“I’m fine.”
“Sure. We all are. That’s why half this building runs on caffeine and denial.”
He dropped into the chair across from me and went over line notes. I listened. I answered. I made decisions. By the time we walked toward the locker room for the team meeting, I had my face back in place.
That was still something I knew how to do.
The players were loud when I entered, but not unmanageable. Benny had one foot up on the bench while Milo tried to tape the blade of his stick without removing a wad of old tape first.
“You have to strip it,” Benny said.
“I am adapting the base layer.”
“You’re creating a fossil.”
Milo glanced at me. “Coach, is innovation punished in this organization?”
“When it makes the equipment staff angry, yes,” I said.
Benny pointed at him. “Convicted.”
Jace sat two stalls over from Roman, tying his skates with more care than usual. Not slow. Deliberate. His phone was zipped in his bag instead of balanced on his knee. His shoulders weren’t loose, exactly, but they weren’t up around his ears either.
He glanced at me once.
No heat. No slip. Just acknowledgment.
Then his attention went back to his laces.
Good.
Painful, but good.
The meeting went cleanly. I kept it short. Three clips. Two corrections. One clear expectation.
“We’ve been chasing plays instead of arriving on time,” I told them, remote in hand, clip paused behind me. “That’s not effort. That’s structure. We fix it today. If you’re the second man, you do not admire the first hit. You read off it. If you’re late, we run it again until late becomes embarrassing.”
A few faces shifted. They knew that tone. Calm did not mean optional.
On the ice, practice had bite from the first drill. Not pretty, but engaged. Sticks down. Feet moving. Less chirping after the whistle than usual, which meant they were either focused or plotting mutiny.
Jace was focused.
Noticeably.
He missed one rotation early when Milo cut across the wrong lane and dragged two players with him. A week ago, Jace might have snapped, might have thrown both hands up or tried to fix the drill by doing everyone’s job at once. Today he stopped, took a hard breath, tapped his stick twice against the ice, and reset.
The second rep was sharp.
He held the middle. Waited for Benny to clear the lane. Fed a pass through traffic that hit tape like it had been magnetized.
“Again,” I called. “Same pace.”
Jace circled back without comment.
Roman watched him from the crease.
So did I, though I did it like a coach. Or close enough to pass.
