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He knows who he's playing next. Everybody in this room knows.

Nobody says anything for a while. The broadcast cuts to the anchors at the desk. A rematch nobody will forget, one of them says. The Final that already has a storyline.

Somebody turns off the TV.

"Well," Webb says, into the silence. "That's great."

"He's going to be in your face every shift," Brandt says to Rémy. He says it flat, not mean. Just stating it. It's the first thing Brandt's said directly to him since Nashville. "Every scrum. Every faceoff. He's going to try to get you thrown out."

"I know," Rémy says.

"You can't take the bait."

"I know."

"Everybody's going to be watching," Brandt says. "That's all I'm saying. Every camera in two countries. Everybody's going to be watching you two."

He doesn't say what you two means. He looks at me when he says it, just for a second, and then looks away.

Moretti uncrosses his arms.

"Practice at ten," he says. "Everybody go home and sleep."

Rémy doesn't go home. He comes to mine.

We're quiet in the elevator. We're quiet walking down the hallway. He doesn't take the stairs two floors first, and I don't ask him to, and nobody's in the hall to see either way.

Inside, he drops his bag by the door, and stands there in the middle of the rug, and looks at the Christmas lights still going in the window, in May.

"You should take those down," he says.

"You told me not to."

"I know. You should anyway. It's weird. It's May."

"I like them."

He turns around. He looks at me for a long time.

"Your knee," he says.

Here it is.

"It's fine," I say.

"It's not fine. I saw Dana in Denver. I saw the needle." He doesn't come any closer. "I saw you in the handshake line tonight. You're pushing off wrong. You've been pushing off wrong since April."

"It's the playoffs, Rémy. Everybody's hurt. Webb's got a cracked rib. Sorel can't lift his left arm over his head."

"I'm not asking about Webb. I'm asking about you."

I look at him. At his face, open and worried and so young. At the scar on his chin I didn't notice until the night on the ice. I think about the junk drawer by the door, about the gray picture with the line through it, about the word replacement.

"Is there anything you need to tell me?" he asks, quietly.

I could tell him. Right now. It would take one sentence.

"After the Final," I say. "Can we talk about it after the Final?"