My return to Houston

[Laine 1,361]

MY RETURN TO HOUSTON

By: Patrik Laine

 

INTRODUCTION:

As many of you may remember, I was a part of the Houston Bulls organization during Season 72. I was selected by the Miami Marauders in round 5 of the VHLM draft. This is my story about my return to Houston. Let's begin.

 

CHAPTER 1: ARRIVAL

We were coming off of a close 2-1 loss to the Las Vegas Aces. When I got on the plane, I took a look at who was next on the schedule. I seen it was Houston, and my initial reaction was one of joy. I had played there for a year, made good friends with the locals and it would be nice to see them again. All I could think about was Houston. My former home. Once we landed, the airport security that always used to see me once we landed smiled at me. One of them said "Welcome back to Houston, Laine.". I looked over with a smile and gave them a nod. We hopped on a bus and went to our hotel. I took a shower and then went to bed.

 

CHAPTER 2: DAY OFF

We had a free day in Houston before our game. I woke up early, at 7:30 and was out of the hotel room by 8. Practice was until 9:30. After practice, I went for a 2 hour walk around downtown Houston. Many fans greeted me and asked for autographs as I completed my walk. Of course, I complied. I also stopped at a hockey shop to purchase a little gift for my friend, Houston's starting goaltender Drew Minott. He had always told me how he wanted a certain stick, pads and mask that match well. I picked up a few items I had custom ordered. Those items were the CCM Axis goalie pads, a mask with a custom paint job and the CCM Extreme Flex 4 goalie stick. Both the stick and pads came with a Houston styled paint job and the mask came with a custom paint job that I asked one of my good friends to make. I texted Minott and asked him if he wanted to meet up for lunch at a cafe that we always went to for lunch back when we played in Houston. He shot me a text back and said sure and we decided to meet there at 12:00 PM. I had the stick, pads and mask in my hotel room and would give them to him later. I walked in right at 12 and he was there waiting for me. We sat down and we talked for a bit before we ordered. He was having a great season playing in Houston, while I was scoring lots of points over in Miami. Once our food came, we had lunch. Afterwards, we drove over to his house. I was sure to bring the gear with me in secret and I surprisingly did a good job hiding it. We hung out for a few hours at his house. Around 3:30, I got a text from coach telling me to be at the hotel for 4 PM. Minott offered to drive me but I said I could walk. As I left, I told him I left him a surprise in his garage which was the goalie gear. Not sure how he reacted to it, but hopefully he enjoyed it. I arrived at the hotel at 3:55 and coach and most of the team was there. We hopped on the team bus and drove about an hour down south to Galveston, Texas. We all got to relax on the beach until about 8 PM. It was a lot of fun. We drove back and arrived back in Houston at 9 PM. We went to our hotel rooms and prepared for tomorrow's game.

 

CHAPTER 3: GAME DAY

I woke up at 7, as I do on every game day. I was downstairs eating breakfast by 7:30 and we arrived at the rink at 9 for the morning skate. After the morning skate, I went to that cafe for lunch. I took one of my teammates, Dakota Lamb, with me. He said he enjoyed the food there and the people were nice. It was 3 PM and the game was set to begin at 6. As usual, I arrived at the rink first, making my entrance at 3:30. I went out to the bench and performed my pre-game rituals. I went back to the locker room at 4 and began taping my sticks. All the other guys began to roll in around 4:30. I seemed nervous before the game according to my teammates and of course I was. I went to the equipment room to get my skates sharpened and coach asked me if I had a minute. I told him my skates were being sharpened, so I follow him. He took me into the visitor's coaching office and he told me the following: "Listen, I know your nervous about playing tonight because you are back in Houston. That is all past you now. I want you to go out there and play 60 minutes of your best hockey that you have been giving us all season long. I'm moving you up to 1st line left wing tonight, so show me what you can do. You will be playing on a line with Lamb and Sens." I gave him a nod and said "I won't let you down coach." We went out for warmups at around 5:15. I went out first and I heard a little cheer from the crowd as I went out. Across the ice, Houston came out a few minutes later. I tapped Minott on the pads and stopped to chat with him for a little bit. Then went right back to skating. Houston had a few of my very good friends on their team. Goaltender Drew Minott, Forwards Venus Thightrap and Defender Markus Schauser just to name a few. I skated by Thightrap a little bit later in warmup and gave her a tap on the skates. The next time I skated by, she gave me a tap by and stopped. "So, how is Miami?" she asked. "Good, certainly a bigger responsibility over here in Miami but it has been good to me so far." I replied. "You miss Houston a bit?" she said. "Yeah, Houston is a smaller city and it is a tighter community around here, but Miami has been fun." I replied with a smile. "Well, good luck tonight" she said with a smile. I replied with a small grin "Better keep your head up, I may hit you a few times" and laughed. "Oh, just wait for when I hit you" she laughed. We gave each other a high five and skated our seperate ways. Warmups were finished at about 5:45. We went into the locker room and listened to coach's pregame speech: "Now, I know that was a big loss to Vegas the other night, but that is behind you. We have a special man in this room who is returning to his former home for the first time. Patty played in Houston last year when they were terrible. Now, Houston is good. So, tell everyone Patty, do you want to beat Houston?" he asked. "Yes, let's play 60 minutes of our best hockey and show them Miami is the real deal!" I said. "Good, Now for the starting lines" coach began, "At forward, we will have Patty, Dak and Sens. On defense we will have Howler and Matty and we will have Bacon in net. Let's go boys!" We made our way out onto the ice and I was ready for the puck drop. The referee blew his whistle and down went the puck.

 

CHAPTER 4: MIAMI VS HOUSTON

I wanted to make an impact right away. In the first few minutes, I didn't have a lot of puck time, but that all changed in one singular play. Thightrap had the puck for Houston along the boards and I gave her a nice hip check to take the puck away. I carried the puck into the zone and looked around to where to go with it. I was Andre going across the other side wide open. I fed the puck across and he one timed it perfectly, but Minott robbed him point blank, conveniently wearing the new gear I got him. We stayed on the puck. Andre got it right back on the rebound Minott gave up. He fed it back to Sens who got a shot off, but Schauser blocked it. The puck bounced right to Matty who slapped the rolling puck right into the net for the opening goal. We went to the bench after that shift energized. However, it didn't last long and it was 2-1 Houston going into the second. I started the second period off a little shaky, but around 6 minutes into the second, I had a perfect opportunity. Matty gave me a beautiful one timer pass, just the way we practiced setting them up. I blast it top right, but hit the crossbar and the rebound squirted out. I jumped into the corner to try and find it, but by the time I had tracked the puck down, so had Houston's defence and the puck was cleared out. The rest of the second period was good. I had a few hits and was good with the puck, making good choices but we still trailed 2-1 heading into the third. I told the team during the intermission that we were going to win this game and we would get these two points and they seemed to agree. We went into the third fired up and it showed. I had a pair of shots early. One was blocked and one missed the net, but it was fortunate. Wolf held it in and passed it to Sens, who gave Dak a one timer on a tee and it tied the game. I skated into the group hug and said "WHAT DID I TELL YOU? LET'S GO!". We got another power play with about 6 minutes left and we said that we were going to score here. Dak got a beauty of a shot off the faceoff but just missed. Sens went low and got the goal off of a wraparound to put us up 3-2! We had another power play a few minutes later. I got the puck off of the faceoff. Took a shot and hit the post....again. I quickly hustled to the puck and protected it with my body along the wall. I fed the puck over to Matty who fed it to King. King walked in and shot an absolute bullet shortside on Minott to extend the lead to 4-2. We won our game in Houston by a final score of 4-2. I was relieved. I gave Minott and Venus a wave as I made my way off the ice. They waved back. We went and got our stuff from the hotel and hopped right back on the bus to go to the airport. I looked up to my schedule. Next stop, Minnesota!

 

(1872 words, 9116 characters written by @PatrikLaine)

 

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[mattyIceman 1,214]

You're gonna have to write an article about facing off against London when you join Helsinki next year, kid.

 

Maybe I'll be nice and get you tea and crumpets, or fish and chips...

 

Maybe I'll saran wrap your skate blades before game time

[ahockeyguy 110]

Awesome job! I will say that Houston is larger, population-wise, than Miami!

[Laine 1,361]

2 hours ago, ahockeyguy said:

Awesome job! I will say that Houston is larger, population-wise, than Miami!

I'm Canadian, so....yeah

[ahockeyguy 110]

1 hour ago, PatrikLaine said:

I'm Canadian, so....yeah

Hey I don't blame you! I confidently figured I could name the top 5 Canadian cities by population and get them in the right order, and here was my try: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Winnipeg. According to that bastion of knowledge Wikipedia, the top 5 Canadian cities as of the 2016 census were: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton. Point is, it's totally understandable. Plus I'm not sure how many Americans know that about Houston and Miami either.