Today, though, I don’t care. I’m dialed in.
The last two shifts of practice are slapshot drills, edge to edge, no break, just skate hard and wind up and let it rip.
My lungs are clawing at my ribs and my thighs burn every time I cut a turn, but it’s better than standing still. If you stand still, you have to think.
If you have to think, you might remember there are only fourteen games left before your contract gets quietly euthanized and you slink back to Tacoma like the cautionary tale everyone expects.
The drill leader blows the whistle and I jump the blue line, collect the pass from O’Doul, and snap it back to the point.
The defenseman cycles, fakes a wrister, and slides it across for me to one-time. Every muscle in my right side coils, uncoils, slamming the stick into the puck so hard the vibration travels up to my elbow.
It’s a good shot. Not perfect.
There’s a little flutter, probably the heel of the blade wasn’t flush but it’s got heat. It hums past the D, rising, and for a split second I’m sure it’s going bar-down.
Except Darius is in net. He’s always in net.
The guy never calls in sick, never even fakes a cramp.
I watch him in the crease, balanced as a fucking yoga guru, eyes level with the puck, and just before I let it go I know, I know he knows where I’m putting it.
He drops, kicks out the pad, and the puck slams into his toe and ricochets to the corner with a noise like a bone breaking.
Darius doesn’t even flinch. He resets his stance and gives me a micro-nod.
I skate past the crease, try to keep my chin up like I meant to shoot it low. “Good save,” I mutter, just loud enough to count.
“Good shot,” Darius says, and it doesn’t sound like an insult, which somehow stings worse. The guy’s so fucking polite you could die.
Next cycle, next shot.
The same, over and over, sweat collecting under my pads, stinging my eyebrows, salt in the cut from last game.
I can feel it weeping, just a little, every time my helmet shifts. By the end of the drill, I’m so gassed I can barely catch the puck clean, and my hands are slick inside the gloves, like they’re melting.
Coach Vasquez paces the boards, arms folded, mouth set in a straight line.
She’s in full psycho mode today, probably because the GM was at yesterday’s game and we coughed up a three-goal lead in the last period.
That’s what you get when your entire D-line is an open invitation and your goalie is one blown suture away from the IR.
“Last round!” she barks, and we all line up for suicides.
The energy is pure middle-school gym class, everyone low-level dreading it but too scared to be the one who bails first.
I focus on my breathing, in for two, out for four, just like the therapist said. I picture each lap as a cigarette, a little burn, a little death.
By the end, I’m wheezing but upright, which is more than I can say for Cap, who finishes with a spectacular full-body sprawl and lays there face-down until the trainer rolls him onto his side like a beached seal.
“Hit the room,” Coach calls, and a couple of the guys immediately drop their sticks and make for the tunnel. Not me.
I linger, turn, and look at Darius, who’s still in the net, taking pucks from a kid they pulled up from the minors for extra reps.
His form is beautiful. Not like, “wow, what an athlete” beautiful, more like the beauty you only notice after you’ve been hit by it a hundred times.
He tracks the puck with his whole body, always a fraction ahead of the play, never guessing, always knowing.
There’s a rumor he used to be a figure skater before switching to hockey because his dad thought it was “less gay.”
