Sometimes, in the quiet moments before a game, I thought about that beach house in LA.
Fourteen months later, he still didn't have answers. Neither did I. We just kept choosing each other in the spaces between everything else, and neither of us brought it up.
The puck dropped, and I stopped thinking about anything but the ice.
Calgary had come to Vegas with something to prove. They were bigger than us, meaner than us, three games into a losing streak that had their coach screaming during morning skate. I'd watched the tape. They were frustrated and physical and looking for someone to take it out on.
I was five-six and weighed a buck-sixty soaking wet. I'd helped drag my team to the Cup Final and earned a contract extensionthat had made headlines for all the wrong reasons. To a team like Calgary, I was everything that was wrong with modern hockey: small and fast and successful despite the fact that I had no business being here.
They wanted to remind me where I belonged.
The first hit came forty seconds in.
Karlsson caught me along the boards, a clean check that drove the air from my lungs and sent my helmet bouncing off the glass. Legal and hard, the kind of hit that was meant to set a tone.
I got up and kept skating.
The second hit came two minutes later. Dorsey this time, catching me in the neutral zone with my head down. My own fault. I knew better than to admire a pass in traffic, but the lane had been there and I'd taken it, and now I was picking myself up off the ice while the crowd noise swelled around me.
"You good?" Bouchard pulled up beside me during the TV timeout, his voice low enough that the cameras wouldn't catch it.
"I’m good."
"They're hunting you."
"I noticed."
His eyes stayed on me a beat too long. He'd been doing that since the weight room last February, since that night he'd asked about my phone and I'd crossed the room too fast to answer it.
"Dorsey's talking," he said. "Says he puts you through the glass before the night's over."
"Let him try."
Bouchard's mouth thinned. He'd watched players come and go, had learned when to fight and when to let things play out.
"Stay off the boards," he said finally. "Give yourself space."
"I know how to play hockey, JL."
He peeled off toward the faceoff circle, and I watched him go. He still showed up to every practice first, still put in extra work after everyone else had gone home. He'd been doing this sincebefore I could legally drive, and he'd never won a Cup, never made a headline that wasn't about quiet consistency. The league was full of guys like him, the ones who held everything together while players like me got the attention.
The third shift, I made Calgary pay for it. Karlsson committed to where he thought I'd be, and I wasn't there, cutting through the space that opened up when he bit on the fake. The puck found my stick, and I was gone, accelerating into the zone with nothing but ice ahead of me. Their goalie came out to challenge, and I went five-hole, quick and dirty, watching the puck slide through before he could get his pads together.
The horn sounded. The bench erupted. I skated past Karlsson on my way back to the celebration and didn't look at him.
That was the job. Take the hit, get back up, and make them regret it.
Ro was waiting at the bench, his glove extended for a fist bump. His eyes moved over my face, checking for damage, and I shook my head slightly.
Calgary answered three minutes later. Then again before the period ended. We went into the first intermission tied 2-2, and I had a bruise forming along my ribs where Dorsey had caught me with an elbow that the refs hadn't seen.
"Ice it," the trainer said, holding out a pack.
I iced it. Bouchard was two stalls down, unlacing his skates with that same methodical focus he brought to everything. He hadn't said a word since the TV timeout, but his attention kept drifting toward me.
Ro dropped onto the bench beside me, still in full gear, his hair dark with sweat. He pulled off his gloves and examined his knuckles, a casual gesture that wasn't casual at all.
"Dorsey," he said. "He does not stop."
