“Who wants to start us off?” The Trailblazers’ director of player engagement, Roman Kinsey, stood at the front of the room as the meeting finally got started, holding a plastic bowl filled with folded pieces of paper. He gave the bowl a shake and held it aloft over the center of the massive table. “I’m going to volunteer someone in three, two?—”
“I’ll bite,” Team Captain Kyle Dabbs said, reaching into the bowl.
From where he sat at the back of the room with Fowler, Bennett frowned. Were they . . . picking names for Secret Santa? Not out of the realm of possibility, considering the holiday was less than six weeks away.
Except Dabbs unfolded the slip of paper, gave it a quick glance, and said, “CC.”
So, not Secret Santa.
Or, at least, not secret.
Across the table from Dabbs, Colter “CC” Clarke linked his fingers together and held them under his chin, batting his eyes.
Dabbs set the slip of paper aside. “That was an epic goddamn game-winning goal against Minnesota last week.”
“Fuck yeah,” CC crowed as a few other guys banged the table in agreement.
Fowler leaned closer to Bennett. “What is happening?” he asked quietly.
Bennett shook his head. Fuck if he knew.
Roman Kinsey held the bowl out to CC.
“Prinnie,” CC announced with a flourish, reading off the paper he’d selected out of the bowl. He turned to the man next to him. “You smell really good today.”
“You really do.” On Prinnie’s other side, Deeley leaned in and gave him a sniff. “What is that? Sandalwood?”
“I don’t actually know.” Prinnie brought his own arm up to his nose and sniffed. “Some new all-natural small-batch body wash I found at a market a couple of months ago. I forget the name of it.”
“Okay, but for real,” Fowler muttered as Prinnie selected a name out of the bowl. “What is happening?”
“This is how we start all meetings,” said the video coach, leaning against the wall on Fowler’s other side. “Five guys pick names out of the bowl and have to say something nice about that person.”
“Seriously?” Bennett said as Prinnie told Assistant Coach Friedle that he hadn’t yelled at him at practice last week.
“I never yell,” Friedle rebutted, earning a round of disbelieving laughs.
“Seriously?” Bennett repeated. Because . . .
What?
A bunch of hockey players—and staff, apparently—sat around saying nice things about each other?
Before every meeting?
It was unheard of.
It was unexpected.
It was awesome.
Fowler hit the record button on his phone. Bennett whipped out his own phone and began typing notes.
How long had this been going on? Why? Who started it? Was this part of what contributed to the Trailblazers’ team culture? How much resistance had that person faced when they’d first proposed it to the team? How much resistance—if any—did the team face by rookies and call-ups and new staff? This wasn’t standard practice. Far from it. Had Bennett ever suggested something like this to his teammates when he’d played for Chicago, they would’ve laughed him out of the locker room.
He wished Fowler had his camera for this—the phone footage quality wouldn’t be as good—but if the video coach was being truthful, they’d have many more opportunities to film this sort of thing in the future.
Bennett let out a little laugh as the say-something-nice portion of the meeting wrapped up. This was storytelling gold. It had to go into one of his episodes.
