The third game of the heavier series did not feel like another date on a calendar.
It felt like a door that had been left open in a storm.
By the time we stepped onto the ice for warm-up, the building had already chosen its mood. Not the wild, chaotic noise of the first round. Something denser. More patient. Their crowd understood structure the same way their team did, and they sat inside that understanding like people who expected to be fed by it. Every puck battle in warm-up carried a fraction more weight than it needed to. Miller stopped mid-stretch at one point and muttered, “These people clap like they’re grading us.” No one laughed hard enough to make it a joke.
Damian skated the perimeter with the same closed expression he wore when the margin for error had officially left the bu
