It’s always been like this. Even when I was a little kid, squeezing in a stick-and-puck practice before school. If ice time started at six, I had better be there with my skates laced by five fifty-five, watching eagerly from the boards while the Zamboni finished resurfacing the ice. Not that I had a choice. He created and set my schedule. By the time I was a teenager and he retired, he’d be turning my bedroom light on at four thirty every morning, uttering for me to get my lazy ass up, and shoving a chalky protein shake into my hand. With no longer having his own career to worry about he turned to watching over my playing like a hawk. As soonas he was available day in and day out, my training regimen was cranked up to eleven.
As I walk out of mine and Gavin’s hotel room, I hope to see Gavin coming out of the elevator. I know he says we can’t do this, and I will respect his wishes. But if I could just see him I might be able to make it through this breakfast. It sounds ridiculous and I know I sound like a child instead of a twenty-four-year-old when it comes to dealing with my father, but he’s had me under his thumb for so long. It feels impossible to break free. Gavin’s the first person I’ve ever met who has no problem telling the man no. When he does it, it makes me feel like I might be able to as well. Someday. But probably not today.
Knocking on the door to my parents’ suite, I let out an audible breath. My mother answers, fully decked out in fashionable athletic gear, like she’s about to run out the door in favor of a yoga class instead of breakfast. Typical.
She kisses me on the cheek. “Gotta run, darling,” she says. “I found this great private yoga instructor here. He’s a dream.”
I bet he is.
“Have fun, dear,” my father says robotically without looking up from the tablet in his hands. He’s scrolling through it at the table that’s set for breakfast by the open doors of the suite’s balcony which overlooks the Las Vegas Strip.
Sometimes I wonder why these two are still married. They have nothing in common. And my mom’s interest in hockey disappeared the moment I was too old to be considered cute for photo ops with her on the other side of the glass from my dad during game warmups. She went back to being a Playboy Bunny for a few years, but aged out of that and has since spent all her free time bouncing between personal trainers and now, apparently, a yoga instructor. While she worked on her “physique” I spent most of my time being carted around from practice to game to practice to my dad’s games by our driver Harris. He probably logged more bleacher time than either of my parents did before my father retired.
“Sit.” Dad beckons me to take a seat around the corner from him at the table.
I sit, then pour myself a large cup of coffee from the pitcher. In front of me on a plate is a spinach and chicken omelet, with a side of fruit instead of potatoes and no toast in sight. It’s the last thing I want to eat right now.
He peers at me over the tablet, then places it down between us with the screen still lit up. By reflex, I look. It’s a sports blog. I recognize their logo above the heading that reads, TEAM USA HOCKEY TEARS IT UP IN LAS VEGAS. ARE THEY CELEBRATING TOO EARLY?Below that is a grainy picture of me dancing with some unknown woman that Gavin placed in front of me when I was trying and failing to dance with him.
My father looks at me and grins, but it’s not friendly. He turns the screen off. “At least there’s finally a picture of you with a woman in the press,” he says. “But that’s the only good thing I have to say about this.”
I take a sip of my coffee as my head begins to pound. “It’s a stupid sports blog looking for content.”
“And you idiots handed it to them on a silver platter. They should be talking about how well you’re playing together. Instead, they get pictures of you all partying like some regular suburban jackasses on a boys’ trip with friends.”
Friends. What an interesting concept. We’ve only been playing together for a week, but I can genuinely say a few of these guys are feeling more like friends to me than my teammates back in Chicago. I can thank Gavin for that. In seven days’ time, he managed to bring us together. Not all of us, of course. Bradley Warren and a few others are still cold towards me, but some, like Bouchard and Franklin and Calhoun and Nichols, I can see us being more than just teammates. “What’s wrong with making friends with these guys?”
“You’re not here to make friends. You’re here to play hockey.”
“Is it so wrong for me to want to do both?”
“Yes. You don’t need these guys as friends. In ten days, you’ll all go back to your original teams and back to being enemies.”
I frown. I don’t want to be enemies with any of them. Most of all with Gavin. Is this what he means as well when he says we can’t do this? Is he looking ahead, knowing that when the Olympics are over, we’re going to have to take each other out on the ice? I mean, I don’t stand a chance against him as it is anyway. A hip check from me would barely register to him. But the other way around could be a career-ending encounter. That being said, experiencing friendships here has me wondering if that’s the missing piece that has kept us from winning the Stanley Cup in Chicago since I’ve been on the team.We can never quite make it over the hump and secure those sixteen games to glory.
“Look,” he says, calmer than he was a minute ago. “I get it. I was you years ago, but I didn’t become a legend in this game by being everyone’s best friend. You need to get out of your feelings if you’re going to win Olympic goldandthe Stanley Cup this year.”
Ah, there it is. He expects me to win both—like he did. But I can’t do that by myself. Hockey is a team sport, and the team works better when we like each other.
I risk looking directly at him. “I don’t think the Broad Wings can win the cup this year.”
“Ridiculous.” He dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “Analytics has us ranked as the team with the number one chance.”
“Analytics doesn’t take into account group dynamics,” I say. “There are some significant rifts on the team.”
I’ve been feeling it for a while, but I didn’t have the experience to figure out what the issues were. I couldn’t see the bigger picture until I got here, and Gavin made it so crystal clear.
My father, and therefore by association, the Broad Wings, have been focusing too much attention on me as the golden boy leading this team to the cup. Analytics only looks at numbers. They don’t have the ability to detect resentment built up within the ranks because the team’s first line center has been made the league’s poster child of hockey perfection. Case in point, the Blizzards, whowon the cup last year. They were ranked eighth in their conference and blew into the playoffs, demolishing every other team. For weeks I couldn’t figure out how they did it, but now I have an idea. It’s obvious from working with Gavin and Bouchard that their team genuinely like each other.
“This is news to me,” my father says and turns his tablet back on. He opens up the team’s internal app. “Do I need to arrange a trade?”
“No!” Unless it’s me, I wish I could say. I ball my hands into fists, then release them.
My father, undeterred by my exclamation, keeps scrolling through the roster. “We have time. The trade deadline is still three weeks away.”
I place my hand on the tablet, lowering it from his view. “Can we please forget I said anything? It’s not a big deal.” I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s life being uprooted out of nowhere because I panicked and blurted out truths I shouldn’t have at a breakfast with my father.
He looks at me, his nostrils flaring with his annoyance. “What is your problem? If there’s an issue on the team, I’m going to fix it.”
