Chapter Ten #3
Tessa deleted the opening she had prepared before the game.
The third goal came four minutes into the second period after Matvei lost his angle near the post. Montreal’s winger carried the puck beneath the goal line and attempted a sharp-angle shot that struck Matvei’s skate before slipping inside.
He remained down for a second after the puck crossed the line.
McDonough looked toward the end of the bench.
Cole put on his mask.
Matvei stayed in the game.
Tessa could imagine the reasoning. Pulling him might protect him from another goal, but it would also transform a bad performance into a public crisis. It was only 3-0. One Halifax goal could change the momentum.
Instead, Montreal scored again.
That one was not Matvei’s fault. A pass through the slot left him moving the wrong direction, and the shooter released before he could recover.
McDonough called Cole from the bench.
The arena applauded when Matvei skated toward the tunnel.
The reaction was not cruel. Most fans stood because they wanted to support him.
Tessa suspected he would hear it differently.
Matvei did not lift his head.
He passed Cole at the boards, tapped the younger goaltender’s pads and disappeared down the tunnel after allowing four goals on seventeen shots.
Tessa looked at her unfinished story.
For the first time since training camp began, she did not know how to write about him without causing pain.
That could not matter.
Her responsibility was not to protect Matvei from the game he had played. It was to describe it accurately, provide context and avoid pretending one bad night carried conclusions it did not support.
She began typing.
The problems Matvei Belov spent the first month of the season appearing to leave behind returned all at once Saturday night.
Tessa stared at the sentence.
It was true.
She kept it.
Cole stopped eleven of twelve shots in relief, and Halifax lost 5-2.
The room below remained closed longer than usual after the game. McDonough spoke for nearly ten minutes, his voice occasionally carrying through the walls into the hallway where reporters waited.
When the doors finally opened, Matvei was already dressed.
He sat beneath his stall wearing a dark suit with the tie loosened at his throat. His damp hair had begun drying around his ears, but the rest of him looked prepared to leave immediately.
The media formed around him.
Tessa stayed near the outside.
“What went wrong tonight?” a television reporter asked.
“I was bad.”
“Was there a common issue on the goals?”
“Different mistakes.”
“Did anything feel off physically?”
“No.”
“Were you surprised the coach left you in after the third goal?”
Matvei’s eyes hardened. “You ask him.”
“How difficult was it to hear the reaction when you left the game?”
Tessa looked toward the reporter.
Matvei did not.
“Next question.”
The silence that followed lasted long enough for several people to glance at one another.
Rick asked about the first goal. Matvei said he dropped too early. Linda asked about the rebound on the second. He said he needed to control it.
His answers were direct, technical and brutally honest.
Tessa’s planned question disappeared.
She had intended to ask whether the mistakes were connected to the habits he had spent the summer correcting. The premise now felt too broad and too close to asking whether one bad game proved the work had failed.
Instead, she waited until the scrum began thinning.
“Do you see tonight as something isolated,” she asked, “or were there warning signs in your game before this?”
Matvei looked at her.
The room around them seemed to narrow.
“Tonight,” he said.
“Nothing had felt off in the previous starts?”
“No.”
“Do the types of mistakes concern you because they resemble some of the problems from last season?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
The answer was quiet.
Tessa nodded. “Thank you.”
Matvei looked away.
She spoke with McDonough before returning upstairs, and he refused to attach larger meaning to the performance.
“He stunk,” the coach said. “He knows he stunk. We don’t need a congressional hearing about it. We need him better next time.”
Tessa used both quotes.
Her story was honest.
She wrote that Matvei had allowed three goals he should have stopped and that several of the technical problems from the previous season resurfaced.
She explained how his feet became increasingly active after the first mistake and how his rebound control deteriorated.
She included his admission that the familiar nature of the errors concerned him.
She also wrote that one bad game did not erase his strong first month.
Her original headline read:
Belov struggles as old issues resurface in Convoy loss to Montreal
Tessa filed the story at eleven-forty-three.
Elaine messaged three minutes later.
Good copy. I’m tightening the hed.
Tessa was gathering her things when the story appeared on the Tribune’s homepage.
The headline stretched across the top of the sports section.
OLD PROBLEMS RETURN AS BELOV SINKS CONVOY
She stopped packing.
The words were not factually indefensible. Matvei’s problems had returned, at least for one night. Halifax had lost largely because of the goals he allowed.
Still, the headline suggested something more permanent than the story supported. It made the game sound like proof of collapse rather than an awful performance in an otherwise strong month.
Tessa opened the messaging window.
This is harsher than the copy.
Elaine replied quickly.
It’s accurate.
“Sinks” makes it sound like the whole result was on him.
Three bad goals in a 5-2 loss. It mostly was.
Tessa looked toward the empty rink.
She could ask Elaine to change it. The editor might even agree after an argument. But the headline had already been published, sent through alerts and shared across social media. Changing it now would not erase the first version.
Her phone began vibrating with notifications.
The story was spreading.
She closed the laptop harder than necessary.
Matvei did not speak to her at practice the next morning.
He did not refuse.
Refusal would have required acknowledging her.
The Convoy held an optional skate for players who had not logged heavy minutes against Montreal. Matvei worked alone with Pat for nearly forty minutes before the rest of the team came onto the ice, repeating post integrations and rebound drills until both of them appeared exhausted.
Tessa watched from the stands.
Matvei never looked up.
When the room opened, reporters gathered around him. He answered the first several questions with the same directness he had shown after the loss.
“How do you put a game like that behind you?”
“Work.”
“What did you focus on with Pat this morning?”
“Everything.”
“Do you expect to start Tuesday?”
“Ask coach.”
Tessa waited until the others finished.
She stepped closer.
Matvei looked down at his skates.
“Do you feel like the session helped you identify why you became more aggressive after the first goal?”
“Yes.”
“In what way?”
“I was not patient.”
“Was that something you felt happening during the game?”
“Yes.”
The answers were technically usable.
They were also shorter than anything he had given her since the first week of camp.
Tessa lowered the recorder.
“Matvei.”
He began untying the other skate.
She hesitated. The locker room was not the place to address the story. Several reporters remained within hearing distance, and anything she said could turn a private disagreement into tomorrow’s radio discussion.
“Thank you,” she said instead.
Matvei did not look up.
The distance continued for three days.
He answered her when required, but never more than necessary. He stopped acknowledging her when she entered the room. When she asked a question in a group scrum, he addressed his response toward the center rather than meeting her eyes.
At first, Tessa told herself she was imagining the difference.
Then, after Cole started and won against Philadelphia, Matvei gave Rick a thoughtful answer about what the younger goaltender had done well. Tessa asked a follow-up on the same subject.
“He was good,” Matvei said.
Nothing else.
The contrast was too obvious to dismiss.
She had expected the story to upset him.
She had not expected that to matter so much.
That realization made her angry with herself, then with him. She had not written anything untrue. She had not turned one poor performance into a judgment of his character. The story explicitly acknowledged his strong start and rejected the idea that one game resolved anything about his season.
He had played badly.
Her job required her to say so.
The headline was different.
Matvei did not know that.
Or perhaps he did and had decided it did not matter.
By the fourth day, Tessa had lost patience with allowing him to punish her for a conversation they had never actually had.
Practice ended shortly after noon. The media availability moved quickly, with most reporters interested in a lineup change involving one of the defensemen. Matvei spoke to a television crew, gave several short answers and started toward the training room.
Tessa followed him into the hallway.
“Matvei.”
He kept walking.
She lengthened her stride.
“Can you stop?”
He stopped.
The corridor was mostly empty. The other reporters remained inside the locker room, and the nearest team staffer had disappeared through a door at the opposite end.
Matvei turned.
Up close, his expression held none of the blank professionalism he had worn during the scrums. Anger tightened his mouth and darkened his eyes.
Tessa crossed her arms.
“You’re mad about the Montreal story.”
“You know.”
“I know you’ve been treating me like we’re back on the first day of camp. I’m assuming that’s why.”
“You write what you want.”
The accusation was so familiar that it immediately sharpened her own frustration.
“I wrote what happened.”
“You write old problems. I sink team.”
“I did not write that headline.”
Matvei gave a humorless laugh. “Your name.”
“My story. Not my headline.”
“Difference?”
“Yes.”
“For you.”
“For anyone who understands how a newspaper works.”