Chapter Five #3
“On the first goal, did you feel like you opened up early beneath the blocker? You seemed to hold your feet longer when they attacked from the same side later in the game.”
Belov looked at her.
Not through her. At her.
For a second, she wondered whether she had overstepped by identifying the mistake so directly. Then he leaned forward, resting his forearms against his thighs.
“Yes,” he said. “I was moving before shot. I give him opening.”
“And later, was staying more patient something you tried to adjust?”
He nodded. “I wait for release. First one, I guess. After, I read.”
It was the longest answer he had given anyone in the scrum.
“Did making the saves after that help you settle into the game?”
Belov’s expression began to close again.
She realized the question sounded too much like the ones he had dismissed moments earlier.
He glanced down at the tape around his wrist. “Next shot helps.”
The answer was short, but not hostile.
Tessa nodded. “Thank you.”
She stepped away before she could ruin it.
The exchange had lasted less than a minute, yet her pulse beat faster as she crossed the room toward McLean. It wasn't because Belov had been friendly. He hadn’t. His voice had remained flat, and he had looked at her as though every additional question required separate consideration.
But he had answered.
Really answered.
She spoke with McLean for another two minutes, gathering his assessment of Belov’s rebound control and movement after the early goal. Then she caught Sundberg before the captain left, asking what had changed in front of the goaltender during the second period.
By the time she reached the elevator, she had seven minutes until her first deadline.
Rick pressed the button repeatedly as though that might make it arrive faster.
“You get what you needed?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I won’t know until I write it.”
The elevator doors opened.
Rick gestured for her to enter first. “That answer means you’re officially one of us.”
The ride upstairs felt impossibly slow.
Tessa reached her desk, dropped her notebook beside the laptop and inserted Belov’s quote into the story. The technical explanation strengthened the lead. It allowed her to describe the early goal honestly without turning it into evidence of a larger failure.
She wrote that Belov had opened early.
She wrote that he corrected it.
She wrote that the first mistake mattered, but so did everything that followed.
Her fingers moved quickly across the keyboard as the deadline clock in the corner of the screen continued forward. She added the second-period saves, McLean’s comments and Sundberg’s explanation of how the team settled into its defensive structure.
Then she read the story once.
There was no time for a second pass.
Tessa clicked file.
The confirmation appeared on the screen with less than a minute to spare.
She leaned back and let out a breath.
Around her, the media room remained busy. Writers revised stories for later editions. Television reporters recorded postgame segments in front of the windows.
Tessa opened a second document for a notebook item about the defense.
Her phone vibrated.
Nina: Next week is not a day.
Tessa stared at the message.
She typed Tuesday?, checked the Convoy’s schedule and deleted it. There was a game Tuesday. Wednesday was a travel day. Practice Thursday morning would probably be followed by interviews and another story.
She locked the phone without answering.
The media room gradually emptied around her.
Linda left first, calling goodnight over one shoulder. Rick followed twenty minutes later, carrying his laptop beneath one arm and telling Tessa not to let the building staff lock her inside.
By midnight, only two other reporters remained.
Tessa finished the notebook item, updated the game story with final quotes and sent a message to her editor explaining the changes. When she finally closed the laptop, the arena beyond the windows was dark.
The ice remained illuminated only by the dim lights used by the maintenance crew. Empty seats curved upward into shadow. The noise that had filled the building two hours earlier had disappeared so completely that she could hear the faint hum of the ventilation system.
She looked toward the crease where Belov had played.
The first goal would appear in every highlight package. It would be the easiest moment to isolate, the simplest image for anyone who wanted proof that the previous season had followed him into the new one.
But Tessa had watched the rest.
She had seen the adjustment. The patience. The twenty-seven saves that followed.
Maybe that was the difference between watching a game and waiting for it to confirm what you already believed.
She packed her laptop into her bag and checked her phone again.
No new message from Nina.
Tessa glanced once more at the empty rink before switching off the desk lamp.
Her first NHL game story was filed.
Her editor seemed happy.
Matvei Belov had given her an actual answer.
It had been a good night.
She tried not to think about how little of it anyone outside the arena would understand.