A few minutes later, drinks in hand, they were back outside, Eli with a croissant to go with his sugary specialty latte. Should Sandro just launch into expectations or goals or . . . what was the other thing Cotton had said? Common ground!
The latter was probably a good starting point.
“Oh, that looks cozy.” Eli veered away from him toward The Vermont Flannel Co, where the window display showcased a handful of mannequins wearing shirts and pants in several different shades of plaid. Eli gestured to one wearing a white-hooded flannel pullover with green and blue stripes. “I could wear that under my winter coat when I go snowshoeing.”
Thank you, Eli, for plopping common ground right into my lap.
“You snowshoe?”
“Sure,” Eli said easily. “I grew up in Saskatoon. It snows for, like, thirteen months out of the year.”
That startled a laugh out of Sandro.
“If I wasn’t playing hockey, I was outside doing some other winter sport.”
“Same,” Sandro said. “My parents used to force me and my siblings out of the house in the winter so we didn’t hibernate. Sometimes we’d take our snowshoes out and take a walk around the block, pushing and shoving each other as we went . . . or until one of the neighborhood kids started a snowball fight.”
“Does your family come to games when we play in Toronto?” Eli asked as he continued walking. He took a large bite of his croissant, flakes getting everywhere.
“Not usually. It’s almost four hours to the city from Tobermory on a good day. One of my brothers lives in Toronto with his family, but he travels so much for work that we’re hardly ever there at the same time.”
“What was your first year as a Trailblazer like?”
Eli didn’t look at him when he asked, instead peering intently—and very deliberately, it seemed—into the window of Phoenix Books.
“Was it . . . intimidating?” Eli pressed.
The way he asked . . .
“Eli.” Sandro paused, but Eli still didn’t look at him. “Do you find being a Trailblazer intimidating?”
“I mean, kinda. I’m playing with players who’ve won the Cup, some of them more than once, like you.” Eli tossed his empty croissant wrapper into a garbage bin. “There’s a lot of pressure to go for a three-peat, but there’s also a lot of pressure to conform to a team culture that seems a little idealistic from an outside perspective.”
Conform. That was an interesting point of view. Sandro and Roman Kinsey had been with the Trailblazers since the team’s first season, and Sandro had witnessed how Roman had gradually changed and improved the Trailblazers’ culture to get them working as a team.
But if Eli saw that as conforming instead of instinctual integration into how the Trailblazers did things, that was a problem Sandro needed to bring up with Roman.
“There’s just . . . a lot of expectation,” Eli went on, shoulders hunched. “I’m expected to always do my best and always put in the effort and always eat right and always stand tall and always think of my—and the team’s—image when I’m out in public and always properly represent my sponsors and always smile?—”
“Who the fuck told you to always smile?” Sandro broke in. “Not Roman.”
Hell, if anybody needed to be told to smile, it was Roman Kinsey. So if he was telling people to always smile . . .
Talk about hypocrisy.
“What? No, not Roman.”
“Dabbs?” Sandro guessed, because the team captain was the only person Sandro would attribute that kind of advice to.
But that didn’t make sense either—Dabbs was also slow to smile, but in an I’m-stoic-and-strong kind of way, unlike Roman’s I’m-a-grumpy-sourpuss way.
“What? No.” Eli waved a hand. “It was the social media intern. Steven?”
Sandro groaned. “Christ. Do me a favor and never listen to social media interns. They mean well, but most of the time, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”
Eli snorted a laugh and sipped his latte. “Noted. So? What was your first season with the Trailblazers like?”
“Not intimidating,” Sandro said immediately. “My first season in the NHL was also the Trailblazers’ first season. The team was made up mostly of young players—I don’t think we had anyone over twenty-five. People expected us to fail because of that, but also because of where we are, geographically speaking. We’re the smallest city with an NHL team—nobody expected us to fill seats. But we have, and we do.”
