“I guess I had other priorities?”
“I know you’re weirdly hands-off, but this is exactly the sort of shit a coach is there for.What were you even doing?”Phil carefully made his way down the stairs.Seeing no alternative, Ben followed.
“I can’t do my job,” he said, “if I have to spend all day babysitting temperamental hockey players!”
Two of said temperamental hockey players, Tom Crowler and Jax Grant, sat at the kitchen table, chopping vegetables.They both looked up, apparently interested in Ben’s opinion.What a nightmare.Ben didn’t have any opinions beyond “oh fuck oh fuck, what am I going to do?”
“Babysitting temperamental hockey playersisyour job,” Phil insisted.
It wasn’t.But Phil didn’t know that.“Phil—”
“Nope.You’re doing Thanksgiving with us, and you’re going to solve this clusterfuck.”
“Phil.”
“We all want a functional hockey team, don’t we?”
Debatable.Ben mostly wanted to get this job done so he could get Pulvermacher off his back.He wanted not to have to deal with a wayward niece; he wanted to be able to afford a decent apartment, and he wanted all of it without having to disappoint Phil.He did wantPhilto have a functional hockey team though.Sighing, he took a place at the kitchen table.“Stuffing smells good.”
“Uh…” Tom Crowler stared at him like a deer in the headlights.
Right.A coach living with a player was a weird situation.
Ben repeated the lie he’d told Phil.“My apartment is being renovated.I moved in here to help Easton until his knee is better.Win-win.”
With the stairs fixed, Phil hardly needed his help.Ever since Ben had gotten back from the road trip, he’d been pretending not to realize as much.He hadn’t started looking at new apartments yet, but with his niece showing up in the next few days, Ben had no choice.He couldn’t stay.
Phil maneuvered his way into one of the kitchen chairs, and Ben pushed the spare one out so he could put his bad leg up on it.
“So the new lines were a bad idea,” he asked without asking.Experience had taught him the quickest way to get to the point was to tell people what you thought you had heard and let them correct you.
“No!”All three of the hockey players in the room shouted.
“Luca really is good.Did you see his assist in the third period in Montreal?”Phil whistled.“He plays smart.That’s a defenseman who can stop goals going in and rack up his own points while he’s at it.”
It was news to Ben that defensemen were supposed to score goals.He thought their job consisted ofblockinggoals.“But Hayes—”
“Jimmy’s thirty-one.He’s not bad, but he’s slowing down, and if he can’t accept playing less minutes for the good of the team, it might be time to pursue other options.”Phil had a stubborn set to his jaw.Understandable given he’d just discovered a man he’d thought of as a friend was a closet racist.
But Ben couldn’t let him inadvertently fulfill Trout’s plan of getting Hayes traded.How to dissuade him without condoning the racism?
Luckily, Crowler interjected.“Hayes isn’t bad by any means.I could see him doing well on the second D-pair and PP2.And from his perspective, we did petition to trade him out for the new guy three votes to one.He might be worried about losing his place on the team entirely.”
They had ambushed Hayes a little.Ben hadn’t thought much of it when Crowler and Grant approached him about switching up the lines; they’d done it before.He took it as a comment on his coaching skills, which were definitely subpar.Sure, Hayes had been annoyed, but Ben had taken it for regular hockey player stuff.
Jax Grant added, “And getting traded from a team you’ve been on for years is rough.”
He would know.It had happened to him only a few months ago.
They made solid points, and in the world of professional sports, maybe those points seemed valid.In Ben’s world, no heated moment or professional disappointment justified racism.
“But he reacted by using a slur against a fellow player,” he said.
“Technically, ‘Mexican’ isn’t a slur,” Grant pointed out.“The way he said it made it sound like one, which is shitty and racist, but it is not, in fact, a slur.”
Phil shook his head.“I can see Howie saying something thoughtless and cruel.Kid’s been in the show for five minutes, and we all know what that’s like.He just wants to fit in.But Jimmy?I’ve known him for years.Camille and I used to go on double dates with him and Allie.”
Ben wanted to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder.It hurt, finding out people you thought you knew didn’t live up to the most basic expectations.But coaches didn’t offer comfort.Instead, Ben asked after the player who had the most reason to be upset, the only actual Hispanic person on the team.“How has Lunes reacted?”
