Chapter One
LUKA
The cold hits me the second I step onto the ice, sliding under my pads and settling in my chest. I take another breath, deeper this time. I like the sting. I like what it reminds me of… that this sport is unforgiving and you can’t fake anything out here. It keeps players honest, and honesty is a trait I trust a hell of a lot more than people.
I dig in. Every push cuts deeper than the last. Every mistake is punished immediately with no mercy.
I build speed, legs pumping, lungs burning in a way that feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve ever been. The puck snaps to my stick, and I move it on instinct, firing it across the rink without looking.
After that, there’s no thinking. Just muscle memory.
That’s when everything gets quiet.
Not the rink. Not the bench. And certainly not the way Aleksi Mäkelin’s mouth never shuts up, even when he’s skating like his life depends on it. My head goes quiet, narrowed to three simple questions: Where is the puck? Where are my teammates? What’s my next move? Nothing else matters while I’m on the ice.
The rink doesn’t ask who I am.
It doesn’t care where I came from or what my last name means in certain circles in Moscow. It doesn’t care that my father’s reputation stretches longer than the list of men who’ve ever dared to tell him no.
Out here, effort is the only currency that matters.
"Three more months until the playoffs," Coach Haynes shouts from the bench. "You’re all going to have to be faster than that if you want a Stanley Cup."
We reset. Again and again until every guy on the Hawkeyes looks like he’s sweating out his sins.
Bottles are tossed to players and then back to the bench. Gloves are slapped against the boards. Exhausted laughter tries to sneak in between drills, but Haynes stomps it out as quickly as it starts.
I don’t stop moving.
Sweat slides down my spine beneath my pads. My shoulder aches, an old injury screaming for tape and ice and mercy, but I push harder anyway. It’s the kind of grit the player feels and the fan rarely sees. We’re always pushing ourselves for longer shifts and faster recoveries. Pushing ourselves past the breaking point, where almost everyone else would give up, but not us.
Because hockey is more than a sport. it’s more than a paycheck. It’s an identity. An identity that I found just in time- before my father tried to force his own agenda onto me.
There’s no coasting in pro hockey.
Not under Coach Ryker Haynes. And certainly not with the entire league watching us, wondering if we’re going to choke again like last year.
Bye-week looms—a two-week mid-season break in January for players. Which means that Haynes is pushing us as if the Cup is already on the line. Like this is the year he finally gets the thing he’s been chasing since he took this job.
He has a championship as a coach with Vancouver, but now he wants one with Seattle.
"You don’t wish your way into a Stanley Cup," he told us before we stepped on the ice, arms crossed and eyes serious. "You earn it long before April."
Haynes knows what it takes.
He’s a former Hawkeyes himself. He played back when the jerseys were heavier and the rules were looser. Then he got deported back to Canada before he could finish the season and was later given the coaching position in Vancouver that he’d always wanted.
Now he’s here with us, pushing for another year, hoping this is the season we bring it home.
With me, he rarely pushes, because he knows what I have.
Three Olympic seasons, three medals, and the reputation of never choking when the stakes are high. I’m solid under pressure. It’s one of the few useful things that my father instilled in me.
I don’t need motivation to do my part to get us to the playoffs. I just need room to make it happen.
"Popovich!" Hunter Reed calls from the blue line. "Are you trying to skate a hole through the ice or just showing off?"
I cut hard, steal the puck off his stick, and snap a shot past Olsen Bozeman before our goalie can react. The sound of it hitting the net is clean and satisfying.
