Page 163 of Rookie Rules

"Then you know tape cannot make a failed contraction safe."

Owen offered oral pain medication and named the dose. Rowan accepted it after Priya confirmed it would not conceal a return-to-play test, because there would be no return-to-play test. The refusal he had prepared served no one.

"I can test it between periods," Rowan said.

Priya stood. She was smaller than Rowan and entirely unimpressed by captaincy. "You failed the functional test when you could not leave the ice under your own power. You are not returning tonight."

"The score is tied."

"The tissue does not know the score."

Owen wrapped ice against the groin and secured it. "Do not make me take your skates."

Rowan looked toward the closed door. Beyond it, the crowd reacted to a chance he could not see.

"Monitor," he said.

Owen turned on the wall screen.

The second-line center had moved between Finn and Luca. The arrangement looked wrong in a way no tactics board could fix. Rowan reached automatically for the tablet that was not beside him.

On screen, Luca carried through neutral ice. Pressure closed. Instead of attempting to beat both defenders, he put the puck safely behind them and chased. Finn arrived first. The new center stayed high.

Structure.

The shift ended without a shot against.

At the bench, Luca leaned across Finn and spoke to the replacement center. The broadcast camera caught only the shape of it. Finn nodded, then repeated the instruction to the defense pair.

The period ended 2-2.

Audio from the broadcast followed players down the tunnel, but Rowan could hear the real room through the wall when the door opened. Skates on rubber. Vale calling for the board. Voices arranging themselves around the hole Rowan had left.

His phone sat inside the equipment bag Owen had brought from the stall. Rowan could have sent Finn a note about the opponent's weak-side center. He could have asked Vale for the tablet or called Luca into the treatment room under the cover of tactics.

The options came easily because control had always disguised itself as usefulness.

Rowan left the phone where it was.

Vale had the video. Finn had eleven seasons of his own. Luca had already seen the weak side. Sending instructions now would have relieved Rowan's helplessness without giving the team anything it lacked.

He asked Owen to angle the monitor instead.

Priya returned with the imaging order and discharge sheet. "We will not assign a grade from this room. The mechanism and exam suggest an adductor injury, but the scan tells us location and extent."

"Best case?"

"A strain that responds quickly once swelling settles."

"Worst case?"

"We are not building a prognosis out of fear. No deformity, no neurologic signs, no evidence tonight of a complete rupture. That is what I can tell you."

Rowan accepted the narrow answer. He signed the form authorizing the scan and gave Owen his house key so the therapist could retrieve the medication bag from Rowan's car. Receiving help felt less dramatic than refusing it and considerably harder.

He had spent years believing leadership meant becoming impossible to remove.

Now removal had happened in less than a second.