this as a friendly chat over drinks. Just a formality. Right. Instead, he was getting drummed out of the beer league. So much for formalities. Across the bar, another team was happily diving into their beers and wings. Danny knew many of those guys. Yet none had come over to say hello. Like he was walking the Green Mile. A few were spying the deliberations at his table with satisfaction. Probably even provided some of the testimony Bonaventure was reading at this very moment. And to think they were getting an afternoon ice time rare in men's league, where games were typically late in the evening. Cowards.

•

Peggy Bonaventure put aside the file, now looking even more shocked. "Mr. Wilde …" She was interrupted by the server finally arriving with the drinks. Taylor and Murray—the Bert and Ernie show—were just as relieved as Danny. As the ice in their scotch glasses clinked, Danny murmured, "Sure you don't want some water to ease the blow?" He couldn't resist. Neither responded. Danny quaffed his beer, burped, and refilled his glass.

Peggy picked up where she left off: "… the second suspension, believe it or not, was for something even worse. A player was coming down the ice, and you evidently checked him over the boards and right into the bench. He dislocated his shoulder."

Danny wiped his lips and dove into his defence. "I remember that. He was hotdogging, with his head down." She remained expressionless. "In the neutral zone," he explained. "That's a no-no. Everyone knows that."

"Hotdogging?"

"Like, ragging the puck and thinking he's gonna cruise into our zone untouched."

"I know the term. Mr. Wilde, this is non-contact hockey. You aren't out there to hurt people."

Now Danny himself was getting angry. "This is a matter of perspective. I get hurt a lot. I still work." For emphasis, he held up a sprained finger that was wrapped in thick bandages. That one was actually caused by a wet hammer that slipped out of his hand on the roof of a job site; but she didn't know that.

Danny looked at the two scotch drinkers. He knew they both agreed with him. But who wanted to get on the wrong side of Lady Byng, Danny thought, likening Peggy to the Governor General's wife who donated a trophy in 1925 to recognize the NHL's most gentlemanly player. Not these guys.

"If you don't mind, we'll each take a moment to read the impact statements from these players."

"What impact? More guys complaining that I hit them?"

She was perplexed, then understood. "No, not actual impacts. They're statements about how the injuries you inflicted affected their lives."

"Oh for f …" Danny swallowed the rest into his beer.

Peggy handed copies of stapled documents to Bert and Ernie, all professional and orderly. The committee again fell silent, lost in the paperwork, leaving Danny to squirm in his chair. He didn't know much about Peggy Bonaventure, other than that she was heavily into girls' hockey, as a coach and administrator. He'd quoted a job once at her palatial residence in the ritzy part of town. It went to one of the high-priced firms that send over inexperienced millennials in blue overalls with their names embossed on their shirts. She was a dedicated career woman, rising through the corporate ranks and dressed to match in a fancy pant suit. Two of her kids were graduates of minor hockey and one, a girl the same age as Carly, was still playing. Murray suggested the girls might have once even skated together. Peggy was universally well-liked and respected; Danny had no chance here. Her husband was a weak-kneed defenceman and absentee husband, making a rare showing at beer league and often away on business trips. Dot-com guy. Drowning in cash.

So, yeah, the hearing was a sham. Bert and Ernie would go along with whatever decision she rendered. Danny turned back to the rink. On the ice, a two-on-one rush was proceeding into the zone. Using his teammate as a decoy, the puck handler blasted a high slap shot. It bounced off the goalie's head and dropped to the ice, just as the second attacker knocked in the puck and crashed the net, the goalie slamming against the crossbar and dislodging the posts. The referee signaled a goal. Danny was impressed he didn't fall for the goalie's deliberate trick of unhinging the net.

After quietly conferring with her lackeys, Peggy said, "Mr. Wilde, thank you for your time. You can go now and Arthur will join you outside to let you know the outcome."

"I'll go line myself up against the wall." No one laughed.

Danny drained the rest of his beer in one go and walked out. Little chance he'd be playing men's league hockey in this town any time soon. He took one final glance at the rink, where the scoring attacker was still peeling himself off the ice. The goalie's mask had flown into the corner, his spinning stick coming to rest near the adjacent face-off circle. And they wonder why we can't find goalies.

Outside, Danny lit up a fresh cigarette and massaged his sprained wrist. On the outdoor rink across the parking lot, the lights were on but no one was playing. The kids were probably all in the warm-up hut glued to their phones. They just don't make shinny hacks like they used to. Changing times.

He assessed his truck. It needed two thousand dollars in repairs. He didn't have enough to pay for basic necessities—sticks, skate sharpening, smelling salts—much less automobile maintenance. The slogan on the door, Wilde Renos, was faded. The phone number was smudged, the numbers peeling. No money to fix that either. Typical of early January, work was slow. He was having a hard time making up for the lost business after clocking his top customer. Plus, given that he never advertised, didn't have a web site, and didn't even have a fixed address anymore, it made sense he got such little repeat business and few referrals.

This hearing over various beer league misdemeanours wasn't going to help. Most of his leads came from the old-timer hockey networks. Now they wanted to banish him. Then there was the fact most of his money went straight to Vanessa, thanks to a judge who—at a so-called bail hearing—demanded he vacate the premises and hand over all he could: first of the month on the nose. Just because he started renovating the kitchen after a hard day's work and a week of tolerating the in-laws. So what if it was New Year's Eve? Vanessa had been complaining about the state of the kitchen for months. He was simply starting the demolition. The police didn't see it that way. Danny got a night in the can and then the non-contact order. And criminal charges for mischief, on a renovating job.

"Danny." Murray emerged from the arena. "What's with your truck? Dents on all sides?"

"Snowbanks," Danny said, eager for the news. "Is she throwing the book at me?"

"Close. She wants to ban you permanently from our league, and any league around here."

"She can do that?" Danny butted out his cigarette.

"She can propose it to the league brass. But they pretty much rubber stamp that stuff. Other leagues would too on our recommendation."

"I thought you were the league brass."

"It would be a committee. Maybe another hearing."

"Forget that. Looks like I'm moving to Toronto."

"Danny, it's beer league …"

Danny was taken aback. "Murray, that ain't the point. Some guys make millions playing hockey in front of thousands of fans, and some play in empty arenas. We're all just hockey players. Remember when Mike Richards was between NHL contracts a few years ago. Went back to Kenora and played beer league."

"At a rink on a street named for him," Murray mused. "But don't you have a house and family here? And a business?"

"Kind of out of the house at the moment."

"Renovating?"

"Sort of. More of a non-contact thing. Like house league hockey."

"You mean no-contact? Do you have a no-contact order? Danny, good grief."

"No big deal. Living in a storage locker for the moment."

"I thought you had a cottage nearby."

"Covered in snow."

"Look, I think we can find a way to get this beer league issue resolved." Murray clicked the remote to unlock his fancy navy blue Mercedes sedan.

"Like what? Paint the boards? Shovel the outdoor ice? Drive the Zamboni?"

"Nothing nearly that arduous. I think I have a solution. And maybe some decent work for you. Follow me to my place."

"Hey, it's getting late. My escort services aren't cheap."

"I have scotch and cigars."

"Saddle up. It's not like I have hockey in the morning, right? Unless you're quashing this suspension."

"Let's talk."

It wasn't every day you get called up for drinks to the swanky part of town. Danny had never once been invited to any of the many social gatherings Murray was known to host. Yet now he was flavour of the month. And did he hear that right? Work? Finally, a little puck luck.

•

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