The replay was unavoidable.
Cassie had watched it live from the press box in Denver, her stomach dropping even before the whistle blew. Damien Morris came in fast, too fast, his elbow rising as Colorado’s captain cut across the neutral zone. There was contact—clear, forceful, unmistakable—and then the sickening stillness that followed. The Colorado captain crumpled to the ice, his helmet skittering away as trainers sprinted from the bench.
The arena went quiet in that way Cassie hated most. Not shock. Not outrage. Just the collective understanding that something had gone wrong.
By the time the horn sounded to end the period, Cassie already knew what the league would decide. Some plays lived in gray areas. This wasn’t one of them.
At morning skate two days later, the Renegades’ practice rink felt subdued. Damien wasn’t on the ice. His stall sat untouched, nameplate stark against the bare wall. Cassie stood alongthe boards with the other reporters, notebook already open, questions written in the margins before anyone spoke a word.
Coach Scott Parker didn’t flinch when the first one came.
“Have you heard from the league yet?” someone asked.
“Yes,” Parker said evenly. “Five games.”
A murmur rippled through the group. Cassie asked the follow-up.
“Scott,” she said, voice steady, “how do you balance defending a player who means a lot to this room with acknowledging that what happened crossed a line?”
Parker exhaled slowly. “You don’t balance it,” he said. “You tell the truth. Diesel’s a physical player. We value that. But there’s a difference between hard and reckless, and this crossed it. We don’t excuse it.”
When Damien returned five games later, the room felt heavier still. He stood at his stall in street clothes, shoulders squared, jaw tight. He didn’t deflect. He didn’t joke.
“I messed up,” he said when Cassie asked about the play. “I put myself in a bad position and I hurt someone. That’s on me.”
She studied his face as he spoke—this man she’d written about sweating through boxing workouts, about channeling aggression into control. This was the other side of that edge. The cost of stepping over it.
“What changes now?” she asked.
Damien met her eyes. “I have to be better. For my teammates. For the league. For the guy I hit.”
Cassie nodded, recorder still running. She would write it straight. No softening. No pile-on. The truth, again, was enough.
Later, as she typed the story alone in her hotel room, Cassie felt the familiar ache of the job settle in her chest. Loving the game didn’t mean loving every part of it. Sometimes it meant sitting with the uncomfortable moments and naming them clearly—especially when they involved people you knew, people you liked.
Especially when they didn’t give you an easy out.
Thirty-Seven
January hit like a slap shot. The Renegades stumbled. An injury bug bit; Elias Johansson missed three weeks with a wrist sprain, and Nick Delgado sat out with a groin strain. Luke logged big minutes and bruises. Cassie was on the road more than home, spending nights in hotel rooms that all blurred together. She rolled out her yoga mat in narrow spaces between beds and wrote articles in airport lounges. When the team lost four straight, panic seeped into the fan base.
Talk radio hosts dissected the power play, which had dipped to 18 percent. They criticized the penalty-kill. They lamented Damien Morris’ inability to score since returning from his suspension. They wondered aloud whether Luke’s heavy minutes were wearing him down. Cassie listened to the noise because it was her job, but it seeped into her sleep. She woke at 3 a.m. thinking about zone entries and high-danger shot attempts.
At practice, she watched players slam sticks and coaches yell. Luke looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes.
It was a sharp, ugly session from the start. Drills reset twice after players messed up the sequence. Pucks bounced when they shouldn’t have. The pace was uneven. Cassie sat in her usual spot along the boards with her notebook balanced on her knee, eyes flicking between line rushes and the defensive drills unfolding in front of her.
Luke missed a read on the first rep—stepped up too early, got burned wide. Parker’s whistle cut through the rink, shrill and impatient.
“Again,” the coach barked.
The second rep was worse. Luke bobbled the puck at the blue line, recovered too late, then snapped a pass that landed square on his partner’s skates. A stick clattered against the boards in frustration—someone else, but close enough that it all blended together.
Cassie felt it in her chest anyway.
By the third drill, Luke’s jaw was set tight, his movements rigid. He was overthinking again. She could see it even from the stands—the way his shoulders stiffened, the fraction-of-a-second delay before he committed. When the drill finally ended, he skated toward the bench and slammed his stick against the boards, hard enough to draw a look from Parker.
Cassie wrote none of that down.
