Page 50 of The Grumpy Defenseman
I could text her. Something simple. Something that acknowledged the hallway and the fact that she had asked if I was okay when she had every reason not to.
I picked up the phone.
Set it down.
Some conversations were not meant for screens. They were meant for the next time you stood in front of someone and tried, imperfectly, to show them you were worth another chance.
Tomorrow.
I could work with tomorrow.
Samantha
We had not had the real conversation yet.
The bus to the scrimmage smelled like a locker room that had been given a promotion and a travel budget.
Same sweat. Same cologne that should have been classified as a chemical weapon under the Geneva Convention. Just mobile now, contained inside a vehicle heading up I-35 while twenty-six professional athletes debated whether gas-station sushiwas a viable meal option.
Consensus: it was not.
Brick remained philosophically committed.
Sandra sat two rows ahead of me, tablet open, looking like a woman trying to manage a rolling steel tube full of professional hockey players with nothing but good posture and a data plan. She caught my eye, gave me a clipped thumbs-up that was somehow both encouraging and supervisory, and went back to whatever color-coded grid was keeping her sane.
Evan sat in the back.
Hood down today, which was different. Headphones around his neck, not on. Eyes forward, radiating the contained focus of a man who was about to step onto the ice and become the version of himself that made sense.
He did not look at me. But the not-looking had a different quality than it had a week ago. The Switzerland not-looking had been deliberate, two people performing the absence of attention. This was somethingelse. Aware. The not-looking of someone who knew exactly where I was and was choosing the moment to acknowledge it.
The visiting team’s facility was smaller than ours: older boards, colder benches, lighting that had been updated just enough to pass inspection. I set up along the glass with my long lens and settled in.
The scrimmage started fast and physical. Exhibition rules, but nobody had told the players.
The first three shifts looked less like a controlled preseason tune-up and more like thirty men reminding each other what mattered. Bodies finished checks. Sticks clattered. Somebody got stapled to the glass hard enough to rattle the camera in my hands. Brick was in full showman mode, all flashy passes and controlled chaos, grinning like the whole thing had been staged for his personal entertainment. Mack changed with the economy of veteran legs. Kowalski finished every hit like effort itself was something he could win.
Ryan, Finn, and Evan took the ice together halfway through the first period, and the whole sheet changed shape.
Ryan did not need volume to control a shift. He took the draw, won it clean, and was already directing traffic before the winger on the other side had fully turned. One point. One word. A blade angled toward open ice. Captain energy, quiet and absolute. Finn played beside Evan with all the restless heat of a rookie trying to prove he belonged every second he was out there. Quick feet. Quicker decisions. He chased contact like it owed him money and recovered like being caught out of position was a personal insult.
And Evan.
Through my viewfinder, he was a different species. Not louder. Not more dramatic. Just certain. Every positioning decision was made before the play developed, like he could see the ice two seconds into the future and was already there waiting. Finn would surge,all forward motion and fire, and Evan would be there behind the play, cleaning the edges, closing the lane, making sure aggression did not become damage. Ryan drove the rhythm up front. Finn pushed it. Evan made the whole thing hold.
The shift built quickly: Ryan winning the draw, Evan moving the puck before pressure arrived, Finn cutting through traffic with too much confidence and exactly enough skill. The rebound kicked loose, Ryan tied up the crease, and Finn jammed the second chance home.
The bench erupted like someone had scored in May instead of a Tuesday scrimmage in a borrowed rink.
Finn turned with both arms half-lifted, shouting something that was probably not printable. Ryan reached him first, gloved hand to the back of his helmet, one sharp tap that somehow managed to be praise, correction, and keep your head in the game all at once. Evan arrived a second later, said something low to Finn that I could not hear,and Finn’s expression changed immediately, the reckless triumph settling into focus.
I shot twelve frames of that sequence alone.
Not the goal. The aftermath.
The game kept moving.
Later, Finn nearly turned a clean entry into an odd-man rush. Ryan angled the threat wide, Evan closed the middle before the pass existed, and the danger died on his blade. A few seconds later they were moving the other way: Ryan driving the rhythm, Finn pushing the pace, Evan holding high as the safety valve until the lane opened.
