Smack!
Howard Prep’s two defense men met the whizzing Carl Hemmer head-on. This time Taber High’s crack hockey player did not go through. Instead his body was catapulted backwards, with pieces of broken sticks flying in air, to land heavily some feet away and go skidding across the ice to bring up with a sickening thud against the sideboards.
“Wow! They certainly stopped him that time!” breathed a spectator. “Looked like dirty work, too! Illegal body-checking and free use of their sticks!... Yes, sir—there’s the referee waving them off the ice ... a major penalty for both of ’em!”
A chorus of boohs followed the two Howard defense men as they skated to the sideboards and clambered into the penalty box to remain out of the game for five minutes which, in this case, meant that the contest would be over before they could return.
“Hello—Carl’s hurt!” discovered the crowd, as the huddled figure sprawled near the sideboards, failed to rise. “He took quite a wallop!”
Knocked unconscious by the impact and suffering a jolting bump on his head, Taber’s hockey star was carried off the ice to the dressing room as the crowd gave him a burst of sympathetic applause. Minus two of her players, Howard Prep’s scoring possibilities were so reduced that she was forced to go strictly on the defensive save for lone attempts to put the puck in from long range. Taber High won the game a few minutes later, three goals to one—the injured Carl’s two goals again providing the margin of victory.
“Wonder how Carl is?” was Lank Broderick’s first question, as the teams left the ice. “I’d like to take a punch at those two Howard guys. Sorry they didn’t get back in play!”
Lank was Carl’s team-mate at left wing, Carl serving as forward on the right wing. They thought much of each other, Lank sacrificing his chances of scoring to feed the puck to Carl because of Carl’s admittedly greater prowess.
“I’m not interested in who makes the scores, just so they’re made,” Lank had often said. “Besides, I’ve got sense enough to know that we’d have just an ordinary hockey team if it wasn’t for Carl ... and we’d be foolish if we didn’t build our six around him ... since he can do so much for us!”
In the locker room, stretched out on a rubbing table, fellow team-mates found their idol, Carl. Taber High’s right wing had just regained consciousness and was staring dazedly at the ceiling. He raised up on his elbows and reached out his hand for an imaginary stick.