Chapter Text
Mitch is still grinning when he steps out of the interview room. It feels strange, how long the smile has lasted.
Usually after games, even good ones, there is a comedown. The adrenaline burns off and something tighter takes its place. Worry. Self-critique. The little voice that starts replaying every missed pass and every bobbled puck and every moment that could have gone differently.
Tonight, that voice is quiet. Not gone. Mitch doesn't think it will ever be completely gone. But quiet enough that he can hear other things instead.
His own laugh, still caught in his chest from something Jack Eichel said in the room. The echo of his teammates pounding their sticks against the floor when he made it to the locker room after the game. The constant vibration of his phone in his pocket.
And, tinny through the speaker mounted in the hallway, Paul Bissonnette talking too loudly, as always. "...I'm telling you, I was wrong. Dead wrong. Mitch Marner has been the best player in these playoffs. If Vegas wins Game 7, hand him the Conn Smythe Trophy."
Mitch snorts softly to himself and adjusts the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder. Biz. He still doesn't know what to do with Biz. For months now it's been apologies and praise and jokes about wanting him back. Mitch understands the performance. Biz's whole job is performance. He says what gets people talking.
But Mitch has a hard time forgetting last spring, when the performance slipped.
The panel had gotten heated after another first-round loss, and for one brief moment Paul Bissonnette stopped sounding like a television personality and started sounding like every furious caller on sports radio, every faceless account in his mentions, every person who looked at him like he had personally ruined their lives. Get Marner off the ice. I’ve seen enough. Unacceptable. He’s lost every single puck battle tonight. Lost it before the penalty. In complete no mans land on the PK. Enough is enough. Earn your ice.
Mitch remembers the exact way his stomach dropped when he heard it. Not because it was new, because it wasn't, but because it was one thing when it was said by faceless fans on twitter, and another when it was said from behind the TNT desk.
Everything since then, the praise, the jokes, the exaggerated mea culpas, sometimes feels sincere but sometimes feels like a man trying to patch over a moment that had revealed more than he intended.
Mitch doesn't know which is true. He isn't sure it matters. No one wants him back in Toronto. That much became very clear.
And, surprisingly, he is okay with that. More than okay. He is happy.
The realization still feels fragile enough that he turns it over carefully in his mind, as if he might scare it away.
Happy. Not relieved. Not vindicated. Not smug. Just happy.
Hockey has felt like hockey again. Not an obligation. Not a referendum on his worth as a person. Not a test he is doomed to fail publicly. Just the game he has loved since he was a little kid in the driveway, pretending the garage door was a net.
He had forgotten that was possible.
He'd felt flashes of it with Team Canada over the years. Short tournaments where everyone pulled in the same direction and no one treated him like a symbol of civic disappointment, but this is different.
This is months of waking up excited to go to the rink. This is Mark Stone grinning at him over breakfast and saying, "You look like you're having fun out there." This is a room full of veterans who do not care what columnists said about him three years ago.
This is scoring three goals in a Stanley Cup Final game and hearing his teammates scream like kids.
He scored a hat trick tonight. A hat trick in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The thought still doesn't feel real.
Mitch's chest tightens, but not in the old way.
The anxiety is there, sure. It would be insane if it weren't. He is one win away from the Stanley Cup, one win away from a trophy with his name all over the broadcasts, one win away from proving... no. He cuts the thought off before it can finish. He has gotten very good at that these playoffs.
He rounds the corner toward the family room. The hallway is quieter than he expects. The concrete corridor stretches ahead under harsh fluorescent lights, the cinderblock walls painted a dull institutional beige. A few pieces of tape curl at the edges where signs had been posted earlier. Somewhere far off, a cart rattles over a seam in the floor.
Mitch glances at his phone.
Messages stacked on messages. His mom. His dad. Half of the team Canda roster. About thirty unread texts.
One from Steph: Where are you, superstar? We have to get to dinner before your son falls asleep :)
Mitch smiles so hard his cheeks ache. He can picture her waiting with their little boy balanced on her hip, probably already in pajamas under a tiny team jacket. Sleepy and confused and still determined to stay awake long enough to see Daddy.
The best game of his career. His family at the end of the hall. His teammates waiting to celebrate.
For once, there is nothing in him but gratitude.
Then a voice says behind him, conversational and close enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. "So you can do it for Vegas, but not for us, eh, Mitchy?"
Mitch turns before he can stop himself. The reaction is automatic, years of smiling politely at strangers who know his nickname and feel entitled to use it. The man standing a few feet away looks utterly ordinary: late forties maybe, stocky, baseball cap pulled low, a credential on a lanyard bouncing lightly against his chest. He could be arena staff, media, somebody's uncle who managed to wander where he shouldn't be. For one disorienting second Mitch assumes this is going to be awkward but harmless, some overeager fan who wants a picture or a joke about finally proving everyone wrong.
Then he sees the man's face. Not excitement. Not admiration. Something raw and feverish, as though the man has been rehearsing this conversation for months and is barely holding himself together long enough to say the lines correctly.
Mitch feels the high of the night falter, not disappearing all at once but draining away with startling speed. His body, which only seconds ago had felt light enough to float, suddenly remembers how exhausted he is. He has played over twenty minutes of playoff hockey, absorbed cross-checks and slashes, emptied himself completely onto the ice, and now he is standing alone in a service corridor with a stranger whose expression makes the back of his neck prickle.
"Sorry?" Mitch says, because politeness is still his first instinct.
The man's eyes travel over him, the damp hair, the sweatpants with the Vegas logo, the evidence of a life that has continued after Toronto, and his mouth twists. "Was this your plan all along kid?"
Mitch doesn't understand at first, or maybe he understands immediately and doesn't want to. The words hit some ancient and overused bruise inside him, a place worn thin by years of hearing that his choices were not merely professional decisions but personal betrayals.
"Excuse me," he says, shifting his bag higher on his shoulder and trying to keep his tone light. Steph is waiting. Their son is probably half asleep, fighting to keep his eyes open just to see him. His teammates are texting him to hurry up so they can go celebrate. This weird interaction will be a story in thirty minutes, something Mark will laugh about over dinner. "My family's waiting for me."
"Bleed us dry with your contract," the man says, his voice rising with each word until it trembles. "Give us nothing. Then walk off into the sunset and win a Cup somewhere else."
Mitch stops moving.
The phrases are so familiar that for a moment they don't sound like threats at all. They sound like headlines, call-in shows, comments he learned years ago not to read but always seemed to absorb anyway. Overpaid. Selfish. Soft. Not built for this. The old reflexive shame stirs before he can suppress it, absurd and immediate, as though he is once again twenty-two years old and trying to explain to an entire country that he is trying as hard as he knows how.
He takes a step backward. The man reaches into his jacket.
Mitch's mind splinters into practical fragments. He should find security. He should run. He should yell.
"Hey," he says, raising one hand. "Listen, man–"
"You couldn't win for Toronto," the man says, and there is something heartbreakingly sincere in his voice, as if he is the injured party here. "You don't get to win anywhere."
The metal baton snaps open with a sound like a stick breaking.
Mitch has just enough time to understand what he is seeing and to think, with perfect clarity and complete disbelief, this cannot actually be happening.
Then the first blow lands high on his ribs, and the world simply ceases to function in a recognizable way. There is no cinematic burst of pain, no dramatic thought, only the instantaneous and terrifying absence of breath. One moment he is standing in a hallway thinking about his wife, and the next he cannot inhale. His knees buckle. A shocked noise escapes him, small and involuntary, and he crashes shoulder-first into the cinderblock wall.
The second strike catches his forearm as he throws up his arms to protect himself. He feels the impact all the way to his teeth and hears a crack that he realizes with detached horror has come from his own body.
"Please," he gasps, because the word emerges before any other. Because some stubborn part of him still believes that if he explains himself clearly enough, if he is calm enough, if he apologizes correctly, this can be fixed.
The third blow drives into his side. This time the pain arrives as something deeper and more frightening than a broken bone. Mitch feels a wet tearing sensation inside his abdomen, a wrongness so profound that his body recognizes it as mortal before his mind can name it. He collapses fully to the floor, curling around himself as instinct takes over.
The man is shouting now, but the words come in fragments between impacts.
"We believed in you."
The baton crashes into his back.
"We defended you."
Another blow to his shoulder.
"You embarrassed us."
Mitch folds tighter, forearms over his head, every muscle devoted to the increasingly impossible task of protecting himself. The concrete is cold beneath his cheek. His breath comes in ragged, useless pulls that never seem to fill his lungs.
"I tried," he hears himself say.
The words tear something open inside him that hurts almost as much as the beating, because they are true and because he hates that they are true. Faced with a stranger trying to kill him, some part of Mitch is still desperate to be understood. To make this person believe that none of it was indifference, or greed, or betrayal. That he had cared so much it nearly destroyed him.
The next strike lands across his back.
"You should have tried harder."
Pain spreads rapidly through his abdomen, pain like he’s never felt before, wrong in a way that feels dangerous, has his body screaming at him. Mitch does not need medical training to understand something is seriously wrong. Each breath is sharper and shallower than the last, accompanied by a nauseating bubbling sensation under his ribs.
He thinks of Steph waiting with their son. He thinks of her text Where are you, superstar? and of how ordinary and joyful his life had felt less than two minutes ago. He had been thinking about dinner, about Game 7, about whether he should finally let himself believe that this could happen.
He tries to crawl, but his right arm buckles beneath him.
The man grabs the front of his sweatshirt and drags him partly upright. Mitch's vision swims, but he can still see that the man's face is wet with tears.
"You were ours," the man says, his voice suddenly soft, almost pleading. "Do you understand that? You were ours."<
The words cut through Mitch more cleanly than any blow. Because that has always been the problem, hasn't it? Not that they hated him, but that they believed they owned him, that his talent, his labor, his body, even his happiness existed in service to their need.
The man slams him backward into the wall and lets him fall. Mitch's head strikes the concrete. White light detonates behind his eyes. For a few moments he can no longer distinguish between sounds and sensations. Footsteps receding. Blood in his mouth. The distant hum of fluorescent lights. His own heartbeat, fast and fluttering and frighteningly weak.
He rolls onto his side and immediately regrets it as agony lances through his chest and abdomen. He tries to push himself up, but the world spins, and he feels his face slam into the concrete, again. Bad, he finds himself thinking, this is really bad.
His phone is inches from his hand. He fumbles for it, fingers trembling too violently to grip properly. The screen lights.
Where are you, superstar?
The message blurs as his vision darkens.
Mitch stares at those words and feels, more than anything else, a crushing and irrational guilt. Steph is waiting. His son is waiting. Everyone is celebrating the best night of his career, and somehow he has turned it into this.
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
The darkness at the edges of his vision advances until the hallway, the lights, and the glowing screen dissolve together. Somewhere far away he thinks he hears voices, his teammates calling his name, closer with every passing second, but before he can answer, consciousness slips from him entirely.
@NHL
Mitch Marner records his second hat trick of the 2026 postseason as the Vegas Golden Knights force Game 7 against Buffalo in the Stanley Cup Final.
@wyshynski
known playoff choker Mitch Marner
@crosbutt
maybe it really was a leafs problem
@1634leafy
auston matthews is frantically texting moldaver right now
@goleafsgo
auston matthews to san jose for celebrini?
@fortheloveof271
LOL the absolute DELUSION keep him, his hairline and his bum knee NO THANKYOU
@VGK
Mitch Marner becomes the first player since Mario Lemieux to record multiple hat tricks in a single postseason and one of the few players in NHL history to score a hat trick in Game 6 of a Stanley Cup Final.
@vgshowers
why do i feel like biz is crying right now?
@mmzeus93
him and half of toronto
The family room is loud in the easy, exuberant way only a team one win from the Stanley Cup can be. Kids weave between folding chairs with the reckless confidence of children who have been told, repeatedly, not to run and have chosen to interpret that as a suggestion.
Someone from the training staff has commandeered a speaker, and music hums beneath the steady wash of conversation and laughter. Wives and girlfriends cluster around paper plates and half-finished drinks. The room feels warm, crowded, and wonderfully alive.
Mark Stone stands near the back with a beer he hasn't really touched, watching the room with the automatic awareness that has become second nature after years of captaincy. His daughter is asleep against his wife's shoulder, one tiny hand fisted in her mother's shirt. Across the room, Jack Eichel is crouched beside his nephew, helping him construct a tower out of plastic cups.
And over by the couch sits Stephanie Marner, their son half-asleep in her arms, still wearing a miniature Vegas hoodie and blinking stubbornly against exhaustion as though sheer willpower might keep him awake long enough to see his dad.
Stone catches Steph checking her phone for the third or fourth time. Mitch should have been here by now.
Normally that would mean nothing. Mitch Marner is thoughtful with reporters to the point of self-sabotage, answering every question as though the right combination of words might somehow satisfy everyone. And tonight he had scored a hat trick in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. The media was never going to let him go quickly.
Still, Stone glances at his watch and feels a faint unease settle under his ribs. Forty-five minutes.
One of the trainers follows his gaze toward the door and grins. "They've probably chained our golden boy to the interview podium."
The room laughs.
Karlsson raises his bottle. "He'll miss the whole dinner because Biz is trying to apologize again." That gets an even bigger laugh, including from Steph, though there is a flicker of concern in her expression that does not quite disappear.
She looks down at her phone and then back up. "He didn't answer."
The words are quiet, but they alter the atmosphere around Stone instantly. Not panic. Not yet. Just the subtle, sharpened awareness that something is off.
Stone sets his beer on the nearest table. "I'm gonna go rescue him."
Jack Eichel is already standing. "I'm coming."
Stone means to keep the mood light. "If Biz's got him cornered, we may need reinforcements."
A few people chuckle, but Stone is already moving toward the door, and Eichel is at his shoulder.
The noise of the family room drops away the moment Mark Stone and Jack Eichel step into the corridor. Their footsteps echo against the concrete walls as they head toward the media area, both of them expecting to find Mitch Marner trapped in some endless postgame interview, smiling politely while analysts try to hand him the Conn Smythe Trophy a game early.
Stone is thinking about how genuinely happy Mitch looked after the game, about the way he had laughed when the room presented him with the game puck, about how rare and unexpectedly moving it had been to see a player of Mitch's caliber seem so completely unburdened. Stone has played with plenty of stars, but there is something about Mitch's joy these playoffs, how tentative it had seemed at first and how real it has become, that makes him feel protective in a way he hadn't entirely anticipated.
They round the corner. At first Stone thinks someone has left a duffel bag against the wall. Then he sees a hand, and the world changes.
"Mitch!" Stone is running before he is conscious of moving, Jack Eichel right behind him.
Mitch is curled tightly on his side, one arm trapped beneath him and the other stretched toward a phone lying just beyond his fingertips. Blood streaks his mouth and chin and has dried beneath his nose. His lower lip is split. One eye is swelling shut. He is trembling so hard that his whole body shudders with each shallow breath.
For one stunned second Stone cannot reconcile this broken figure with the teammate who had been laughing less than an hour ago. Then Mitch coughs.
The sound is wet and ragged, and dark blood spatters onto the concrete.
Stone drops to his knees. "Oh my God. Mitch. Hey. Hey, buddy, look at me."
Mitch's eyelids flutter. His skin has taken on a frightening gray pallor, and sweat beads across his forehead despite the coolness of the corridor. Every breath seems to catch halfway, as though his body can no longer remember how to inhale without pain.
Eichel is already fumbling his phone from his pocket, his hands shaking so badly he nearly drops it.
"Call 911," Stone says, though Jack is already dialing.
"Yeah, hi, we need an ambulance," Eichel says, his words tumbling over one another. "At KeyBank, in the back hallway by the family room. One of our players, he got attacked, I think. He's really hurt. He's coughing up blood and he can barely breathe. Please– please hurry."
Stone takes Mitch's cold, trembling hand and leans close. "Stay with me," he says, forcing his voice to stay steady. "We've got you."
Mitch's lips move. Stone bends until he can hear him. "...Steph?"
The question is barely audible and so full of fear that Stone feels something twist painfully in his chest. "She's okay," Stone says immediately. "Steph is okay."
Mitch swallows with visible effort, his eyes opening a fraction. "...Miles?"
"He's okay too," Stone says, tightening his grip on Mitch's hand. "They're both safe. They're waiting for you."
Mitch's face tightens as though he is trying to absorb the words through the fog of pain. He coughs again, blood staining the corner of his mouth.
Eichel lowers the phone just long enough to shout down the corridor, his voice cracking.
"Medic! Security! Somebody help us!"
The response is immediate. Footsteps thunder toward them. Stone keeps talking because he cannot bear the thought of Mitch slipping into silence. "Steph and Miles are right here. You're going to see them in a minute. Just keep breathing for me."
Mitch's fingers twitch weakly around Stone's. His eyes drift shut, then open again as he fights to stay conscious.
The first medics arrive at a sprint, followed by trainers and security. They kneel around Mitch and begin working with swift, practiced efficiency. Oxygen is fitted over his face. One medic cuts through the Vegas sweatshirt with trauma shears.
Stone catches sight of Mitch's torso and has to force himself not to recoil.
Angry crimson welts cross his ribs and right flank, some already darkening to deep maroon where something had struck repeatedly. Over Mitch's right upper abdomen, just beneath the lower ribs, the skin is stretched taut and subtly swollen, the normal hard definition of a professional athlete's torso distorted into an unnatural fullness. His abdominal muscles are rigid, as if his body is bracing against a pain too severe to comprehend.
Stone has seen every kind of hockey injury, broken jaws, separated shoulders, skate cuts, teeth scattered across the ice.
This looks different.
This looks like something inside Mitch has been shattered.
A medic presses gently along Mitch's abdomen and Mitch arches off the floor with a muffled cry even through the oxygen mask.
"BP's dropping," another medic says sharply.
"Let's move."
Only when one of the medics firmly guides him backward does Stone release Mitch's hand.
He rises on shaking legs, his hands damp with blood from Mitch's mouth and nose, and watches as the paramedics load his teammate onto the stretcher and rush him toward the waiting ambulance.
Less than an hour ago, they had all been laughing and waiting to celebrate the best game of Mitch Marner's life.
Now Mark Stone can do nothing but stand in a concrete hallway and watch as strangers fight to keep him alive long enough to get back to his wife and son.
r/hockey
Marner scores his second hat trick in the 2026 post-season, leading playoff scoring with 32 points in 26 games
3.6 k upvotes - 973 comments
radiantgreg VGK-NHL
sooo he’s getting the conn smythe right?+1123
blue34 TOR-NHL
this was inevitable lol+876
missionette CHI-NHL
Because it was never him+2064thlinegoon TOR-NHL
Well… it was. stats don’t lie. he consistently shat the bed in big games for the leafs. so he can do it in vegas. great. couldn’t do it for his hometown team when it actually mattered. +60goldeneagle2 VGK-NHL
It wasn’t. It was a team failure and the focus on Marner is ridiculous. Always has been. +83badleafliving TOR-NHL
he was always too soft for a market that actually gave a shit and had expectations. he can do it in vegas when hockey is the least interesting thing happening in the city, where no one knows or cares about him. he couldn’t do it when the lights were brightest, and that’s why he ran. -438 more replies
embarrassedpast CAR-NHL
Take some melatonin, mute the thread, and go to bed toronto. You can regroup in your own sub tomorrow+180
dontbesalty TOR-NHL
I’ll be dreaming about McKenna +31
Mark Stone does not remember walking back to the family room. Later, when he tries to reconstruct the night, there are flashes that stand out with unnatural clarity: the weight of Mitch Marner's hand in his, cold and weak; the sound of Mitch asking if Steph and Miles were okay; the sight of trauma shears slicing through Mitch's sweatshirt to reveal angry red welts and the unnatural swelling beneath his ribs.
Everything else feels blurred around the edges.
One moment Stone is kneeling on concrete with blood on his hands, listening to paramedics call out numbers he does not understand. The next he is moving quickly down the hallway, Jack Eichel half a step behind him, both of them still breathing too hard.
Stone is vaguely aware that someone, security, maybe a trainer, is saying they will meet them at the hospital. That the ambulance is leaving now. That police are on the way. None of it seems real.
The family room doors swing open. The family room is still laughing when Mark Stone pushes open the door. For a second, the sound hits him so hard he almost stops.
Music from a portable speaker. The hiss of another beer being opened. Somebody's kid shrieking with laughter as William Karlsson pretends to steal a hat off his head. Stephanie Marner is on the couch with Miles drooping sleepily against her shoulder, her phone in her hand, glancing every few seconds toward the door with the indulgent expression of someone waiting for her husband to finish being celebrated.
Stone has a sudden, irrational urge to turn around and walk back out. If he leaves now, Mitch is still just late. Mitch is still trapped answering the same question twenty different ways. Mitch is still smiling, flushed and embarrassed and trying to deflect praise after the best game of his career.
Instead, he steps fully into the room. The blood on his shirt is what does it. Stone doesn't have to say anything. Conversations falter one by one as people notice the dark smears across his hands, the stains on his knees, the fact that Jack Eichel is behind him and looks as though he might be sick.
The music cuts off in the middle of a song. By the time Stone reaches the couch, the room has gone completely silent. Steph is already standing. Miles stirs against her shoulder. "Where's Mitch?"
Stone opens his mouth and nothing comes out.
He has stood in front of cameras after playoff losses. He has addressed rooms after trades, injuries, eliminations. He has had to say difficult things to teammates and coaches and family members. He has never had to look at a woman waiting to celebrate with her husband and tell her why he hasn’t made it to her.
"Steph," he says finally, his voice so rough he barely recognizes it. He pulls a chair closer with shaking hands. "Let's sit down for a second."
She doesn't sit. "Mark." It’s just his name, but there is already panic in it.
Stone forces himself to meet her eyes. "Please, Steph."
Something in his face convinces her. She lowers herself mechanically into the chair, still clutching Miles, who begins to squirm in response to the tension tightening around them.
Stone crouches in front of her.
He is aware of the entire room listening.
"Listen to me," he says. "Everything's going to be okay, but Mitch is on his way to the hospital right now."
For a moment Steph simply stares at him. Then she shakes her head once, as though she has misheard. "What?"
"He's at the hospital."
Her voice comes faster now, tripping over itself. "Was he hurt in the game? Did they find something after? I don't understand."
Stone swallows. "It's not from the game."
He hears a sharp intake of breath somewhere behind him and Steph's fingers tighten reflexively in Miles's sweatshirt. "What do you mean?"
Stone wishes desperately that he had more than fragments. A hallway. Blood on Mitch's mouth. Mitch asking if Steph and Miles were okay. "We don't know exactly what happened," he says. "Jack and I found him in the hallway. He was hurt, and the ambulance took him."
Steph is very still. "Hurt how?"
Stone closes his eyes for half a second. "We think someone attacked him."
A bottle slips from someone's hand and hits the carpet with a dull thud.
Alex Pietrangelo is moving before Stone has finished the sentence, already digging in his pocket for his keys. William Karlsson goes so pale Stone thinks for a second he might sit down, but instead he braces both hands on the table and stares.
Then the room starts talking all at once.
"Attacked?"
"What the fuck?"
"Inside the building?"
"Was it somebody from Buffalo?"
"Probably some drunk fuck pissed that Mitchy skated circles around their team tonight."
"Did he get robbed?"
"How does somebody even get back here?"
Steph makes a small, involuntary sound and presses Miles closer. The boy wakes fully, looking from his mother's face to Stone's and beginning to cry.
"I need to go," she says. She is on her feet before Stone can answer. "I need to go now."
"Yeah," Pietrangelo says, already at the door. "Let's go."
Half the room moves with them, the collective instinct of hockey people who are used to action, to doing something. The door opens before anyone reaches it. Two arena security officers and a Buffalo Police Department officer step inside.
The lead officer raises both hands. "I'm sorry. No one can leave right now."
Pietrangelo stops short. "What?"
"The building is under lockdown while we search for the suspect."
For a beat, nobody reacts. The words are too surreal to fit inside the reality of the room. Then Steph stares at the officer as though he has said something obscene. "My husband is at the hospital."
The officer nods, visibly uncomfortable. "I know, ma'am."
"No." Her voice breaks. "You don't know." Miles is crying in earnest now, frightened by the tremor in his mother's voice. Steph shifts him higher against her shoulder and takes another step toward the door, as if force of will alone might carry her through the line of uniforms. "I am going to see him. Now."
The officer does not move. "I'm sorry. We need to clear the building first."
Around the room, anger and disbelief begin to boil over.
"This is insane."
"How long is this going to take?"
"Did you catch the guy?"
Stone remains where he is, still crouched beside the empty chair. Ten minutes ago he was holding Mitch's hand on a concrete floor and telling him to keep breathing. Now he is in a locked room full of people who all expect him to have answers. He has none.
Tortorella removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose for one brief second.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet. "Everybody stop."
The room stills. Tortorella looks first at Steph, then at the team.
“We cannot leave until security clears the building.” His gaze settles on the players, then turns back to Stephanie and Miles. “Mitch would never forgive us if something happened to you or to Miles because we rushed out before security knew it was safe. The paramedics are with him. He’s on his way to the hospital. That’s where he needs to be, and that’s where we’ll go the second security opens that door."
His voice remains level, but the strain underneath is unmistakable. “Until then, sit down, shup up, and let the people who can help him do their jobs.”
No one argues after that. Slowly, reluctantly, the room settles into a tense and unnatural quiet.
Phones buzz unanswered. Children cry and are soothed. Players pace in tight circles, stopping every few seconds to glance at the locked door.
Less than an hour ago, this room had been preparing to celebrate the best game of Mitch Marner's life and the chance to win the Stanley Cup, and now it feels like the inside of a held breath.
They know only three things for certain.
Mitch was attacked.
Mitch was taken to the hospital.
And until that door opens, there is nothing any of them can do but wait.
WGRZ Buffalo News
10:47 PM ET
BREAKING
KeyBank Center remains under partial lockdown following reports of an assault inside the arena after Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final. Buffalo Police Department says one person has been transported to a local hospital. No additional details have been released.
unregistered user
Probably a drunk fan fight in the concourse
unregistered user
Weird that the arena is still locked down if it was just two fans throwing punches
Edith Carlisle
praying for whoever was hurt... I know we are excited, but we have to remember it is a game, and to be kind to visiting fans…
unregistered user
no mercy **** vegas, and their tacky fansunregistered user
is this dumb *** news site really ******* censoring me????
unregistered user
the VGK bus is still outside, lol, imagine winning a playoff game and being told you can’t leave the building, I bet those boys are TIRED