“We were late through the neutral zone in the second. Special teams kept us alive. Evan made the read. Zach won the wall. Colt screened. Kowalski got it through.”
Evan leans back in his stall. “Look at you. Emotionally available through systems analysis.”
“Do not make me regret complimenting you.”
“I am already unbearable.”
Finn points at him. “Already?”
Zach says, “Historically.”
The room laughs again, easier this time.
Evan stands and grabs the whiteboard marker before any coach can. He draws the breakout fast, ugly, and right. I watch the room shift toward the board instead of inward toward pressure.
There it is.
The room does not need me to hold every answer. Sometimes it needs me to make space for the right one.
Maren comes through on her after-game rounds, and Finn stops her before she reaches him.
“Hey, Doc.” He says it loud enough for the stalls around him to hear. “That hit in the corner, third period. Everything went bright for a second. Probably nothing. Wanted it on the record.”
The room does not go quiet. Nobody trades a look. Colt keeps unlacing. Zach keeps taping.
Maren nods like he has handed her a weather report. “Good. See me before you leave.”
“Yeah.”
That is all.
A season ago he would have swallowed it and called the silence toughness. He just said it out loud in a full room, and the room did not make him pay for it.
I do not say anything. Saying something would turn it into a lesson.
It is better as a habit.
After the media scrum, Colt lowers himself onto the bench at my side.
“Sierra says your girl brought actual food tonight.”
“Not my girl.”
Colt looks at me.
“Cap.”
“What?”
“You left a playoff game, drove through the night with her, slept in a hospital hallway, came back, won the series, and still looked for her after the horn like Section 312 had the final score. But sure. Not your girl.”
I unlace my skate. “Are you done?”
“Never.”
Zach passes behind us. “He skated like a man apologizing to a city tonight.”
Zach does not soften it. “Stop apologizing to people who do not know you.”
