“Fake the screen,” I said when Grayson fired one straight into pads. “Slide across late.”
Grayson tried it the next rep. The puck snapped into the corner of the net. He raised his stick in a small salute without breaking stride.
Practice rolled on, one drill feeding into the next. Transition pressure. Corner battles. A set focused on short shifts and fast changes. I skated when Coach waved me in, kept my touches simple, then stepped right back out to watch. The energy buzzed through me anyway, a charge I hadn’t felt since the bench became off limits.
Between reps, Tucker skated over, breath fogging his visor. “You see something on their power play?”
“High seam opens when their weak-side forward cheats,” I said. “They trust their recovery speed too much.”
He nodded, thoughtful, then pushed off without another word.
That might have been the moment it really hit me. They were listening. Not humoring me, not waiting for me to mess up, just taking the information and folding it into their own game.
Coach gathered them at center ice for a water break. Bottles hissed open. Gloves thudded against the boards. I stayed back, content to watch the circle fill in without me.
Grayson skated over anyway. He stopped close enough that I could see the sweat darkening his collar.
“You’re different,” he said.
I shrugged. “Way more time to think on the bench.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He tipped his helmet back. “You’re making us better today.”
The words settled in deeper than any goal ever had. I didn’t have a smart reply ready. I settled for honest.
“That’s because I want you to win.”
Grayson studied me for a beat, then clapped my shoulder pad once and turned back toward the group.
Coach blew the whistle again. “Okay. Last set. Five-on-five pressure. Short shifts.”
The drill was fast and messy in the best way, bodies cutting lanes, sticks knocking pucks loose, voices calling coverage. I paced along the boards, pointing out gaps, calling switches when I saw them late. When Mason got caught too high, I shouted for Hunter to drop back. When Tucker hesitated on a clear, I barked once and he sent it up ice without looking.
By the time Coach called it, my lungs burned and my legs shook even though I hadn’t logged half the work I used to. The guys drifted toward the bench, laughing, chirping, replaying moments from the drill.
Coach waved me over. “Good work today.”
It was a simple thing to say, but it didn’t feel small.
I peeled off my gloves and rested them on the bench, watching the team file past me toward the tunnel. Mason slowed, bumped my hip with his, easy and familiar. Hunter tossed me a grin. Tucker gave me a nod. Grayson went last, captain’s C catching the light as he passed.
“Be ready tomorrow,” Coach said quietly. “Your seat will be next to mine.”
I nodded, throat tight, and followed them off the ice, not playing, not benched in spirit either, finally part of the work instead of standing apart from it.
The building felt different when you weren’t dressing for the game.
I noticed it the second I stepped into the tunnel and took my place behind the bench instead of hopping over the boards for warmups. The noise still hit the same—thirty seconds of chaos as the Oilers poured onto the ice, boos raining down from the crowd, the Surge faithful louder, sharper, defiant—but my body didn’t have an outlet for it. The adrenaline had nowhere to go. It just sat there, buzzing under my skin, begging for a shift that wasn’t coming.
Round Two. Game Six. Closeout game.
Everything tight. Everything loud. Everything on a knife edge.
Coach leaned against the boards beside me, arms folded, jaw set. He didn’t say much before games like this. He trusted the work. Trusted the structure. Trusted the men wearing the jerseys.
And, somehow, he trusted me.
I tracked the Oilers during warmups out of habit. Their power play unit ran reps with that same crisp arrogance they’d had all series. Too much east-west movement. Too much faith in their cross-seam pass. I’d watched it on film until the patterns lived in my head, the way you memorize exits in a burning building.
