Clean.
I laced my skates. Left, then right. Checked the tension and checked again.
By the time I unlocked my phone, seventeen minutes had passed.
Kieran:Can you meet me before practice? Training room hallway. 8:45.
The timestamp read 8:28. It was now 8:45.
I stood. Walked to the hallway. A faint smell of menthol drifted from the training room entrance.
Empty.
Heath:Just saw this. Where are you?
Kieran:Had to move. Thompson pulled me in. Talk after practice.
Thompson. The GM. On deadline morning.
I pocketed the phone and walked back to the locker room.
Practice started clean.
Markel ran breakout drills for twenty minutes. Controlled structure.
I ran my reps. Cycled low. Found lanes. Kieran was on the right side, running the patterns we'd been running for weeks.
We didn't speak while on the ice.
Eleven minutes into the session, the building's atmosphere changed.
I didn't hear it. I felt it.
Two players near the bench stopped drilling. Varga looked at his phone. The equipment manager stood near the tunnel with his arms crossed, watching the ice without watching the drills.
Markel blew his whistle. Line change.
I came off. Grabbed water. Sat on the bench.
Varga landed beside me, face blank.
"What?" I asked.
"Mathers signed."
I didn't look at my phone.
I looked across the ice.
Kieran was mid-drill. Right circle. His stick was on the ice, weight distributed in the stance I knew better than my own. Rook fired from the point. Kieran deflected, a clean redirect, and the puck hit the back of the net.
He retrieved the puck. Flipped it to Holloway. Skated to the boards for water.
His shoulders were level. His jaw set. He drank from the bottle and wiped his mouth with his glove.
Control.
He looked like a black-and-white frame dropped into color.
