Chapter 3
“Good morning, Mr. Sullivan,” Stanley called from the security desk.
I dropped a paper bag on his desk—an old fashioned donut from the coffee shop around the corner. They were famous for them and it was genuinely tortuous to stop in just for coffee. Someone should enjoy a donut.
“C’mon Stanley. Mr. Sullivan is my dad. Derek, please.”
He lifted the bag and peered inside, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Thanks, Derek.”
I swiped my badge and headed to the weight room.
Thomas, our team trainer, was already there, and so was Kenzo Carter-Volsky.
No one worked harder than that man. He was thrashing battle ropes, his shaved head slicked with sweat, compression shirt plastered to his body like a second skin.
He moved with the focused intensity of someone who had something to prove, even after four seasons and an All-Star nod.
Thomas nodded to me as I cut through to the locker room to drop off my stuff.
Avery sat in his stall texting, long legs sprawled, tattoos crawling down his arms. He looked up with that faintly stern resting face that meant nothing—off the ice he was the most easygoing person on the roster.
Was the first to congratulate you on a goal.
Remembered everyone’s birthday. Even brought in homemade brownies for the team once.
“Hey, Sully.”
“Sup Avery, what’s new?”
I set my bag down and changed out of my street shoes. My knee ached dully, the way it always did in the morning. Probably always would.
“Did I tell you my brother is moving in with me? He just got in yesterday.”
“Yeah, I think you mentioned it. Mathéo?”
“Théo. Yeah.” He turned his phone face down on his knee, something shifting in his expression—not quite discomfort, but close. “It’s weird to live with him again. I moved out at 18 for the OHL, then came down here. We haven’t been under the same roof since we were kids.”
“Good weird or bad weird?”
He considered that for a moment. “Just weird. He’s going through some stuff. Needed a change of scenery.”
I didn’t push. You learn fast on a team: some doors aren’t yours to open. “Can’t imagine living with my brothers again. Ethan was always a slob and Jimmy loses his mind if you touch his shit.”
That got a short laugh out of him. “We’re only ten months apart, so our shit was always each other’s shit. Shared everything. Rooms, gear, ice time.” He paused. “Anyway. We’re going to IKEA after practice to pick up some furniture for his room.”
“Ugh, good luck. Traffic’s going to be a bitch.”
“Don’t remind me.”
I stuffed my gym bag in my locker. “You ready?”
He nodded, stuck his phone on the top shelf of his locker, and shut the door with a clang.
◆◆◆
Thomas didn’t believe in mercy. No exceptions.
Didn’t matter if you were a rookie or a two time Cup winner.
He moved through the room with his clipboard like a general surveying a battlefield, adjusting form here, adding weight there, ignoring complaints with the serene indifference of a man who had heard every excuse.
Lucas Morrison, our team captain, arrived at just past eight.
He was 32 with an active toddler at home and somehow still keeping pace with 22 year old Avery, which was either impressive or deeply unfair depending on how you looked at it.
Thomas put the two of them through jumping lunges in the open floor space—Morrison silent and focused, Avery making the occasional noise of protest that Thomas cheerfully ignored.
Volsky and I were on bikes, side by side. The rehab corner. The damaged goods row.
We’d been here before—literally and figuratively.
Both of us sidelined at different points last season.
I had missed the first half due to my freak accident.
Stairs, dog, heartbreak. The holy trinity of career-ending bad luck.
Volsky had missed the playoffs due to a torn rotator cuff and we’d gotten trounced in the first round anyway.
Four games. Clean sweep. The kind of exit that lived in your chest for months afterward like a stone you couldn’t dislodge.
Between the two of us, we’d cost the Frost their best forward line at the worst possible time. We didn’t talk about it directly. We didn’t need to. It lived in the space between us on these bikes every morning—a shared debt we were both methodically paying down.
The A on my jersey made it worse. Alternate captain.
A leadership role I’d earned over six seasons and then I’d spent half of last year watching from the press box while the team carried on without me.
Morrison never said anything but I felt it—the weight of the letter I hadn’t been healthy enough to deserve.
Thomas had us on a modified program. Controlled cardio, nothing that would torque the knee or load the shoulder beyond what he’d mapped out on his increasingly detailed spreadsheet. He monitored us like we were expensive equipment being brought back online after a system failure.
“How was your weekend?” I asked, watching my RPMs on the display.
A beat of silence. Volsky’s default before answering most questions. “Good. Ran the lakefront path Saturday morning. Bradley made dinner.” A brief pause. “He tried a new gluten-free pasta recipe. It was actually decent.”
“High praise.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Almost a smile. “I’m not really a foodie. It kills him. And my sister.”
I pushed the pedals harder, watched the numbers climb.
“You alright?” Volsky asked. Not prying. Just noticing. He noticed everything.
“Fine. Knee’s a little tight this morning.”
He accepted that without comment.
It was a lie. My knee was fine. I couldn’t exactly explain why I’d gone quiet—why my chest had tightened when he said Bradley made dinner. Three ordinary words. The kind of detail that meant you had someone waiting at home.
I used to have that. Ten years with Mackenzie. Now I had an empty apartment and a dog who deserved more walks than I had time to give him.
I pushed the pedals harder and didn’t think about it.
Across the room, Morrison murmured something that made Avery laugh—loud and sudden.
Morrison didn’t even crack a smile but his eyes crinkled at the corners.
It was strangely reassuring to watch him: a body that had absorbed a decade of professional contact and he was still here at eight in the morning, doing jumping lunges without complaint.
The engine of this team on the ice and off it.
First line center. Captain. The axis everything else rotated around.
We needed him healthy. We needed Volsky’s shoulder dialed in. We needed my knee to hold.
Minnesota wasn’t going to sweep us again.
“Bradley coming to the home opener?” I asked, because the silence had started to feel like a door into my own head and I didn’t want to go through it.
“Yeah.” Something in Volsky’s expression shifted—barely perceptible, like a change in light. “He wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good. We need all the support we can get.”
“He’s still upset about that goaltender interference call from the playoffs.” Volsky shook his head. “Brings it up at least once a week.”
“The one in Game 3? Total bullshit. It was a clean goal.”
“I know. He knows. He’s made a PowerPoint about it.”
I laughed. “A PowerPoint?”
“With diagrams.” Volsky’s mouth twitched. “He’s very passionate.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Having someone in your corner like that.”
Volsky glanced at me—steady, unhurried, the way he looked at everything.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It is.”
Morrison called something across the room to Thomas. Thomas consulted his clipboard and called back. Avery groaned through another set and Morrison told him, without looking over, to stop being dramatic—he was 22, act like it.
I focused on the burn in my legs and the number climbing on the display.
Twenty-eight years old. In most careers, that was nothing—barely getting started. In hockey, it was the beginning of the end.
I tried not to think about it too much, but the math was always there, lurking at the edges.
Most players peaked somewhere between 24 and 28.
The lucky ones stretched into their 30s if they were smart about their bodies and luckier about their injuries.
Morrison was the exception, not the rule.
And I’d already lost half a season to a freak accident that had nothing to do with the game itself.
The knee would hold. Probably. But probably wasn’t the same as definitely, and every time it twinged in the morning, I wondered if this was the season it all started to slip. The season I stopped earning the letter on my chest.
Across the room, Avery powered through another set of lunges. Twenty-two years old. Fresh legs. A body that hadn’t accumulated a decade of micro-damage. He was good—really good—and getting better every week. Second line now but not for long. Anyone with eyes could see it.
I was mentoring him. That was the word we used.
Mentoring. Teaching him how to read defensive schemes, how to protect the puck along the boards, how to position himself for the breakout pass.
All the things someone had taught me once, back when I was the hungry kid with fresh legs and something to prove.
The thing no one told you about mentoring was that you were training your own replacement.
I’d done it before—at every level. Bantam, juniors, the AHL. Helped the younger guys find their footing, watched them climb, felt genuinely happy when they made the next roster. But I’d always been climbing too. There was always a next level to reach, a new challenge to chase.
What happened when there wasn’t?
What happened when the kid you were mentoring started outskating you and there was nowhere left for you to go?
I watched Avery land another lunge, easy and explosive, and felt something complicated twist in my chest. Pride, maybe.
And underneath it, something darker. The quiet fear of becoming irrelevant.
Of waking up one morning and realizing the game had moved on without you—and the A on your jersey was just a reminder of who you used to be.
Morrison caught my eye from across the room and gave me a small nod. Steady. Reassuring. Like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
Maybe he did. He’d been doing this longer than any of us.
I nodded back and kept pedaling.