“Dude, you were unreal tonight! Like, seriously unreal. When did you become Wayne Gretzky?”
“I’ve always been this good,” I said with a grin. “You guys weren’t paying attention.”
But inside, I knew the truth. I’d been good before, but tonight, I’d been better. I’d beensmart. Tonight, I’d played chess while everyone else was playing checkers. And I had Coach Anders to thank for that.
And for the first time, I truly understood why I hadn’t been drafted, how much I still had to learn. How much he could still teach me.
As we packed up our gear, I caught sight of him near the coaching area, quietly organizing paperwork while the chaos swirled around him. He looked up and our eyes met for a second. He nodded once, a gesture that somehow meant more than all the celebrations around me.
The bus ride home started loud and stayed that way for about fifteen minutes. Guys reliving plays, talking shit about Rochester’s goalie, making plans for how they were going to spend their weekend. But as the highway stretched out in front of us and the adrenaline started to fade, the bus got quieter.
By the time we’d been driving for forty-five minutes, most of the team was asleep or zoned out with headphones. The lights were dimmed, and the steady hum of the engine was almost hypnotic.
Sleep wasn’t happening for me, though. Too pumped from the game, too busy thinking about how different everything had felt out there. I grabbed my water bottle and headed toward the back of the bus, thinking I’d locate some quiet space to decompress.
Instead, I found Coach Anders.
He was alone in the last row, looking out the window at the dark countryside rolling past. The overhead reading light cast a soft glow across his profile, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw and the way his blond hair had gotten slightly messed up during the game. He had a notebook in his lap, probably reviewing game notes or planning future training sessions, his long fingers absently tapping against the cover.
There was something peaceful about the way he sat there, completely absorbed in whatever he was thinking about. Without the usual composed expression he wore during practice, he looked younger somehow, more relaxed. The short sleeves of his standard Millard polo shirt had rolled up a bit, showing off surprisingly nice biceps for someone who’d been out of the game for that long and who spent most of his time holding clipboards instead of hockey sticks. Maybe he still worked out a lot? There was so much about him I didn’t know.
The guy never seemed to stop working, but right now, he looked more like he was just… thinking. Taking a moment to himself in the quiet of the bus.
“Mind if I sit?” I asked.
He looked up, surprised. “Of course. Please.”
I slid into the seat across the aisle from him. For a moment, we sat in comfortable silence, the rest of the team a world away from our little pocket of quiet in the back of the bus.
“Everyone else is asleep,” I said.
He chuckled. “Ah, the sweet symphony of snoring teammates. It’s the sound of victory.”
“That was one hell of a game tonight.”
“You played exceptionally well. Those corner battles in the second period… You executed the positioning perfectly.”
“Yeah, about that.” I leaned forward slightly. “I wanted to thank you. The techniques you’ve been teaching me made a huge difference tonight.”
“You made the difference. I simply provided some tools. You were the one who chose to use them.”
“Still. I know I was a dick when we first started working together. You could’ve given up on me, but you didn’t.”
He smiled, and in the dim light of the bus, it looked different somehow. Less like a coach smiling at a student, more like… I don’t know. Like a friend. His eyes were kind. Warm. “You were not a dick. You were protecting what you cared about. I understood that.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for being patient with me anyway.”
Silence settled between us again, but it wasn’t awkward. It was the kind of comfortable quiet that happens when you don’t feel like you have to fill every moment with words.
“What made you want to coach?” I then asked. “I mean, you played at a really high level. I know you had that injury, but you recovered. You could probably have gone pro somewhere, right?”
Coach Anders was quiet for a long moment, looking out the window. “I discovered I enjoyed helping others succeed,” he said finally, turning back to me. “There is magic in watching a player understand a concept they have been struggling with. The moment when everything clicks is quite rewarding.”
“Is that why you came to America? To coach?”
“Partly. I also wanted to experience a different hockey culture. Canadian university hockey was excellent, but American college hockey has its own character.”
“What’s it like? Sweden, I mean.”
