"Wanted you to look at something," he said. "If that's okay."
He sat on the bed, not the edge, the middle, back against the headboard. I sat beside him. Our shoulders touched.
He tapped the screen. Game footage loaded. Vegas. Second period.
"Watch the D-man," he said. "Number four."
I watched.
"Now watch you."
On screen, I planted in the crease. Crosscheck. Shot. Deflection. Goal.
"You arrive at the net front a full second before the puck gets to the point," Kieran said. "Their D-man hasn't registered you yetbecause you came from behind the net. By the time he picks you up, you're already established."
"I went to the net. That's what Markel told me to do."
"Markel told you to go to the net. He didn't tell youwhento go. You picked the timing yourself."
He swiped to an older game against Nashville. "Same thing. Watch your feet."
I watched. Micro-movements. Half-steps I didn't remember making because they'd happened below the level of conscious thought.
"You're reading the goalie's weight transfer. Before the shot. Not after. You're processing faster than you think you are."
He said it the way he said everything: evenly, calmly. It was like a trainer delivering test results. Oxygen capacity. Electrolyte levels. Heath Donnelly is processing faster than he thinks he is.
Another clip. A scramble goal in Boston. He paused the frame.
"Look at where everyone else is." I saw bodies everywhere. Sticks tangled. Utter chaos. "Now look at where you are."
I was in the only clear lane. A pocket of space six inches wide that existed for maybe half a second before the other bodies closed it.
"The commentators call it luck because it doesn't look like skill," Kieran said. "Skill is supposed to look clean. What you do is messier. But the read underneath it is elite."
Elite.
Nobody had used that word about me. Not my coaches in juniors. Not Pickle. Not Markel. Not the beat writers still debating whether I was a statistical anomaly with good timing.
Kieran Mathers, a first-round draft pick, called my reads elite. Without a single qualifier.
My immediate instinct was to deflect. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and let the word exist without trying to shrink it.
"You sound like Pickle," I said.
"Is that good or bad?"
"Means you're right."
The corners of his mouth curled into a small smile.
"Your reads are real," he said. "I need you to hear that from someone who isn't a pipe cleaner enthusiast in Ontario."
I smiled back. "Okay," I said. "I hear it."
Goosebumps rose on my arms in the same half-second I noticed Kieran's hand on his thigh, tendons shifting as he flexed and released his fingers.
"Kieran."
