The red light turns on.
And everything goes silent. Like no one quite believes it.
Then the horn sounds, and the Bears explode over the boards, gloves and sticks flying as they celebrate.
I don’t move.
I watch Volkov drop to his knees, staring straight at the ice. My gaze shifts to J.D. as he bends forward, hands braced on his thighs, his gaze searching the crowd for… ah—his wife.
I wish I could look at Beckett. Get strength or comfort or that reassurance that someone still cares about me, like J.D. and his wife. But I can’t. Instead, I focus on the sounds from the bench—the ones that echo the grief inside me.
They dideverythingright.
But the scoreboard didn’t care.
We played better, we earned more chances, we played the cleanest game all year.
And we still lost.
I walk into the tunnel in a state of shock, the noise around me faded to a low hum.
I’m not even sure what I say to the team in the locker room. They don’t need to hear from me right now. They did exactly what I told them to do.
And it wasn’t enough.
I exit the locker room and have a quick debrief in the hall with the coaches, just long enough to tell them they did great work, and we’ll start planning for the next season on Monday.
We all need a day off.
And then I see him. Standing at the door to my office.
My dad.
“You made it,” I observe, pulling the door open and inviting him in.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Fin. Tough game out there.”
I nod. Both grateful for his presence and already exhausted by the lecture that’s sure to come. Because no matter how well I thought we did tonight, my dad will have critiques. Not to be mean, but because he’s always wanted me to be the best. And that requires acknowledging and changing any action or thought that is less than perfect. Even if it’s subjective.
But it is helpful: I can’t change what I don’t know.
“You coached not to lose,” he says, eyes still sharp in a way that used to make grown men pay attention. “You trusted your system at a time when you needed your men to break it.”
He paces, slow and deliberate. “Overtime isn’t about control. It’s about timing. You needed to unleash their killer instinct, not their discipline. You changed lines like it was regulation. You protected a structure that didn’t serve the outcome you wanted. You should’ve unleashed your difference makers. You should’ve taken a risk. They didn’t make any mistakes, but you didn’t allow them to force one, either.”
He stops in front of me. “Great coaches don’t just eliminate errors. They decide which ones they’re willing to live with.”
I nod. Of course.
My dad sighs. “You’re too young for this position, Finley. I wish they would’ve listened to me when I told them not to offer it to you, but they set you up for failure. This loss, whether it happened now or in a few weeks, would’ve happened. You’re just not ready.”
I know he’s not trying to make me feel like this is my fault. I know he cares about making me better, but there’s something about the way he says it that has the air whooshing out of me like I just took a hit to the solar plexus.
And while I know he was talking about playing it safe tonight, his words hit home in a different way. One that reminds me that I made a different error, one of potentially greater magnitude. One that I still have to deal with.
Chapter 39
Finley
