Page 6 of Rookie Rules

The familiar old pain had arrived with him, quiet enough to ignore and too established to deserve surprise. He shifted his weight, tested the edge under his right skate, and filed the information away. Available. Stable. Nothing Owen needed to hear about.

Across the zone, Eli Novak mishandled a puck during a transition turn, recovered it, then looked toward Rowan as if expecting a grade.

Rowan pointed his stick toward the next cone.

Eli went.

Better.

Jace Moreno tried to turn a routine puck-protection warmup into a contest and lost the puck to Mateo Reyes, who laughed loudly enough for both of them. Finn made the same pattern look dull and perfect. Nolan moved with the economy of a man who had stopped wasting energy years ago.

And Luca Bennett skated as if the ice had been waiting for him.

That was not the language Rowan would have used in a meeting.

In a meeting, Luca had excellent edge control and unusually fast acceleration out of direction changes. He carried his chest over his knees without collapsing his posture. His hands stayed separate from his feet, able to change the puck's rhythm while his body sold something else.

On the ice, he was difficult not to watch.

Luca came out of a turn along the far boards, crossed under a pass that should have landed behind him, and collected it without breaking stride. He rolled the puck from heel to toe once. Then he looked up.

At Rowan.

Not Vale. Not the assistant coaches stationed at either end. Rowan.

The glance lasted less than a second. Luca pushed the puck ahead and accelerated after it, shoulders loose, number 88 flashing as he crossed the blue line.

Camp doesn't care what anyone expects. It cares what you repeat.

Apparently Bennett had taken that personally.

Rowan turned his attention to the rest of the group.

He made it almost twenty seconds.

"Bring it in," Vale called.

Players gathered at the tactics board near the home bench, snow collecting around their blades. Vale drew three tracks through the neutral zone. His voice did not need volume to hold a room. At forty-eight, he had refined disapproval into a measurable pressure system.

"Controlled regroup into a three-on-two entry," he said. "Defense starts it. Center swings low. Wings hold width until the first pass crosses the red. Right side gets it at the line and moves it inside. Middle has weak-side support. We are reading timing, not auditions for a highlight reel."

Jace looked toward Luca.

Luca smiled at the board as if it had said nothing personal.

Vale continued. "First two groups, half speed. Get the route right. Then we go live against the pair."

Rowan knew this drill. Everyone in the room knew some version of it. The point was not the shot at the end. The point was whether five moving pieces could create the same picture on command, then adjust when a defender damaged it.

Structure created options. It did not remove them.

That distinction mattered more now than it had five years ago. The Wolves had spent too many games reacting as individuals and calling it urgency. A late defenseman pinched. A winger flew the zone. A center cheated for offense, leaving the middle open behind him. None of the decisions looked fatal by itself. Together they had become a season.

Vale sent the first group.

Finn held the left side, Rowan swung low through the middle, and Jace took the right. The puck moved from Nolan to Rowan, then out to Jace at the blue line. Rowan drove between the defenders. Jace put the puck back inside. Rowan touched it across to Finn at the weak-side dot.

Finn shot low. Gabriel Moreau turned it aside with his pad.