when life gives you insomnia, make insomnia-ade. or not!fic.
Soooo here's 3500 words of not!fic about bandom peeps forming an off-the-wall expansion team in Vegas. *hands*
It's 2014. The NHL conference system has undergone restructure, leaving it with two eight-team conferences and two seven-team conferences, and the league has announced that it is accepting applications for two new franchises to even out the numbers. They're expecting Seattle and Quebec City to step up, but at the last minute, the Quebec City investment group falls apart, and none of the other applications can pull together the necessary funding.
Pete Wentz, brilliant yet underappreciated management peon for the Blackhawks, gets a call from Hugh Hefner. The Las Vegas Battle Rabbits are born.
Fast-forward to the beginning of the season.
It's not the craziest thing the NHL has ever let happen. Putting a team in Phoenix, that was crazy. Putting TWO teams in Florida, that was just ridiculous. Putting a team in Vegas? Eh. People like spending money in Vegas. And it's got solid, if unorthodox, financing, so the worst that can happen is the team fails in Nevada and Hefner moves it somewhere else.
Public opinion is that the team's failure will not stem from its location. The hockey twitterverse/blogosphere is not of one mind as to why it will fail, but they're all certain it will. Katie Baker thinks it's doomed because its players are cobbled together from personal contacts and are mostly brand-new to playing pro. Ellen Etchingham thinks it's doomed because Pete Wentz is way too inexperienced to effectively GM a LARP, much less an NHL team. Ryan Lambert thinks it's doomed because two of its players are female, and Ryan Lambert is a douche. Wyshynski thinks it's doomed because it's called the Battle Rabbits. The Ducks had Teemu Selanne and even they couldn't win a Cup until they dropped the "Mighty," he reasons.
The Rabbits pay no heed to such doubters. They practice hard all summer, they tell the media they're confident in their team's capabilities, and they fucking CRUSH the Sharks in their first preseason exhibition game. Lambert shuts up with the "puck bunny" jokes about top-line left wing Victoria Asher pretty fucking fast.
The Rabbits continue to dominate through the beginning of the season. In their first ten NHL games, they lose two: one against L.A. in a shootout because Quick is still a god in 2014, and one against the Rangers when Marc Staal slams second-line center Brendon Urie against the boards and he ends up having to sit out the rest of the game for potential concussion symptoms. It's the Rabbits' first brush with serious injury, and it throws them off enough for New York to outscore them. But other than that, they've won everything so far.
The bloggers start posting wide-eyed "who knew?" articles analyzing the talent on the team. Everyone agrees that the thrust of the Rabbits' success comes from their starting goalie, Amanda Palmer. Justin Bourne writes suspicious conspiracy-theory posts about Palmer's mask, which is decorated with abstract patterns that look perfectly innocent if you stare right at them but become inexplicably obscene when viewed in the peripheral vision. But most people are too busy jaw-dropping at her .942 save percentage to bother examining that too closely. The backup goalie is some guy called Bryar, but no one has a clue whether he's any good, because he hasn't stepped in front of the net once so far.
The Rabbits' top line is Asher-Saporta-Blackinton. The second line is the Smith-Urie-Ross line, which quickly becomes known for its speed and elegant plays. Their weakness is the physical game, thus the Staal hit, but they're fast enough that they can dodge impact most of the time. Merritt, Montano, and Euringer are the third line, with McCracken, Allman, and Howard bringing up the gritty rear. Toro and Iero are the Rabbits' defensive big guns, with Crawford, Weekes, McCoy, and Mrotek for hella depth.
Nobody has ever heard of any of these people before. It's a mystery where that Wentz guy came up with them.
*
So Pete's having a pretty great life right now. His underground-genius hockey contacts panned out, his career is all set, and he's making boatloads of money. The only thing he wants that he doesn't have, in fact, is the guy who wears the mascot outfit.
Patrick has no interest in hockey. Patrick wears the mascot outfit because the job pays well enough to let him focus on music in his spare time. (There is no properly characterized universe in which Patrick Stump is not a music nerd.) Patrick kind of hates hockey, as a matter of fact. He didn't care one way or another before he got this job, but being up close and personal with the sort of people who choose to attend the Playboy-funded Las Vegas NHL team's home games has opened his eyes to a whole new world of douchery. He's here until he gets his sound production career off the ground, and then he's gone.
Pete knows all this because he had a conversation with Patrick once, at a publicity event before the season started, where Patrick had to wear the rabbit outfit in hundred-degree weather. Patrick, not following hockey, had no clue who Pete was, and gratefully accepted his offer of a chilled water bottle and sympathy. They got to talking; Patrick made his unfavorable opinions regarding the Battle Rabbits clear, and Pete encouraged him to follow his dreams and do music if music was what he loved. Then they chatted about classic rock for a while before someone dragged Pete off to shake hands and talk to reporters.
Sometime since then, Patrick has figured out who Pete is. Pete sees him around and tries to say hi, but Patrick just avoids the shit out of him with a "no, I love this job, really, I was just kidding, don't fire me" look on his face.
When Pete can see his face. Usually it's just a big plush rabbit head.
*
Gerard is the PA announcer for the Rabbits' arena. He announces about how fantastic Iero is a lot. To be fair, Iero is a pretty great D-man, but Gerard is really not being fair, because Toro is just as good and gets a hell of a lot fewer penalties. Gerard might not mind the penalties. They put Iero right next to him in the box, all sweaty and pissed-off. It's pretty great.
Mikey is an ice girl, except not a girl. (He totally fucked Pete for the job. Pete figured he was just carrying on the legacy of the team's venerable financier, and went with it.) Andy is the goaltending coach, Joe is in charge of the penalty kill. Zach and Worm are refs.
Brian Schechter is the coach. Ellen Etchingham was pretty dubious about that too, but a month into the season, nobody's dubious. The Rabbits aren't winning everything, but they're doing pretty damn well. Saporta is on track for a 40-goal season. Palmer's GAA hasn't risen above 2, and she's had two shutouts already. The Rabbits are gaining fans almost as fast as they're gaining enemies. There's a petition online to name them as a competitor in the 2016 Winter Classic against the Kings.
***
December rolls around, and the Rabbits are doing great. They're not destroying everyone, but they're floating around 3rd or 4th in the league. Brian is super happy. Andy is super happy. Joe is mildly satisfied, although he won't stop working the Rabbits to the bone on the PK while the Kings' numbers are still better than theirs (the Vegas-L.A. rivalry is fledgling but already epic). Pete is deliriously happy most of the time, although Patrick still won't talk to him, which is a bummer. But he's working on it.
Then some radio station in Cambridge gets third-line forward Stephin Merritt into the studio over Christmas break for an interview, and they're like "soooo, you must be swimming in ladies after all this success your team is having, got a girlfriend?" and he's like, "Boyfriend, yes," and they're like o.o and the internet is like O.O and the YCP folks are like :D :D :D :D :D!!!!!!! and Stephin is like O.o uhhhh back off, my dick is my business? and the media is like YEAH NO, HOWSABOUT A COMMENT?
And, like... he knew that being openly into dudes would attract attention, but he didn't realize exactly how crazy everyone was going to get. It's not just hockey media, not even just sports media, because no athlete in the top four American sports has ever been out publicly before retirement. It's ALL the media. And the YCP people are pressuring him to be their posterboy, and jesus, he just wants to play hockey. It's seriously stressful and exhausting, and his quality of play drops sharply. He moves from third line to fourth line, and even then he's not meeting expectations.
After a couple weeks, Pete and Brian pull Stephin aside for a talk. They get that he's dealing with a lot right now, but, well, it was his own decision to come out, and while they're willing to support him, there's a limit to how much they can let the team suffer for it. And Stephin is totally understanding about it, he doesn't want to be given preferential treatment, if he's not able to get it together then they should definitely give some kid from the farm system a chance. He doesn't want to drag the team down.
So they send him down to their AHL affiliate and call up a promising young forward to take his place, and Amanda goes on strike.
She doesn't TELL anyone she's going on strike. Their first game without Stephin is a home game against the Canucks, and she suits up as usual, skates out to the net, stands there, and... continues standing there. The ref drops the puck, Vancouver wins the faceoff, Kesler takes it to the Rabbits' zone, Dallon and Ian block a couple of shots but the Canucks keep possession and Burrows gets it to the net... and Amanda just stands there while it goes in.
Everyone gives her "what the hell?" faces as they skate back to center ice for another faceoff. The Rabbits keep the puck in the offensive zone for a while, but eventually it gets back to the other end of the ice, and it's headed straight for Amanda's pads, and she actually steps aside to let it in.
Brian takes his time-out four minutes into the first period, because he doesn't have a choice. Amanda calmly skates back to the bench, where Brian demands to know what the hell is going on, and then all becomes clear: she's taking a stand in support of her teammate.
Pissed off does not begin to describe Brian's reaction to this. He sends out Bob, because he has to, and spends the next two commercial breaks cussing out Amanda at the top of his lungs. She takes it serenely, which pisses him off even more, and before the first period is over, he sends her to the locker room.
Bob is a decent goalie, but he's not Amanda, and sadly he's not quite Schneider either, at least not enough to overcome the early two-goal deficit. They lose 5-2. Everyone's mad, but mostly they're just confused as fuck. They're all set to descend on Amanda and demand to know what's going on, but before they hit the locker room, Pete snags Amanda and takes her back to his office. He's like, "look, we didn't send him down because he came out. You've seen his numbers lately. Treating him the same as everybody else works both ways."
Amanda leans forward and looks him in the eye and says, "This league created the culture that fucked Stephin over. If it's not going to take responsibility for that and deal with the consequences, I'm not interested in participating in it. I'm contractually obligated to stand between the posts when you tell me to, but you cannot contractually obligate me to do it well."
Pete's pretty sure there actually is something in her contract about putting forth her best reasonable effort, but she has a point, and he's already feeling bad enough about the Stephin thing to not push it. He just says, "Okay, you're right, I'll call him back up for the next game. But don't do this again, understand? If you have a problem, talk to me. We could have resolved this without losing a game."
Amanda gives him this eyebrow, like, mhm, 'cause you totally would have listened to me before I threatened the success of the franchise, but she doesn't say it out loud. By the next practice, Stephin's back, and after the media explosion dies down, his numbers return to normal. Amanda alienates everyone in management through the sheer force of her smug.
*
By then it's February, and the trade deadline is approaching fast. Everyone's a little bit squirmy, but no one's really freaked out until two days before the deadline, when Ryan gets traded to the Caps for Joel Ward.
This team is made up of oddball hockey prodigies who are all too unconventional or too small or too female or too unrepentantly obnoxious to have made it in the normal NHL-track system. None of these players are used to inter-team movement. They've come to think of the team as theirs over the last few months, and to lose one of their own to another team is a shock.
But they're well on their way to the playoffs now, and they need to be planning ahead. They're rock-solid on defense, but their scoring could use a boost, and Ryan doesn't score a whole lot. He's fantastic at possession and getting the puck into the right zone, but his shot just isn't all that intimidating, and Ward has been hitting the back of the net a lot this season.
The Rabbits are a little tense until the trade deadline passes, but Pete doesn't move anybody else. They've got a good thing going here; he doesn't want to fuck with it too much.
They keep winning a lot until mid-March, when Gabe gets a bad knee injury. The doctors are saying he might be out for the season. Brian scowls a lot and moves Victoria to center, which she's fine at except she can't win faceoffs for shit. They don't do as well for the rest of the regular season, and end up seeded fifth in the conference.
That's okay. The Kings were seeded eighth and bulldozed their way to the Cup. If the Kings can do it, the Rabbits decide, so can they.
*
They're one game away from sweeping the Stars in the first series when Bourne's post about Amanda's mask from way back in October goes viral, and everyone realizes that there actually are obscene images hidden in the design. Don Cherry just about shits his eye-wateringly maroon pants over it. The NHL firmly informs Amanda that she will not be permitted to wear that mask in games anymore.
Amanda goes on strike again.
This time, Pete throws up his hands and writes her off as a healthy scratch. He does not have time for this shit. He puts Bryar out to start and calls up some kid who's nowhere near NHL-ready from the farm team as backup. The series against the Stars goes to Game 7, and while they do manage to eke out the win, eking shit out is just not gonna cut it.
It doesn't cut it in the second series against the Blackhawks, either. They lose two in a row, then win one, then lose another one, and they're just about fucked when the doctors finally give Gabe the green light to play and he swoops in to save the day. They knock out the Hawks, then kick the Kings' asses in a blissfully brief five-game Western Conference series, and then they're going to the final.
The Caps-Rangers series is tied at two, so they have a few days to catch their breath. Pete takes advantage of the respite to try to pound some sense into Amanda's head, but she refuses to compromise on the subject of subversively filthy goalie mask art, so they're stuck with Bryar. Who actually isn't bad, so they'll probably be fine.
The Caps finally win the Eastern Conference finals in six, steered by a rock-solid Holtby in net, and the Stanley Cup Finals begin.
*
"We have a problem," says Melissa from PR.
"Is it my problem?" asks Pete.
"No," says Melissa from PR. "It's my problem. I'm just bitching at you about it."
"I'm accomplishing very important general management tasks," says Pete, gently guiding his remote-controlled helicopter to land on her head.
Melissa from PR stands very still until the helicopter takes flight again. "The mascot guy quit," she says.
Pete crashes the helicopter into his mini-fridge.
*
Patrick is two days into recording his debut album with one of the best indie producers in Vegas when he receives in his mailbox two tickets to Battle Rabbits playoff home games and a note saying he'll get more if the games end up having to be played, which they totally won't because the Rabbits have got this. It is full of emoticons written in ballpoint pen. There is no signature.
Patrick doesn't go. He hates hockey, and even if he liked it, he's gotten enough of it over the season. Besides, he has an album to record. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He's not wasting his time at dumb old sports games when he could be living his dream in the studio.
The series does go past four games. It's tied 3-3 when Patrick gets a ticket for Game 7 in his mailbox, along with some ballpoint-scrawled sadface emoticons.
Despite himself, he is intrigued.
The indie producer has a wedding to attend that weekend, so Patrick ends up going to the game. Whatever, he got pretty fond of that little Urie fucker while they were doing promo events together. It would be kind of cool to see him lift the Cup.
The arena is fucking nuts. The Rabbits have built a huge local following. There are people in Playboy-bunny ears all over the place, some with little fuzzball tails safety-pinned to the rear of their pink-and-black jerseys. Patrick can see the mascot roaming the arena. He slouches down in his seat in post-traumatic terror.
Seventeen and a half minutes into the third, Green goes to the box for hooking. Vegas is on the power play, with the score tied at two. The entire crowd is on their feet, screaming. Patrick is standing up too, just because he wouldn't be able to see otherwise (he still can't really see; fuck tall people and their inconveniently positioned Playboy-bunny ears) when he gets a sense of someone standing uncomfortably close to his shoulder.
He turns. It's the bunny mascot.
"Jesus Christ," he yips, and bumps into the lady next to him.
The bunny mascot removes its head, revealing Pete fucking Wentz, star GM. Patrick stares. No one else seems to notice--they're all too busy screaming at Blackinton to "SHOOT! SHOOOOOT!"
Pete says something. Patrick can't hear a damn word, the place is so noisy.
The roar gets even louder, and he looks back at the rink. Green is out of the box, instantly setting up a three-on-two rush. He passes to Ribeiro, who passes back to Green, who passes to... shit, that's Ryan, that's Ryan Ross taking a shot and beating Bryar to score with twenty-four seconds left on the clock.
Brian pulls Bryar. Saporta wins the faceoff, but it doesn't matter. They get in one more shot, denied by Holtby, before time runs out and the Capitals have won.
"...really should get down there," Pete is saying into Patrick's ear. "So will you?"
"WIll I what?" says Patrick, tearing his eyes away from the devastated faces on the home bench.
"Go out with me," Pete says.
Patrick shakes his head. Pete's face falls, like being rejected by Patrick is actually more disappointing for him than losing the Cup.
Patrick wasn't actually saying no, though, he was just shaking his head because Pete is fucking unbelievable. "What," says Patrick. "What are you even doing?"
"Romantically gesturing?" says Pete, and raises his paws in a theatrical shrug.
There is no way this can possibly be a good idea, but Patrick says yes anyway.
*
Pete decides to trade Amanda to the Leafs in the offseason. They're desperate enough for decent goaltending that they're willing to risk her batshit insanity.
Before the deal goes through, Amanda breaks contract and runs off to Russia. The KHL timidly asks if they want her back. Pete decides fuck it.
The Rabbits lose in the first round of the playoffs the next year, but they have a Winter Classic with the Kings lined up, and they'll be golden once they get another star goalie. Pete's not too worried. They'll be fine.
Amanda leads her KHL team to the Continental Cup that season, shutting down the five-hole and proudly showing off her dirty goalie mask the whole way.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/80830.html.
It's 2014. The NHL conference system has undergone restructure, leaving it with two eight-team conferences and two seven-team conferences, and the league has announced that it is accepting applications for two new franchises to even out the numbers. They're expecting Seattle and Quebec City to step up, but at the last minute, the Quebec City investment group falls apart, and none of the other applications can pull together the necessary funding.
Pete Wentz, brilliant yet underappreciated management peon for the Blackhawks, gets a call from Hugh Hefner. The Las Vegas Battle Rabbits are born.
Fast-forward to the beginning of the season.
It's not the craziest thing the NHL has ever let happen. Putting a team in Phoenix, that was crazy. Putting TWO teams in Florida, that was just ridiculous. Putting a team in Vegas? Eh. People like spending money in Vegas. And it's got solid, if unorthodox, financing, so the worst that can happen is the team fails in Nevada and Hefner moves it somewhere else.
Public opinion is that the team's failure will not stem from its location. The hockey twitterverse/blogosphere is not of one mind as to why it will fail, but they're all certain it will. Katie Baker thinks it's doomed because its players are cobbled together from personal contacts and are mostly brand-new to playing pro. Ellen Etchingham thinks it's doomed because Pete Wentz is way too inexperienced to effectively GM a LARP, much less an NHL team. Ryan Lambert thinks it's doomed because two of its players are female, and Ryan Lambert is a douche. Wyshynski thinks it's doomed because it's called the Battle Rabbits. The Ducks had Teemu Selanne and even they couldn't win a Cup until they dropped the "Mighty," he reasons.
The Rabbits pay no heed to such doubters. They practice hard all summer, they tell the media they're confident in their team's capabilities, and they fucking CRUSH the Sharks in their first preseason exhibition game. Lambert shuts up with the "puck bunny" jokes about top-line left wing Victoria Asher pretty fucking fast.
The Rabbits continue to dominate through the beginning of the season. In their first ten NHL games, they lose two: one against L.A. in a shootout because Quick is still a god in 2014, and one against the Rangers when Marc Staal slams second-line center Brendon Urie against the boards and he ends up having to sit out the rest of the game for potential concussion symptoms. It's the Rabbits' first brush with serious injury, and it throws them off enough for New York to outscore them. But other than that, they've won everything so far.
The bloggers start posting wide-eyed "who knew?" articles analyzing the talent on the team. Everyone agrees that the thrust of the Rabbits' success comes from their starting goalie, Amanda Palmer. Justin Bourne writes suspicious conspiracy-theory posts about Palmer's mask, which is decorated with abstract patterns that look perfectly innocent if you stare right at them but become inexplicably obscene when viewed in the peripheral vision. But most people are too busy jaw-dropping at her .942 save percentage to bother examining that too closely. The backup goalie is some guy called Bryar, but no one has a clue whether he's any good, because he hasn't stepped in front of the net once so far.
The Rabbits' top line is Asher-Saporta-Blackinton. The second line is the Smith-Urie-Ross line, which quickly becomes known for its speed and elegant plays. Their weakness is the physical game, thus the Staal hit, but they're fast enough that they can dodge impact most of the time. Merritt, Montano, and Euringer are the third line, with McCracken, Allman, and Howard bringing up the gritty rear. Toro and Iero are the Rabbits' defensive big guns, with Crawford, Weekes, McCoy, and Mrotek for hella depth.
Nobody has ever heard of any of these people before. It's a mystery where that Wentz guy came up with them.
*
So Pete's having a pretty great life right now. His underground-genius hockey contacts panned out, his career is all set, and he's making boatloads of money. The only thing he wants that he doesn't have, in fact, is the guy who wears the mascot outfit.
Patrick has no interest in hockey. Patrick wears the mascot outfit because the job pays well enough to let him focus on music in his spare time. (There is no properly characterized universe in which Patrick Stump is not a music nerd.) Patrick kind of hates hockey, as a matter of fact. He didn't care one way or another before he got this job, but being up close and personal with the sort of people who choose to attend the Playboy-funded Las Vegas NHL team's home games has opened his eyes to a whole new world of douchery. He's here until he gets his sound production career off the ground, and then he's gone.
Pete knows all this because he had a conversation with Patrick once, at a publicity event before the season started, where Patrick had to wear the rabbit outfit in hundred-degree weather. Patrick, not following hockey, had no clue who Pete was, and gratefully accepted his offer of a chilled water bottle and sympathy. They got to talking; Patrick made his unfavorable opinions regarding the Battle Rabbits clear, and Pete encouraged him to follow his dreams and do music if music was what he loved. Then they chatted about classic rock for a while before someone dragged Pete off to shake hands and talk to reporters.
Sometime since then, Patrick has figured out who Pete is. Pete sees him around and tries to say hi, but Patrick just avoids the shit out of him with a "no, I love this job, really, I was just kidding, don't fire me" look on his face.
When Pete can see his face. Usually it's just a big plush rabbit head.
*
Gerard is the PA announcer for the Rabbits' arena. He announces about how fantastic Iero is a lot. To be fair, Iero is a pretty great D-man, but Gerard is really not being fair, because Toro is just as good and gets a hell of a lot fewer penalties. Gerard might not mind the penalties. They put Iero right next to him in the box, all sweaty and pissed-off. It's pretty great.
Mikey is an ice girl, except not a girl. (He totally fucked Pete for the job. Pete figured he was just carrying on the legacy of the team's venerable financier, and went with it.) Andy is the goaltending coach, Joe is in charge of the penalty kill. Zach and Worm are refs.
Brian Schechter is the coach. Ellen Etchingham was pretty dubious about that too, but a month into the season, nobody's dubious. The Rabbits aren't winning everything, but they're doing pretty damn well. Saporta is on track for a 40-goal season. Palmer's GAA hasn't risen above 2, and she's had two shutouts already. The Rabbits are gaining fans almost as fast as they're gaining enemies. There's a petition online to name them as a competitor in the 2016 Winter Classic against the Kings.
***
December rolls around, and the Rabbits are doing great. They're not destroying everyone, but they're floating around 3rd or 4th in the league. Brian is super happy. Andy is super happy. Joe is mildly satisfied, although he won't stop working the Rabbits to the bone on the PK while the Kings' numbers are still better than theirs (the Vegas-L.A. rivalry is fledgling but already epic). Pete is deliriously happy most of the time, although Patrick still won't talk to him, which is a bummer. But he's working on it.
Then some radio station in Cambridge gets third-line forward Stephin Merritt into the studio over Christmas break for an interview, and they're like "soooo, you must be swimming in ladies after all this success your team is having, got a girlfriend?" and he's like, "Boyfriend, yes," and they're like o.o and the internet is like O.O and the YCP folks are like :D :D :D :D :D!!!!!!! and Stephin is like O.o uhhhh back off, my dick is my business? and the media is like YEAH NO, HOWSABOUT A COMMENT?
And, like... he knew that being openly into dudes would attract attention, but he didn't realize exactly how crazy everyone was going to get. It's not just hockey media, not even just sports media, because no athlete in the top four American sports has ever been out publicly before retirement. It's ALL the media. And the YCP people are pressuring him to be their posterboy, and jesus, he just wants to play hockey. It's seriously stressful and exhausting, and his quality of play drops sharply. He moves from third line to fourth line, and even then he's not meeting expectations.
After a couple weeks, Pete and Brian pull Stephin aside for a talk. They get that he's dealing with a lot right now, but, well, it was his own decision to come out, and while they're willing to support him, there's a limit to how much they can let the team suffer for it. And Stephin is totally understanding about it, he doesn't want to be given preferential treatment, if he's not able to get it together then they should definitely give some kid from the farm system a chance. He doesn't want to drag the team down.
So they send him down to their AHL affiliate and call up a promising young forward to take his place, and Amanda goes on strike.
She doesn't TELL anyone she's going on strike. Their first game without Stephin is a home game against the Canucks, and she suits up as usual, skates out to the net, stands there, and... continues standing there. The ref drops the puck, Vancouver wins the faceoff, Kesler takes it to the Rabbits' zone, Dallon and Ian block a couple of shots but the Canucks keep possession and Burrows gets it to the net... and Amanda just stands there while it goes in.
Everyone gives her "what the hell?" faces as they skate back to center ice for another faceoff. The Rabbits keep the puck in the offensive zone for a while, but eventually it gets back to the other end of the ice, and it's headed straight for Amanda's pads, and she actually steps aside to let it in.
Brian takes his time-out four minutes into the first period, because he doesn't have a choice. Amanda calmly skates back to the bench, where Brian demands to know what the hell is going on, and then all becomes clear: she's taking a stand in support of her teammate.
Pissed off does not begin to describe Brian's reaction to this. He sends out Bob, because he has to, and spends the next two commercial breaks cussing out Amanda at the top of his lungs. She takes it serenely, which pisses him off even more, and before the first period is over, he sends her to the locker room.
Bob is a decent goalie, but he's not Amanda, and sadly he's not quite Schneider either, at least not enough to overcome the early two-goal deficit. They lose 5-2. Everyone's mad, but mostly they're just confused as fuck. They're all set to descend on Amanda and demand to know what's going on, but before they hit the locker room, Pete snags Amanda and takes her back to his office. He's like, "look, we didn't send him down because he came out. You've seen his numbers lately. Treating him the same as everybody else works both ways."
Amanda leans forward and looks him in the eye and says, "This league created the culture that fucked Stephin over. If it's not going to take responsibility for that and deal with the consequences, I'm not interested in participating in it. I'm contractually obligated to stand between the posts when you tell me to, but you cannot contractually obligate me to do it well."
Pete's pretty sure there actually is something in her contract about putting forth her best reasonable effort, but she has a point, and he's already feeling bad enough about the Stephin thing to not push it. He just says, "Okay, you're right, I'll call him back up for the next game. But don't do this again, understand? If you have a problem, talk to me. We could have resolved this without losing a game."
Amanda gives him this eyebrow, like, mhm, 'cause you totally would have listened to me before I threatened the success of the franchise, but she doesn't say it out loud. By the next practice, Stephin's back, and after the media explosion dies down, his numbers return to normal. Amanda alienates everyone in management through the sheer force of her smug.
*
By then it's February, and the trade deadline is approaching fast. Everyone's a little bit squirmy, but no one's really freaked out until two days before the deadline, when Ryan gets traded to the Caps for Joel Ward.
This team is made up of oddball hockey prodigies who are all too unconventional or too small or too female or too unrepentantly obnoxious to have made it in the normal NHL-track system. None of these players are used to inter-team movement. They've come to think of the team as theirs over the last few months, and to lose one of their own to another team is a shock.
But they're well on their way to the playoffs now, and they need to be planning ahead. They're rock-solid on defense, but their scoring could use a boost, and Ryan doesn't score a whole lot. He's fantastic at possession and getting the puck into the right zone, but his shot just isn't all that intimidating, and Ward has been hitting the back of the net a lot this season.
The Rabbits are a little tense until the trade deadline passes, but Pete doesn't move anybody else. They've got a good thing going here; he doesn't want to fuck with it too much.
They keep winning a lot until mid-March, when Gabe gets a bad knee injury. The doctors are saying he might be out for the season. Brian scowls a lot and moves Victoria to center, which she's fine at except she can't win faceoffs for shit. They don't do as well for the rest of the regular season, and end up seeded fifth in the conference.
That's okay. The Kings were seeded eighth and bulldozed their way to the Cup. If the Kings can do it, the Rabbits decide, so can they.
*
They're one game away from sweeping the Stars in the first series when Bourne's post about Amanda's mask from way back in October goes viral, and everyone realizes that there actually are obscene images hidden in the design. Don Cherry just about shits his eye-wateringly maroon pants over it. The NHL firmly informs Amanda that she will not be permitted to wear that mask in games anymore.
Amanda goes on strike again.
This time, Pete throws up his hands and writes her off as a healthy scratch. He does not have time for this shit. He puts Bryar out to start and calls up some kid who's nowhere near NHL-ready from the farm team as backup. The series against the Stars goes to Game 7, and while they do manage to eke out the win, eking shit out is just not gonna cut it.
It doesn't cut it in the second series against the Blackhawks, either. They lose two in a row, then win one, then lose another one, and they're just about fucked when the doctors finally give Gabe the green light to play and he swoops in to save the day. They knock out the Hawks, then kick the Kings' asses in a blissfully brief five-game Western Conference series, and then they're going to the final.
The Caps-Rangers series is tied at two, so they have a few days to catch their breath. Pete takes advantage of the respite to try to pound some sense into Amanda's head, but she refuses to compromise on the subject of subversively filthy goalie mask art, so they're stuck with Bryar. Who actually isn't bad, so they'll probably be fine.
The Caps finally win the Eastern Conference finals in six, steered by a rock-solid Holtby in net, and the Stanley Cup Finals begin.
*
"We have a problem," says Melissa from PR.
"Is it my problem?" asks Pete.
"No," says Melissa from PR. "It's my problem. I'm just bitching at you about it."
"I'm accomplishing very important general management tasks," says Pete, gently guiding his remote-controlled helicopter to land on her head.
Melissa from PR stands very still until the helicopter takes flight again. "The mascot guy quit," she says.
Pete crashes the helicopter into his mini-fridge.
*
Patrick is two days into recording his debut album with one of the best indie producers in Vegas when he receives in his mailbox two tickets to Battle Rabbits playoff home games and a note saying he'll get more if the games end up having to be played, which they totally won't because the Rabbits have got this. It is full of emoticons written in ballpoint pen. There is no signature.
Patrick doesn't go. He hates hockey, and even if he liked it, he's gotten enough of it over the season. Besides, he has an album to record. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He's not wasting his time at dumb old sports games when he could be living his dream in the studio.
The series does go past four games. It's tied 3-3 when Patrick gets a ticket for Game 7 in his mailbox, along with some ballpoint-scrawled sadface emoticons.
Despite himself, he is intrigued.
The indie producer has a wedding to attend that weekend, so Patrick ends up going to the game. Whatever, he got pretty fond of that little Urie fucker while they were doing promo events together. It would be kind of cool to see him lift the Cup.
The arena is fucking nuts. The Rabbits have built a huge local following. There are people in Playboy-bunny ears all over the place, some with little fuzzball tails safety-pinned to the rear of their pink-and-black jerseys. Patrick can see the mascot roaming the arena. He slouches down in his seat in post-traumatic terror.
Seventeen and a half minutes into the third, Green goes to the box for hooking. Vegas is on the power play, with the score tied at two. The entire crowd is on their feet, screaming. Patrick is standing up too, just because he wouldn't be able to see otherwise (he still can't really see; fuck tall people and their inconveniently positioned Playboy-bunny ears) when he gets a sense of someone standing uncomfortably close to his shoulder.
He turns. It's the bunny mascot.
"Jesus Christ," he yips, and bumps into the lady next to him.
The bunny mascot removes its head, revealing Pete fucking Wentz, star GM. Patrick stares. No one else seems to notice--they're all too busy screaming at Blackinton to "SHOOT! SHOOOOOT!"
Pete says something. Patrick can't hear a damn word, the place is so noisy.
The roar gets even louder, and he looks back at the rink. Green is out of the box, instantly setting up a three-on-two rush. He passes to Ribeiro, who passes back to Green, who passes to... shit, that's Ryan, that's Ryan Ross taking a shot and beating Bryar to score with twenty-four seconds left on the clock.
Brian pulls Bryar. Saporta wins the faceoff, but it doesn't matter. They get in one more shot, denied by Holtby, before time runs out and the Capitals have won.
"...really should get down there," Pete is saying into Patrick's ear. "So will you?"
"WIll I what?" says Patrick, tearing his eyes away from the devastated faces on the home bench.
"Go out with me," Pete says.
Patrick shakes his head. Pete's face falls, like being rejected by Patrick is actually more disappointing for him than losing the Cup.
Patrick wasn't actually saying no, though, he was just shaking his head because Pete is fucking unbelievable. "What," says Patrick. "What are you even doing?"
"Romantically gesturing?" says Pete, and raises his paws in a theatrical shrug.
There is no way this can possibly be a good idea, but Patrick says yes anyway.
*
Pete decides to trade Amanda to the Leafs in the offseason. They're desperate enough for decent goaltending that they're willing to risk her batshit insanity.
Before the deal goes through, Amanda breaks contract and runs off to Russia. The KHL timidly asks if they want her back. Pete decides fuck it.
The Rabbits lose in the first round of the playoffs the next year, but they have a Winter Classic with the Kings lined up, and they'll be golden once they get another star goalie. Pete's not too worried. They'll be fine.
Amanda leads her KHL team to the Continental Cup that season, shutting down the five-hole and proudly showing off her dirty goalie mask the whole way.
This entry was originally posted at http://jedusaur.dreamwidth.org/80830.html.