John Adams High School - Clipper Yearbook (Ozone Park, NY)

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l down the ice. He passes one to me, and I pass it back at the mid-stripe. I-Ie goes down a little and sets for a shot. There's a Tiger wing right in front of him, but that don't bother Mack. He lets it go and it sails right by that Tiger's head toward the goal. The Tiger goalie's got a blank look on his face. His own man gets in his way, and he can't see the puck. It hits the net for the only point of the game. Whatta lucky break for us! Thatis some way to win an opening game. We gets a two-day vacation and then we faces the Yellow jackets, the weakest team in the league. I play sorta bad in the last quarter, letting a jacket wing get past me, and the result is a 2-1 win for the jackets. The kid doesn't do much this game. But his luck can't be stopped long. Our next game is with the Hawks, last year's champs. For two periods, we battle them guys dizzy, and it's only by the bad breaks that the score is 0-0. The game is nearing the end, and we can't do anything. So it goes into an overtime. We hold off the Hawks for a while, and then Mack Stella traps the puck. He carries it up a way and nearly sur- prises rne with a pass when he isn't even looking at me. I snares it and shoots it to Watt, who relays it to Stella. Stella spins and bullets the rubber at the Hawk goal. The goalie makes a one-handed stab at it and grabs it with a prayer on his lips, be:ause that was a real hot shot. I-Ie sees a Hawk man in the clear and he hurriedly goes to toss him the puck. In his anxiety to relay the puck to him, he lets it slip through the back of his mitts and it bounces on the ice. He turns around to grab it quick-like but his eyes widen with horror, for the puck is rolling toward the net. He dives for it but he is too late. The puck rolls in for a point. Naturally, the only guy they can credit with the goal is Stella. Boy, if that isn't luck, I'rn a monkey's uncle. D'ye think that would happen with us? I'll say not. Anyhow, we staves off the Hawks and wins the game. bk 514 FF Throughout the season, we play good enough to keep us near the top of the heap. Strange, but it seems there's no end to Cocky Stella's luck. Not that he isn't a good player, for he really is one of the season's finds. But he keeps scoring fluke goals, avoid- ing penalties when he trips men so that everyone but the ref sees it. There's one game in particular, when Mack clips a guy from behind, and the ref misses it. It was the Comet game. A Comet walks up to the ref and asks, Hey, where's your dog? The ref says, puzzled-like, What dog?,' The Comet man answers, You're the first blind man I ever saw without a dog. He got two minutes for that, and Stella got away scot-free . . . All this time, joe goes around with that I told you look on his face. But as the season began to draw to a close,

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He's got something up his sleeve, I sez to myself. :'Listen, Joe says to Marty, knock the sass out of that wise guy and make a good job. Marty smiles pleasantly and when this Mack Stella comes out, the ice is cleared. He handles the stick as if he knows his business. i'Daroux, hollers joe at the goalie. Git down there and let's see what this kid kin do. Daroux is a cagey, grizzled half-breed who has been in the business nearly ten years. Stella's supposed to pass Marty and score a goal on Daroux, a man-sized task for any veteran. They toss him a puck and he starts toward Daroux at full speed. Marty barges in on him and as the kid feints to the left, Marty trips on his stick and goes sprawling on his face. Mack crosses to the right and slams the disc hard at Daroux. The goal-keeper sets himself for an easy save, but the puck takes a crazy hop and bounces over his shoulder into the net, for one of the Hukiest goals l've ever seen. Marty picks himself up and is mad as a wet hen. Daroux is kinda sore, too. The kid skates back, chesty-like. What a lucky guy, I mutters to joe. Yeah, says joe, but he's watching this Stella guy's form intently. Try it agin, you men, he shouts. So the blond-haired kid takes the puck again and starts circling Marty, cau- tious-like. But Marty is real mad, and he charges the kid like a bull. He lands a beauty of a body-block on Stella, and he goes up in the air, feet first. Daroux sees Marty bump the kid and turns away, grinning. How- ever, Stella happens to swing his stick by instinct as he leaves the ice and it hits the puck by a lucky break. The puck dribbles down the ice past the unwitting Daroux and just about plops into the strands. Boy, that's the limit of luck! The kid gets up as confident and unshaken as ever and skates over to joe with a How's that, boss? joe glares at him in nine languages and tells him to beat it-until the same time tomorrow. He leaves the place, and I tells Joe that I think the kid's lucky. But joe seems to think the kid has got the goods and wants to hang on to him. In fact, for the first time in four years, joe cracks a smile. The boy must have something, I figures. ak ar as The gang has already nicknamed him Cocky because of his self-con- fidence. That's putting it mildly. He's one of these self-made men, who wor- ships his creator. Well, the night of the opening game rolls around, and Cocky acts like his nickname. It was one of the tlukiest games I ever did see in a long while. We won, by 1-O, but there's more than that to it. The kid played the first period well enough, but joe takes him out in the second for a rest. He sticks him in again in the last period, and the score is tied at 0-0. Cocky gets the puck behind our goal and starts

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with us in second place,-. something begins to go wrong. I knew what it was right away. Cocky was going sour on us. I guess that's what the write-ups the papers gave him did to his head, because he was keeping late hours and going off his game. I told him to lay off once, but he told me to mind my own business. Not that he really went bad. His luck was too great. His playing was getting ragged. He no longer blocked hard, skated like the wind, was slowing up. But not his luck. Lots of times he got in hot water, but his luck always helped him out. His breaks were getting to be legendary. Wfell, the last game of the season comes and just like in story books, if we win this game, it means the cham- pionship. And who should we be playing but the Hawks, a team that never fails in the clutch. Joe don't seem worried, although I am. It's just before game time, and Stella isn't present. just before the third period, the locker-room door flies open and in dashes Mack Stella, disheveled and bloody but a sight for ten pairs of sore eyes. Where were you? gasps joe, who's nearly having a hemorrhage. Tell you as I dress, jerks out Cocky as he rips off his shirt. A bunch of men kidnapped me and promised me a big wad of cash if I tossed the game. I refused, and they took me to some room on Tenth Avenue. But they parked the car in front of a fire hydrant, and a police- man saw the car. Stella stopped talk- ing as he pulled his jersey on. He came in to give them a ticket and before they could gag me, I raised a rumpus, and he clapped the gang in the hoosegow. Drove me over in his car. He adjusted his skate and was ready to go. Well, his luck had gotten him there, and now, according to Hoyle, it should win the game for us. But for once, it looked like his luck had deserted him. Every time he got in Hawk ter- ritory, two men pounced on him and made him hit the ice so hard his teeth rattled like a Ford fender. just as the final minutes were dwindling, he got his stick on the puck and started on a do-or-die offensive. I follow right in his 'tracks and bumped out two men. Marty cleared the fore and it seemed as though a good shot might win the game. Cocky made ready to shoot the puck, but a strange thing happened. At the last moment, his stick slid over the puck, and the only thing he was carrying was ice chips. I saw this at a glance, and raced to- ward it right away. I guess no one else saw it, for they were all watching Mack. He drew his stick back to swing as I reached the puck, two feet behind him. We swung simultan- eously and the next thing I saw was the red light winking. The whistle blew, ending the game. At last, I had done something heroic-like and won a championship game for the team. But the crowd came down on the ice and lifted Stella to their shoulders, not me. Then I understood. The only thing the spectators had seen was Cocky swinging at the disc, and it had looked like he scored the point. No one saw me make it. Anyway, it seemed ap- propriate that the kid get all the glory for that. It was right up his line. I didn't want the point or the fame anyway. All I wanted was the game.