The fifth game of the series did not feel like a continuation of the second climb.
It felt like the climb had reached a section of exposed rock where the only available handholds were the ones you had already tested with your full weight, and the only way forward was to trust the testing.
The building was louder than the fourth game and quieter at the same time—loud in the stands, quiet in the stretches of ice where the play broke down into individual negotiations between sticks and skates and the particular desperation of two teams that had stopped pretending the series would resolve itself without taking something permanent from both of them. Warm-up carried the residual of the tied series like a scent. Damian skated through it with the focused stillness of a man who had put every prev
