My father is off his phone now, and he looks me over the way he always does: top to bottom and then back up to my face. Then he extends his hand, I take it, and we do the usual three-second, slightly too firm handshake.
“Glad you came,” I say.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he says.
He puts his hand on my elbow. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet after the game. Greg Mercer. He’s with Boston. I’ve arranged ten minutes after the press has cleared.”
He says it the way he says everything — like it’s already been decided and I’m being briefed, not asked. Six months ago, that sentence would have sent a surge of enthusiasm through me. Right now, it’s like drinking tea when you’ve been a coffee drinker all your life.
“Good game tonight,” he says, patting my elbow before letting go. “Make it count.”
“Yeah.”
I lean down, kiss the top of my mother’s head, and tell her thanks for coming, and she beams at me. At the same time, my father goes back to his phone, like he’s checked me off the to-do list and he’s already on to the next item.
Like father like son.
As they head for the stands, I walk to the locker room door, put the captain face on, and push inside. A bunch of the guys are already there, and something shifts when they notice me — conversations tightening, postures straightening.
It’s the room rearranging itself around the captain being in the room.
I nod at a few of the guys and try not to make it a big deal. Because while I’ve put on a Ravens jersey a few hundred times in this room, one letter seems to be all it takes to make a difference. It feels like I’m no longer one of the guys, or not in the same way, anyway.
“Captain,” Luca says, as I pass him on the way to my stall.
“Shut up.”
He grins. “Sure, Captain.”
Seb nods at me when I sit next to him.
For the next twenty minutes, the guys talk shit around me, loud and easy, and I let it go on without me. A little later, Coach Franklin’s speech is a variant of the one he often gives — same lines, same emphases, same closing reminders.
What’s different is what happens after the speech. He looks at me, then he takes a step back, and the room turns to me. I stand because that’s what they expect from the guy with the letter.
I’ve heard versions of this speech a hundred times from other captains at all levels of hockey, and now I’m saying what they said because it worked when they said it. It’s all I can manage right now.
“They’re going to try to make it physical early because that’s all they’ve got, and when they do, you don’t bite. You stay on your check, you win your board battles, and you trust the guy next to you to win his.”
I look at Theo, then at Luca, who is bouncing one knee and grinning at me like I’m about to say something worth remembering. I’m not. Because this isn’tRemember the Titans, and speeches in here don’t mean shit out there.
“Ravens on three,” I finish.
Twenty-something voices hit it together, sticks banging the floor, and this is the moment of the pregame that does matter. The sound fills the room, same as always, and it almost reaches whatever part of me has gone quiet.
Then we hit the ice, and the first period is ugly.
They’re bigger but not as skilled, and it’s clear they’ve decided our freshmen are the soft spot. They finish every check, grind the boards, and make it miserable hockey. They’re not skilled enough to scare me, but they’re physical enough to make it ugly.
Between shifts, I do the captain things — keeping the freshmen’s heads in it, relaying what Franklin calls down from behind us, watching the ice so I know what’s coming on my next shift. It’s a role I was already kind of doing with Gavin so absent, but now it hits home.
This is my team now, and there’s no one else coming to save my ass.
As the period goes on, their hits get increasingly dirty, and the refs are letting it go. A Ravens freshman D-man takes a late hit along the boards and the ref’s arm stays down. Next shift, their winger runs another freshman into the end boards after the whistle.
Seb doesn’t even hesitate — he cross-checks the guy onto his back before anyone else has moved.That’swhen the ref’s arm goes up, and Seb skates to the box like he’s paying a bill he expected, because Seb always repays every debt as soon as possible, on and off the ice.
But two minutes is a long time when you’re killing a penalty, and they should have earned a few before Seb got his. So, as I take the ice for the penalty kill, I skate past the ref and keep my voice low enough that only he hears it.
