Chapter 8 Davis
The nameplate is the first thing I see. Block letters, white on black, slotted into the top of the stall like it's been there for years.
DAVIS. Except this building opened six weeks ago and still smells like fresh paint and new rubber, and the nameplate is so clean I can see the overhead lights reflected in it.
I touch the edge. Just once, fast, to make sure it's real.
The locker room is bigger than any I've played in, including college, and right now it's a wall of noise.
Fifty-plus guys in various stages of arrival, duffels hitting the floor, equipment bags unzipped, the low competitive hum of men sizing each other up without admitting that's what they're doing.
Training camp for an expansion team is a total beast. More invites, more bodies, more guys who know that half the stalls in this room will be empty by the end of the week.
The math is both the best and worst part.
More open roster spots than any other team in the league. But more people fighting for them.
I find my stall, third row, near the end. The jersey is hanging inside. White and blue Firebirds crest on the chest, no number on the back. Yet.
The guy in the stall next to mine is already unpacking with the focus of someone defusing a bomb.
Blond, younger than most of the room, built like a forward.
He's organizing his gear in a specific order, tape on the left shelf, skate guards lined up, gloves positioned fingers-out. He doesn't look up.
"Davis," I say. "Tyler."
He glances over. Open face, a little startled, like he forgot there were other people in the building. "Mueller. Sam." A handshake, firm and quick. "You're from Minnesota, right? I saw the roster sheet."
"Yeah. You?"
"Wisconsin."
"Midwest solidarity." I hold my fist out for the bump he returns.
He grins at that, brief and genuine, then goes back to his gear. I notice he's already taped his sticks. Four of them, identical, the tape job neat and consistent. The kid came prepared.
The vets filter in like they own the place, which they do, or will.
I watch from my stall because watching is what I do.
My dad likes to tell the story of when he put me on the ice at six and I spent the first practice just standing there, tracking the puck, tracking the bodies, learning the patterns.
The next practice? I was flying past kids years older than me. I watch, I learn, I execute with precision.
Ikonen arrives and the room shifts. Not quiet, not a record-scratch, just a subtle reorganization of awareness.
And good night, this guy is enormous. I knew that from scouting reports and game tape, but tape doesn't quite capture the way a man that immense moves through a space without rushing, every step deliberate, nothing wasted.
He scans the room the way I imagine he reads the ice, taking in positions and trajectories without appearing to look at anything specific.
His eyes pass over me, register, and move on.
Assessment complete. I have been categorized and filed in under two seconds.
Asher arrives twelve minutes later, and the difference is immediate. Where Ikonen reorganized the room's gravity, Asher reorganizes its temperature. He comes in talking, bag over one shoulder, already mid-sentence to someone behind him. Within minutes he's at my stall as he makes the rounds.
"Davis, right? Tyler? Minnesota." He says it as if we've met before, like he's confirming details rather than introducing himself. "Whereabouts? My buddy played at Shattuck."
"Roseville. Just north of the Cities."
"Good hockey up there. Glad you're here, man."
He claps my shoulder and moves on, and I am left with the distinct impression that Ryan Asher now has a file on me that includes my name, my hometown, and the quality of hockey in my region, and that he'll remember all of it next time without being reminded.
Mueller, beside me, watched the whole exchange with the expression of someone who just witnessed a magic trick but can't figure out the method.
Coach Boudreaux, or Coach Bodie as everyone calls him, gathers us in the film room at nine sharp.
He stands at the front with his arms crossed and doesn't wait for the room to settle.
The room settles itself fast because everything about this man suggests he has never repeated himself and doesn't plan to start.
"You're here because we think you can play.
Some of you will prove us right. Some won't." He pauses.
"We don't have traditions. We don't have history, and we don't have the luxury of easing into anything.
Every shift is an audition, and every game is a statement.
If that scares you, there's the door." He looks at the door.
Nobody else does. "Good. See you on the ice. "
Five sentences. The room is a wire pulled taut.
After that mic drop, I walk the facility because I want to see it all and we have about 30 minutes until forwards have to be in a conference room.
I pass the weight room, the training tables, the tunnel to the ice.
Everything is new, unmarked, waiting to become whatever we make it.
The halls have that strange institutional blankness of a place no one has lived in yet, no scuff marks on the walls, no inside jokes taped to doors, no history in the concrete.
I pass Mueller in the hallway near the training room. He's studying a laminated map of the facility with the intensity he gave his gear, tracing the route from the locker room to the ice with one finger.
"You good?" I ask.
"Trying to memorize the layout. I don't want to get lost on the first day."
"It's not that big."
"I got lost at my billet family's house for a week in juniors. I'm not taking chances."
I almost laugh until I realize he's serious. The afternoon skate is three hours away. My legs are restless and I wish I had time to fly on the ice for a few minutes before we sit down for the study portion of the day.
I remind myself that my nameplate is in a stall in an NHL locker room. There are over fifty guys here and most of them have done this before, and I haven't, not at this level, and the gap between what I know about the game and what I know about being in this room is wide enough to skate through.
But I'm here. My name is up and my jersey is in the stall and in three hours I get to do the thing I've been doing since I was six years old, except now it counts in a way it never has before.
I find an empty bench near the training room and sit and wait and watch the hallway fill up with strangers who are about to become more than that, and I try to hold all of it without letting any of it go.