Chapter Ten
Four weeks into the season, Tessa had learned that familiarity did not make the NHL schedule feel any less relentless.
It only made the exhaustion easier to anticipate.
She knew now that a seven o’clock game would almost certainly keep her at Atlantic Centre until midnight, and that the nights she expected to leave early were usually the ones that produced overtime, an injury or a quote requiring three additional phone calls before she could responsibly publish it.
She had learned to keep a second sweater in the media workroom because the press box became colder as autumn settled over Halifax, and to carry protein bars in every bag she owned because Rick’s warning about missed meals had proven accurate before the second week of the season.
Her apartment had stopped looking temporarily messy and begun looking permanently abandoned.
Clean laundry migrated between the basket and the chair beside her bed without ever reaching the closet.
Dishes accumulated in the sink until a rare off day forced her to acknowledge them.
Nina continued sending invitations several days in advance, followed by reminders that became increasingly sarcastic as Tessa postponed two dinners and one Saturday morning walk.
The work itself had become less intimidating.
She no longer spent every trip down to the locker room wondering whether she had misunderstood the schedule or missed an unwritten rule everyone else had absorbed years earlier.
The media relations staff knew which quotes she needed after games and occasionally pointed her toward players who had spoken about something relevant during the television interviews.
Linda had stopped explaining where things were kept in the press room.
Rick still gave advice, but more often now because he enjoyed giving it than because Tessa required it.
Even Frank Donnelly’s chair had become simply her chair.
She noticed the change one morning when Linda reached across the aisle and borrowed the charger Tessa had begun leaving plugged into the wall beneath the desk.
“Look at you,” Linda said. “You have permanent infrastructure.”
“It’s a charging cord.”
“That’s how it starts. Next thing you know, you’ll have a coffee mug in the cabinet and strong opinions about where everyone sits on the road.”
“I already have strong opinions about where everyone sits.”
Linda nodded. “You’re ahead of schedule.”
Tessa smiled and returned to the story on her screen.
The Convoy had started the season well. They won four of their first six games, including the opener against Ottawa, and earned a point in another.
Matvei started four of them. Cole Bennett started two and won both, ensuring that the questions surrounding the crease remained alive even as Mike McDonough insisted he did not have a problem worth discussing.
“Two goalies playing good ain’t a controversy,” the coach said after Cole stopped thirty-one shots in his first start. “It’s a luxury. You people oughta try enjoying something sometime.”
The quote appeared in nearly every outlet’s coverage.
Tessa used it too.
Matvei’s answers changed slowly enough that she might not have noticed if she had not spent so much time thinking about the difference.
He still gave television reporters the minimum whenever they asked broad questions about redemption, confidence or whether his strong start proved the previous season was behind him.
Some days, he appeared to resent every recorder in the room equally.
On others, he seemed almost amused by the questions, offering answers dry enough that reporters occasionally mistook them for sincerity.
Tessa learned not to approach him immediately.
She spoke with other players first, listened to the questions he had already answered and waited until she had something that did not require him to repeat himself. When she did approach, his eyes usually moved toward her before she spoke. He no longer looked surprised to see her.
He still looked annoyed often enough that she refused to call it progress.
After a win over New York in the third game of the season, Tessa asked whether he had adjusted his depth when the visitors began sending more passes through the slot.
“You watched,” he said.
It was not an answer.
“That is generally part of the job.”
His mouth shifted at one corner.
Then he explained the adjustment.
Three days later, after a practice built almost entirely around special teams, she asked whether the penalty kill wanted him playing the puck more aggressively when opponents dumped it behind the defense.
“You ask Pat.”
“I’m asking you.”
“He tells me what to do.”
“And do you agree with him?”
Matvei stared at her long enough that Tessa wondered whether she had gone too far.
“Sometimes.”
Pat, standing close enough to hear, laughed from the neighboring stall.
Matvei refused to say anything else.
The rhythm between them never became easy. It became recognizable.
Tessa knew when the brief narrowing of his eyes meant he disliked the premise of a question and when it meant he was trying to find the right English word.
She knew that he would usually speak more freely about teammates than himself, particularly Joona.
She knew not to ask a follow-up when he looked toward the recorder rather than at her.
Matvei learned things about her too, though he rarely acknowledged them directly.
He waited while she wrote down longer answers instead of beginning to untie his skates and effectively ending the interview.
When she arrived at his stall after several other reporters, he sometimes gave enough context that she did not need to ask him to repeat everything.
Once, when she approached without a recorder because its battery had died, he glanced at her empty hand and said, “You finally give up?”
Their exchanges remained professional. Brief. Usually surrounded by other people.
Tessa told herself that was exactly what she wanted.
Most days, she believed it.
The Convoy’s first road trip began with Tessa standing in a security line at Halifax Airport while the team’s charter was already somewhere over Quebec.
She had packed the night before using the road-trip checklist Frank left behind in a folder at the Tribune.
Laptop charger. Recorder charger. Backup batteries.
Two notebooks. Printed roster. Enough professional clothing for three days and enough comfortable clothing to survive everything in between.
The folder also contained a handwritten warning.
Never check the bag.
Tessa understood why after watching an airline employee ask volunteers to surrender their luggage at the gate. She held her carry-on closer to her body and avoided eye contact until boarding began.
The team would spend two nights in Toronto before returning home.
Tessa had covered plenty of junior road games, but those trips usually involved driving several hours through weather no sensible person would willingly enter.
NHL travel seemed more polished from outside.
In reality, she spent the flight balancing her laptop against a tray table too small to hold it, editing a story while the man beside her watched an action movie without headphones.
By the time she reached Toronto, the Convoy had already completed their afternoon meetings and several players had posted photographs from a team dinner.
Tessa took a train downtown, dragged her suitcase six blocks through pedestrian traffic and checked into a hotel room narrow enough that opening the bathroom door required moving the desk chair.
The Tribune had booked her a property close to the arena but not the one used by the team, which she considered a relief.
She had no desire to spend two days wondering whether every elevator ride created some sort of professional concern.
Her room looked onto the brick wall of the neighboring building.
She set up her laptop on the desk, ordered food from the least expensive restaurant she could find and spent the evening preparing a feature on Joona’s transition to the NHL.
Seven games into the season, the winger had three assists and no goals.
His game had been encouraging, but Tessa could see the pressure building each time someone asked when the first one would come.
Joona answered politely, insisting the chances mattered more than the result, but he had begun shooting pucks into an empty net after practice with increasing frustration.
Matvei noticed too.
The previous day, Tessa had watched him retrieve a puck Joona shot wide and send it back toward the winger.
“Net is big,” Matvei said.
“Not when you stand there.”
“I am not there in game.”
“You are in practice.”
“Then score in game.”
Joona responded in Finnish.
Matvei smiled as though he had understood every word.
Tessa included none of that in the story. She had not been interviewing either player, and the moment belonged to practice rather than publication. Still, she wrote down the exchange later because it revealed something about both of them.
She had begun collecting details she could not use.
That concerned her more than she wanted to admit.
The next morning, Tessa reached the arena before the Convoy’s skate and found the visiting press area nearly empty. She placed her bag at the Tribune’s assigned seat, then walked down to ice level with Rick and two television reporters who had joined the trip.
Toronto’s arena felt similar to Atlantic Centre until it did not.
The corridors were narrower beneath the stands, the visiting locker room smaller and the route between the press box and dressing room complicated enough that Tessa took photographs of two hallway signs in case she needed them after the game.
During the skate, Joona remained on the second power-play unit. He scored twice during the final rush drill, though neither goal seemed to satisfy him. Matvei started in one crease, Cole in the other.