JOE CAVANAGH just sat there with his arms outstretched on the back of his adjustable seat on the team bus, and grinned with the grin of a man who has just seen his opponent voluntarily surrender. He grinned again, then began chuckling and rubbed his hands together eagerly. It was too good to be true.

"You're really serious about this?" he asked, somewhat skeptically.

"Sure," I said. "Sometime next week, anytime at your convenience, I'll meet you at the rink. I'll get Jimmy Cunniff to lend me the goaltending equipment, and we'll arrange with the attendants to give us the ice for a few minutes. You'll get ten penalty shots, from anywhere you want. You can blasts it, or come in really close and deke if you like. It's up to you. Then, I'll use the experience to write a story on what it's like to be in the goal with an All-American shooting at you. I think the fans would go for it. You know, like Plimpton."

Cavanagh was obviously going for it, too, in a big way.

"I'll bring the wickedest book you ever saw," Cavanagh said, a little sinisterly. "You won't even see the puck. Or maybe I'll just put some moves on you. There's a few things I've been wanting to try out, but no one else wants to be the guinea pig," Cavanagh turned around and grinned at Jack Turco, who grinned back a little enviously.

"Let me try it instead," Turco suggested.

A few others volunteered quickly, as well. Chris Gurry. Skip Freeman. All the boys who had had violent disagreements with the quality of the articles that I had written about the hockey team this winter. Everyone wanted a piece of Powers of the Press. Especially when Powers was on the receiving end of the deal.

"Christ," Turco said. "The Master has been dreaming about this. He said once that he had this amazing dream, where you were tied into the net, with no pads. Nothing. And the Master had about a thousand pucks at the blue line. He fired them all, and they were all right on the net. Then, when he ran out of pucks, he came barreling in on you and broke the goddamn stick right over your head. It was beautiful."

The Master, George Murphy, probably would have done it, too. He and I had been hassling each other all season. Once, after a game at Brown this January, we were riding back from Providence on the team bus, and Murphy leaned over and looked at the game story I was writing for the next day's CRIMSON. Harvard had won, 6-3, but hadn't looked as impressive as I thought they could have. I said so in my story, and Murphy, who always has an appreciative audience at his beck and call, argued about it. In front of the whole team. All the way back to Cambridge. He tried his best to make me look really ignorant, so I swore that I'd get even. Something about the power of the press, or some crap like that.

So sure enough, in the CRIMSON the next morning, I had gotten my revenge. I found a stock picture of Murphy in the files, and we ran it on the sports page. We glorified the guy, ferissake. He was the moving force behind the victory, even though he had only played for about a minute or so. George "The Master" Murphy. No wonder he was seeing me in his dreams.

So that was part of the reason that I had asked Cavanagh to shoot on me, rather than Murphy or someone whose antipathy towards me would have had a little more appeal to the masses. Joey, I had figured, was probably the best breakaway artist on the team, along with Ronny Mark. It was worth it to be publicly humiliated if the executioner could really do it in style. And besides, since Cavanagh and I had been pretty good friends in the past, I was reasonably sure that he wouldn't try to take my head off with a slapper, or something sneaky like that. Reasonably sure.

But here he was now, relaxing in his slide-back seat, murmuring about how long the blade on that stick was going to be, how curved, how illegal. I felt a sudden, but distinct, distrust of Joe Cavanagh. Power corrupts and all that.

"Just Don't Get Him Mad"

"How many do you intend to stop?" someone asked. "Oh, he'll probably miss one," I answered. I didn't intend to stop any. I had never even worn goalie pads before, much less played in the nets. Of course I didn't intend to stop any. But I did intend to get advice, so on the return trip to Cambridge that night. I sought out Mike LoPresti and Bruce Durno, the varsity goaltenders, and asked them what was the best way for a novice goalie to stop an All American center on a penalty shot.

"Sprawl," they said.

I filed this away for future reference.