Chapter 9 Mueller
The first drill is a skating assessment, and I love it.
Coach Bodie's assistants split us into groups of six and run us through transitions.
Forward to backward, crossovers through the circles, tight turns around the dots.
Basic stuff if you've been skating forever, but the pace is different here.
College was fast. This is a whole different level.
The gaps between good and great show up in the first ten minutes, in the details that don't make highlight reels.
How clean someone's edges are through a transition, whether they lose half a step on the pivot or keep their speed, how deep they get into a crossover before pushing out.
I'm breathing hard by the second rotation, but my legs feel right. Edges are clean, transitions are smooth. I can do this all day. Or at least I tell myself that before the third rotation, when my thighs start filing a formal complaint.
After skating comes puck skills, and this is where the room separates.
We cycle through stations: passing accuracy, give-and-go patterns, one-on-one puck protection.
I'm decent at all of it and great at none of it, which is more or less the story of my hockey life.
I make up for it by working harder than the guy next to me, whoever that happens to be.
Today that's Gauthier, the Quebecois winger, and keeping up with him is a project.
His first three strides are things I've only seen on game tape of guys who've been in the league for a decade.
He explodes out of his stance like the ice is launching him.
I make a mental note to watch his feet during the next drill and figure out where the extra push comes from.
Asher runs the passing drill as if he designed it.
He probably didn't, but you wouldn't know from watching.
Every touch is purposeful. He sees the whole pattern before it develops, puts the puck on your tape a half second before you've committed to your route, and when you receive it you feel like you made a good play when in reality, he made it for you.
I've played with skilled centers before.
This is different. This is a guy who makes the game easier for everyone in his radius and makes it look effortless, which is the part I know is a lie because nothing at this level is effortless.
Volkov is in my group for the one-on-one station and his hands in tight space are filthy.
Stickhandling through a defender like the puck is attached to the blade.
But when we rotate into a three-man weave and he's lined up with Fontenot, something shifts.
Not his effort, not his skating. His reads.
He has a passing lane to Fontenot's tape, a clean look, and he doesn't take it.
Goes wide instead, forces a lower-percentage play that dies at the boards.
I watch it happen and wait for the correction from the coaches, because that's a bad decision.
Fontenot was open. But the coaches move on, and so does Volkov, and the next rep he's back to making plays that look like cheat codes.
I don't understand what happened on that rep.
Guys miss reads sometimes. It just didn't look like a miss. It looked like a choice, the wrong one, and I can’t wrap my head around why he would do that.
Davis is in the group ahead of mine for most of the morning, and I keep tracking him between my own reps.
I can't help it. The kid reads the play the way I read a menu, which is to say with full attention and zero hesitation.
During the battle drills he's not the fastest or the strongest, but he's always in position.
Always. Like he knew where the puck was going before the pass left the blade.
His skating is solid, nothing flashy, good mechanics.
But his anticipation is elite. He strips a vet during a one-on-one drill with a stick lift that I'd call lucky if I hadn't watched him set it up two strides earlier. I file that away.
By the time we break for lunch, my legs have stopped speaking to me.
Two and a half hours of on-ice work at a pace that makes college conditioning feel like open skate at a public rink.
I'm standing in the lunch line with my tray, scanning the room, and the geography is obvious.
The vets have their tables. Not hostile, not closed off, just established.
Groups that already know each other's names and rhythms from years of playing against each other.
Davis is at a table in the corner with an empty seat. I sit down because it's open and because he's the guy whose nameplate is next to mine and we're from the same time zone, and those are sufficient reasons when you don't know anyone.
"Your stick lift on Berger in that one-on-one," I say. "You set that up from the faceoff dot."
He looks at me for a second with an expression I can't read. "You saw that?"
"It was a good read."
"Thanks. Your footwork in the crossover drill was the cleanest in your group."
I consider this. "Jensen's was better."
"Jensen's been doing it for eleven years."
Fair point.
Two more trays land at our table. The Czech guys, Novák and Hájek. Novák sits down like someone who has already decided this is where he belongs. Hájek simply follows, looking relieved to have somewhere to go. His tray has a concerning amount of food on it for someone who weighs maybe one-eighty.
"Mueller," Novák says, as if confirming a suspicion. "Wisconsin."
"Yeah."
"You skate like you grew up on a pond."
I try to figure out if that's a compliment. His face gives me nothing.
"Frozen lake, actually."
"Close enough." He turns to Davis. "And you. Minnesota."
Davis shrugs. Neither confirms nor denies.
Hájek is eating at a pace that suggests he hasn't seen food in days. Between bites he says, "The skating this morning was very hard. In Czech league we do not skate this much in one session." His English is careful, each word given space. "My legs are, how do you say. Not working."
"Dead," Davis offers.
"Dead. Yes. My legs are dead."
"Same," I say, and mean it.
Novák leans back in his chair and looks at the three of us. "First practice. NHL. We are still here." He raises his water bottle. We raise ours. Not a toast, exactly. More of an acknowledgment. We made it to lunch.
After we eat, Davis says something about Volkov and Fontenot's drill work not clicking.
"What about them?" I ask.
Davis and Novák exchange a meaningful glance but I don't know what it means. Novák says, "History. From before."
"Hockey history?"
"Something like that." Novák takes a drink of his water and offers nothing further.
I let it go because whatever it is, it's not about their skating, and their skating is the part that's my business. Plus my phone is buzzing in my pocket and I already know who it is.
I find a quiet corner of the hallway and call her back.
"Samuel." My mom's voice is the same as it's been every day of my life, warm and slightly worried and speaking English with the vowels she brought from Munich that she's never lost. "How is your first day?"
"Good. The skating is next level. There's a guy from Quebec whose acceleration is insane, and the center, Ryan Asher, runs the ice like he can see three seconds into the future."
"That's wonderful. Have you made any friends?"
I look back toward the cafeteria, where Davis is clearing trays and Novák remarking to Hájek in a way that makes him cough up his drink.
"I think so?" I say. "Yeah. I think I have."