Chapter Six #2
When the final whistle sounded, Joona stayed on the ice with two other young forwards to work on shots from the slot. Matvei had planned to leave, but Pat asked him to remain for several repetitions of a screen drill.
By the time they finished, the other players were gone.
Joona collected the final group of pucks near the boards and pushed them toward the equipment staff. His movements had lost some of their urgency now that nobody from management remained in the stands.
As they walked toward the tunnel, he fell into step beside Matvei.
“Media today?”
“Always.”
“Many questions?”
“You scored twice. They will ask.”
Joona adjusted the tape around the knob of his stick. “What I say?”
“The truth.”
“What truth?”
“That you scored twice.”
Joona gave him an irritated look. “You do not answer questions.”
“I answer.”
“One word.”
“One word can be truth.”
They stepped onto the rubber flooring beyond the tunnel. Joona lowered his voice as trainers and equipment staff moved around them.
“They ask if I make team.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then say you don’t know.”
“They think no confidence.”
Matvei understood the concern. A player could say he expected to make the roster and be described as arrogant. He could say the decision belonged to the coaches and be accused of lacking belief in himself. The question sounded simple only to people who did not have to answer it.
“Say you want to show you can help,” Matvei told him.
Joona repeated the sentence quietly. “I want show I can help.”
“I want to show.”
“I want to show I can help.”
“Good.”
“And if they ask minor league?”
“Say same.”
Joona nodded, repeating the line once more as they entered the locker room.
The media arrived before Joona had finished untying his skates.
Matvei watched the reporters gather from his stall. They had been told which players were available, and Joona’s two goals that morning made him the obvious first choice. Three television cameras moved toward the young winger at once, followed by several reporters carrying recorders.
Joona straightened in his chair.
The expression that crossed his face was familiar.
He looked the way Matvei had felt during his first years in Halifax, when a group of reporters approaching his stall seemed less like people asking questions than an exam he had not known he was taking.
Viktor passed beside Joona and squeezed his shoulder once before continuing toward the training room. Matvei remained seated, slowly removing the tape from his socks.
The first few questions were easy.
How did he feel about the scrimmage? What did he see on the first goal? How was he adjusting to the smaller ice?
Joona answered carefully. His sentences were short but understandable, and his confidence grew whenever the subject returned to hockey.
“The space is less,” he said. “You have to make play faster. In Finland, maybe you have one more second. Here, defender already on you.”
A television reporter asked whether his scoring success in Europe gave him confidence that his game would translate to the NHL.
“Yes,” Joona said. “I think my game can work. I skate, I shoot. I learn defense more.”
The answer was honest. The reporters wrote it down.
Then Rick asked the question Joona had anticipated.
“Do you feel like you’ve shown enough to earn a roster spot here, or would some time in the minors help you adjust?”
Joona’s eyes shifted briefly toward Matvei.
Matvei gave no reaction.
“I think I am ready here,” Joona said.
“Ready for the NHL?”
“Yes.”
“And if the team decides differently?”
Joona hesitated. The silence lasted only a few seconds, but Matvei saw the young winger begin searching for the sentence they had practiced.
“I am better than minors,” he said finally.
Several reporters looked up.
Joona noticed.
His face changed as he realized the words had landed differently than he intended.
Rick’s tone remained conversational, but Matvei could already hear the line repeated on the radio. “You believe you’re too good for the minors?”
“No.” Joona shook his head quickly. “Not too good. I mean I play better here.”
“Better at the NHL level?”
“I can play NHL. I think.”
The answers were becoming less clear rather than more. Joona’s grip tightened around the towel in his hands, and he looked from one reporter to another as they prepared follow-up questions.
Matvei shifted forward in his chair.
Before he could say anything, Tessa spoke from the outside of the group.
“Joona, do you think your game fits the NHL style and that you’re ready to help the team now?”
She asked the question slowly without making the simplification obvious.
Joona turned toward her. Relief appeared briefly in his face.
“Yes. This.”
“But you’re not saying you would have nothing to learn in the minors?”
“No.” He shook his head again. “Good league in minors. Hard league. Many good players. I say I want to be here. I think I can help here.”
Tessa nodded. “What part of your game do you think helps you most on the smaller ice?”
The question returned him to hockey.
Joona spoke about his shot, his ability to find space near the net and the work the coaches had done with him along the boards.
His English remained uneven, but the tension left his shoulders.
The other reporters followed Tessa’s direction, asking about the goals and his adjustment instead of continuing to circle the sentence he had gotten wrong.
The scrum ended a few minutes later.
Joona remained seated while the cameras moved away. He stared down at the tape bunched between his fingers.
Matvei waited until the reporters were speaking with another player before turning to Joona.
“You okay?”
Joona shrugged.
“That means no.”
“I say bad.”
“You said wrong words.”
“They write wrong words.”
It was not a question.
Matvei looked toward the reporters. Tessa stood near the entrance speaking with Rick, her notebook open between them.
“Maybe,” he said.
Joona followed his gaze. “The girl help.”
“She asked question.”
“She know what I mean.”
Matvei sat on the edge of the empty stall beside him.
He wanted to tell Joona not to read anything.
He wanted to say the sentence would disappear if he ignored it, though experience had taught him the opposite.
Once a quote was entertaining enough, other people would keep it alive regardless of what came before or after.
“You explained,” Matvei said.
Joona looked unconvinced.
A communications staffer approached and crouched in front of him. She reassured him that the interview had been fine, then repeated the clarification he had given. Joona nodded, though the tightness in his expression remained.
Matvei returned to his stall and finished changing.
As he lifted his bag from the floor, he glanced toward the doorway.
Tessa was gone.
The story appeared online that afternoon.
Matvei did not look for it.
Joona found him in the players’ lounge the following morning and placed his phone on the table between Matvei’s coffee and a plate of eggs.
“She writes.”
Matvei continued eating. “Many people write.”
“Read.”
“No.”
Joona pushed the phone closer.
A photograph from the scrimmage filled the screen. Joona was shown releasing the puck from the left circle, his body leaning into the shot while a defenseman attempted to close the space between them.
The headline read:
SALONEN MAKING HIS CASE AS CONVOY WEIGH ROSTER DECISIONS
Tessa’s name appeared beneath it.
Matvei picked up the phone.
The story began with Joona’s production in Europe and the questions surrounding how quickly his game would translate to North America. It described his two goals, the smaller ice and the competition for the final places in Halifax’s forward group.
The sentence was there.
Not the way Joona had first said it.
Tessa wrote that Salonen believed he was ready to help the Convoy immediately, though he acknowledged that the minors would offer another strong level of competition if the organization decided he needed more time to adjust.
She used his clarification:
“I want to be here. I think I can help here.”
There was no mention of him believing he was better than the minors. No joke about his English. No suggestion that he considered himself above the players who would begin the season there.
Matvei read the next paragraph.
Tessa had quoted Viktor explaining that Joona’s confidence coming over from Europe was necessary, not disrespectful.
She added context about how many successful European players required time in the minors before establishing themselves in the NHL, but did not frame that as proof Joona needed the same path.
The story did not predict the roster decision.
It made the case for him without pretending the answer was obvious.
Matvei handed the phone back.
“It is good,” Joona said.
“Yes.”
“She fix what I say.”
“No.” Matvei looked at the article again. “She used what you mean.”
Joona nodded as though there were no difference.
To Matvei, the difference was enormous.
A reporter’s job was to record what someone said. That was what they had always told him whenever he objected to a quote. The words had come from his mouth. The recorder proved it. Their responsibility ended there.
Tessa had been handed the kind of sentence that could have carried the story by itself. It was bold, easy to understand and likely to spread far beyond a training camp article. She could have placed it in the headline and defended the decision with perfect accuracy.
Joona had said it.
She had chosen not to use it because it was not what he meant.
“Did she talk to you after?” Matvei asked.
Joona shook his head. “No. She say thank you. Then go.”
“She did not ask more?”
“She ask hockey.”
Of course she had.
Joona picked up his phone and returned to the article, scrolling through it again with a small smile. He had probably read it several times already.
Matvei understood the instinct.
The first story written about a young player in a new country felt important in a way later stories did not. It offered evidence of how people saw him before he had learned how to see himself there.