No, no. Absolutely not. He’s loosened up ever so slightly, and I’m misinterpreting that. The notion that this guy, Mr. Grumpy, ten years my junior, could be flirting with me is laughable.
“Are you going to do running commentary?” I ask as two players meet in the middle of the ice and seem to have a brief sparring match with their sticks over the puck before everyone scatters across the ice.
Logan snorts and crosses his arms. “No.”
“Are you playing in this game?”
“Of course.”
“What number are you?”
“Eighty-eight.”
And even if he hadn’t told me, I think I’d have figured it out within the first five minutes of watching. He’sreallyfast, and I don’t know if he’s supposed to be everywhere, but he’s definitelyhustling hard. I can see what he meant earlier about his on-ice mentality. The minute he’s on the ice, the energy of the team shifts, which feels strange to say when I’m not in the arena, only observing through a screen. I’m probably giving him too much credit, reading into something in the wrong way.
From across the ice, a player on the other team has zeroed in on Logan, but at the last second, Logan seems to sense his approach and sidesteps him. The extraordinary awareness of his location on the ice and everyone else’s seems to continue throughout the game.
“Can you pause it?” I ask. “Do you have paper and a pen anywhere?”
“I can check the drawers in the office. Your brother left a few things behind.” He pauses the game and heads toward the room where my brother had a desk.
“He left all his furniture?” I ask when Logan returns to hand me a pen and some blank paper.
“I left my apartment in California as it is—I’ll go back there in the off season.”
“Okay,” I say, staring at the screen. “Hit Play again.” And as I watch, without looking at the paper, I jot down drills, flexibility movements, exercises I’d normally use for rehab that I could modify to build greater strength and endurance in the areas that it seems like Logan might appreciate. Movements and exercises I haven’t had to think about the last few years on the island are coming back to me. My exposure to high-level athletes has been minimal since I left Northern University, but I had a good breadth of experience while I was there—football, swimming, tennis, hockey, soccer, and a host of other athletes came to physio in various degrees of crisis.
I know how to fix people. I’m confident in that. The question is whether I can add value to Logan’s already impressive physicalpresence on the ice, and while I’d love to try, I can’t lie and tell him I know exactlyhowto do it.
“Talk me through where you see your weaknesses?” I ask as I keep writing on the page, watching the tape.
“Reaction time and flexibility. More flexible, more explosive power.”
“But your primary goal is to avoid injuries, as much as it’s possible to?”
“I want to be healthy for as long as I can, in every way that I can.”
“In an ideal world, you’d play until you were…”
“Thirty-five? Thirty-six? There are guys still playing good hockey at that age in the league.”
“Then I wonder whether we get a little creative with your training. Add in gymnastics, different types of yoga, maybe some martial arts training. We can start with movement literacy. You were probably working integrative chains specific to hockey with your previous trainer, right?”
He nods.
“Well…” I take a beat to think. “Then we can look at force absorption and force transmission. Try to add in some pattern stability, tissue resiliency, mobility, stability and flexibility as we go. I’ll need your game schedule to figure all this out.”
“I’ve done hockey yoga,” he says, his voice gruff. “You seem excited.”
“I just…” I give a little self-conscious laugh. “I know you’re skeptical, but I think I can do this. I also appreciate that you don’t want to be anyone’s guinea pig, so if you give me a couple of weeks to try some things and it’s still a “no,” I won’t be offended.” But Imightbe sad and depressed that I couldn’t do the job to his satisfaction when I’msosure Ican. A few weeks is unlikely to make a noticeable difference for him. The kind of impact he’s looking for on his body is more likely to take months.
“That’s a lot of notes,” he says, nodding at the paper.
“Had to get it all out.” I swoosh my hands down my body. “Writing helps my thoughts to become focused and organized. Once it’s on the page, I candothings with them.”
“I hate writing,” he says.
I suspect he hatesmanyforms of communication based on what Tamiko told me.
