Page 75 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“Eight years. Eleven-point-two AAV. Full no-movement clause through year five. Modified for six through eight.”
Eighty-nine-point-six million dollars.
The number sat in the air the way a puck sat on the blue line before a power play: loaded, waiting for someone to pull the trigger.
Mark leaned forward. “This is the best offer you’re going to see, Evan. Seattle’s committed. They’ve restructured their cap to make room. They want you as the cornerstone of their rebuild.”
Cornerstone.
The word was supposed to feel like an honor. It felt like a relocation notice.
Across the table, Walsh had not spoken. He was listening. He had set his pen on a legal pad and had not picked it up again. When he shifted his weight, the unhurried adjustment of a man who was negotiating and wanted the person on the other end tothink he was not, every head at the table tracked the movement without meaning to.
That was the kind of authority executive leadership bought you. You did not have to say things. You just had to sit there while the room noticed you had not.
I stared at the folder.
The numbers were clean, typed in a font designed to communicate authority and precision. They represented security. Legacy. The kind of contract that changed a player’s family for generations, the kind my father, driving a Zamboni at eight dollars an hour, could not have imagined in his most extravagant fantasy.
I should have been thrilled.
I should have been negotiating details, asking about signing bonuses, and discussing trade clauses.
Instead, I was thinking about the sound Sam made when I said her name in the dark. About a training office that smelled like rubber mats and something I wasstarting to recognize as the scent of a life I had not known I wanted.
“Evan.” Mark’s voice sharpened. “We need engagement here.”
“I’m engaged.”
“You’re staring at the folder like it insulted your mother.”
Silas folded his hands. “We need an answer by end of week. Seattle’s window is narrow. If we’re doing the sign-and-trade, both front offices need to move simultaneously.”
“How narrow?”
“Friday. Five p.m. Eastern.”
Three days.
Seventy-two hours to decide whether to accept the biggest contract of my life and relocate two thousand miles from my sister’s kitchen, my nephew’s moats, and a dog who sat in the passenger seat of my truck like it was his constitutional right. Two thousand miles from the room where the veterans knew the set of my shoulders meant leave him alone, and the younger guys stillwatched how I taped my stick before practice.
And from Sam.
The thought arrived without permission, the way all the important ones did.
Complete.
Non-negotiable.
I was not ready to say it out loud. But it was there, sitting in the center of the calculus like a variable that changed every equation it touched.
“I need time,” I said.
Mark’s jaw tightened. “How much time?”
“A day.”
“Evan…”
