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"Was it in the kid's stall?"

"It's garbage, Gus."

He takes off his reading glasses. "You want me to pull the door log? I can tell you who swiped in last night after the game."

"No."

"Owen."

"I said no."

"Somebody's going to do it again," he says. "That kind of guy always does it again."

"Then I'll throw it out again."

He looks at me. Then he puts his glasses back on and turns back to the stick in the vise.

"Your call, Captain," he says, and he doesn't make it sound like a compliment.

Castel comes in at nine-fifty-eight for a ten o'clock meeting. He's singing again. It's a different song. He drops into his stall, looks at the empty hook, and hangs up his jacket on it without a second glance.

Brandt watches him from across the room. So does Kowal. Neither of them says anything, and neither of them looks disappointed, exactly. They look like guys who are waiting.

I tape my stick and don't look at anyone.

Practice is a two-on-one drill. Forwards come down in pairs against a single D, and the point is simple: make the pass or take the shot, don't get cute, get it on net. We've been running this drill since I was nineteen.

Castel comes down with Sorel against Webb. He gets the puck at the blue line, fakes the pass, and then pulls a full spin-o-rama at the top of the circle, three-sixty on one skate, and lifts a backhand over the goalie's shoulder.

Sorel whoops. A couple of the young guys bang their sticks on the ice.

Castel does a little bow.

"Castel," I say. "Again."

He looks over at me, grinning. "I scored."

"Do the drill."

"That was the drill. It went in."

"The drill is a two-on-one. You pass or you shoot. You don't do a lap."

"It was half a lap."

"Do it again."

He skates back up the ice, still smiling, but it's thinner now. He comes down again with Sorel against Webb, and this time he passes, a flat perfect saucer that lands right on Sorel's tape, and Sorel buries it.

"Better," I say.

"That was worse," Castel says, coasting past me. "That was the most boring goal I've ever seen."

"Boring goals count the same."

"Not to the people who paid for tickets."

"The people who paid for tickets want us to win."