Opening Faceoff

You called game time, so I set my crease under the cold white beam of the park floodlights. The ice was hard and clean. A heavy black rubber puck came screaming off the boards on an aggressive lateral cut, aimed straight for the top shelf. I held my depth, trusted my stance, and snapped my catching glove across the crease to meet the trajectory mid-flight. The impact cracked loud into the deep webbing. First shot of the playoffs, smothered clean. Nothing gets past.