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I nod. Once.

“I’ve watched this group become something,” Beau says. “I’ve watched it happen from a bench I hate sitting on. And I would give anything to be out there with you tonight. But I don’t need to be. Because you don’t need me tonight.” A final beat. “You need each other. Go get it.”

Cash bangs his stick against the floor. Wyatt follows. The whole room picks it up — sticks hammering the concrete in that specific pre-game rhythm that means the room is locked in — and I feel it in my chest the same way I’ve felt it every year since I got here. The specific belonging of a room full of guys who’d take a hit for each other without thinking twice.

Beau catches my eye across the room. Doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t need to.

I’m ready.

First period is even. Tight.

Hartwell’s top line is exactly what Coach warned us about. Fast. Disciplined. Working the give-and-go through the neutral zone like they’ve drilled it a thousand times, because they have. I’m matched against their best forward most of the shift — a guy named Delgado who’s quick enough to make me work for every gap.

I hold the line clean for the first ten minutes.

Then Delgado gets a step on me at the blue line. Good read on his part. Bad gap on mine. I have to reach, and I catch a piece of his stick doing it, and the whistle goes.

Hooking. Two minutes.

I skate to the box. I don’t say anything to the ref, because saying anything to the ref is exactly the kind of undisciplined move Coach warned us about, but internally I’m running through every reason that call was soft, and none of the reasons make the two minutes disappear.

Hartwell’s power play scores forty seconds in. Clean shot from the point, tipped, top corner, nothing our goalie could’ve done about it.

1-0, Hartwell.

I come out of the box and skate my next shift like the mistake is still sitting in my chest, which it is. I catch myself being too aggressive on the next puck battle — too much stick, too much force — and Coach’s voice in my head says clean feet, clean sticks, and I have to physically pull back from a hit I want to throw because it’s not the right read.

The period ends with the score sitting there. 1-0. I skate to the room replaying the Delgado gap on a loop I can’t turn off.

First intermission. Coach doesn’t yell. He never yells between periods — he’s not that kind of coach, and yelling at guys who already know they made a mistake doesn’t fix the mistake. He pulls up the whiteboard and draws the gap I gave up, clean and simple, chalk-lines on a rink diagram.

“Here.” He taps the diagram. “Half a stick length. That’s the difference between a clean gap and a hooking call.” He looks around the room, not just at me. “Half a stick length, every one of you, all game. That’s the margin tonight.”

I sit with that. I don’t argue it, because he’s right, and because arguing it would just be me trying to make the penalty feel smaller than it was.

Cash sits next to me, still catching his breath, water bottle dripping onto his pads. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t look good.”

“I’m good, Cash.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t push, which for Cash is a genuine act of restraint. “Delgado’s fast. Everyone’s had trouble with him tonight, not just you.”

“I know.”

“I’m just saying. It’s not — “ He stops himself, searches for the word. “It’s not a Theo problem. It’s a Delgado problem.”

It’s a decent thing to say, and I appreciate that he said it even though it doesn’t change how the first period actually went. I nod. He claps my pad and moves off to bother Wyatt about something, and I sit there for another minute with the tape on my stick and the sound of the room settling back into pre-period quiet, and I think about the gap, and I think about closing it next time.

Second period, we tie it.

Cash finishes a rebound off a scramble in front. Ugly goal. Doesn’t matter. It counts. The bench goes off. Margo’s somewhere behind us in section four and I don’t look, don’t let myself look, because looking costs focus and I don’t have any to spare right now.

Then Hartwell answers six minutes later. Delgado again — a give-and-go through our neutral zone that I read half a second too late — and he’s in alone on our goalie, and he scores clean, top shelf, and there’s not a single thing anyone on our bench could’ve done differently.

2-1, Hartwell.