Chapter Sixteen
The tournament moved faster once Christmas ended.
Games filled every afternoon and evening.
Practices were shortened, moved or canceled depending on which teams had played the night before.
Media availabilities appeared on the schedule with less warning, sometimes announced through messages Tessa received while walking between opposite sides of the arena.
She stopped thinking in dates.
Days became matchups.
Finland against Czechia.
Russia against Sweden.
Canada against the United States.
The semifinal possibilities shifted after every result, sending reporters back into the tournament rulebook to calculate regulation wins, goal differential and head-to-head tiebreakers that seemed designed to make simple standings feel theoretical.
Tessa worked through all of it.
She arrived at the arena before daylight fully reached Helsinki and usually left several hours after darkness returned, though the distinction mattered less in a city where winter offered so little of the space between them.
Her desk in the media room accumulated coffee cups, printed rosters and notebooks filled with handwriting that became progressively less legible as the week continued.
Elaine sent assignments from Halifax while Tessa slept and follow-up questions while she was inside games. The Tribune wanted daily stories on Joona and Matvei, Canadian coverage for the broader readership and enough tournament analysis to justify the cost of sending her across the Atlantic.
Tessa produced all of it.
Work gave her somewhere to place every thought that did not belong in a story.
Matvei made that harder.
They did not speak privately after the argument in the arena corridor.
He walked back alone the day after Christmas.
Tessa found a taxi after struggling through another app and returned to her hotel with enough time to shower before answering Elaine’s questions about the Canada-Sweden lead.
She saw the lights in Russia’s lobby when she crossed the street but did not look toward the windows above them.
The next morning, Matvei was already on the ice when she entered the arena.
Russia held a short practice before its final round-robin game. Tessa watched from the lower seats while he worked through a series of controlled rushes and post integrations. His old coach stood near the glass with Russia’s goaltending staff, speaking animatedly after nearly every repetition.
Matvei never looked toward the media section.
Or, if he did, Tessa missed it.
She interviewed two Russian forwards afterward and did not approach him. There was no reporting reason to. She had enough material from the United States game, and manufacturing another conversation would have violated the distance she had insisted she needed.
Matvei noticed.
She knew because he looked toward her while answering another reporter’s question, his expression unreadable from across the mixed zone.
Tessa looked down at her notes.
The professional space between them had become more difficult to maintain now that both understood it was deliberate.
Before Helsinki, Matvei’s distance had been instinctive. He distrusted reporters, disliked questions and limited access because withholding had protected him for most of his career. Tessa had learned to work within those boundaries without treating every short answer as rejection.
Now the silence had meaning.
Every time he gave her the same brief response he offered everyone else, she wondered whether he was respecting what she asked for or punishing her for asking.
Every time she thanked him and moved away, she wondered whether professionalism had become indistinguishable from fear.
Neither gave the other an answer.
Finland beat Czechia 5-2.
Joona scored once and assisted on another, extending a tournament that already seemed constructed specifically for him.
Every game produced another photograph of his family in the stands, another video of his childhood friends celebrating in the concourse and another story about the hometown player becoming one of Finland’s most important forwards.
Tessa wrote one of them.
She spent nearly twenty minutes with Joona after the game, asking how playing at home had changed as the tournament progressed.
“At first, I see everyone,” Joona said. “Family, friends, people from old team. Now game starts and I forget.”
“Do you still look for them afterward?”
“Yes.”
He smiled.
“My mother wears same jersey every game. She says lucky.”
“Is it?”
“We win.”
Tessa used the quote near the end of the story.
Joona remained one of the easiest people in Helsinki to write about because he had not yet learned to hide what the tournament meant.
Older players spoke about national pride through familiar phrases, shaped by years of international availabilities and an understanding of how quickly emotion could become a headline.
Joona simply felt everything.
He smiled when Finland won, looked devastated when it trailed and turned toward his family after every goal. His English occasionally narrowed beneath the attention, but he no longer appeared frightened of choosing the wrong word. If he needed time, he took it.
Matvei had helped give him that confidence.
Tessa saw the influence each time Joona paused rather than allowing a reporter to define the answer for him.
After Finland’s win, Matvei waited near the edge of the mixed zone while Joona finished speaking. Russia had arrived for an evening meeting and used the same corridor to reach its rooms.
Joona noticed him first.
He lifted two fingers to indicate his point total.
Matvei responded with one.
Joona shook his head and pointed toward the scoreboard visible through the open arena doors.
Matvei’s mouth moved with an insult Tessa could not hear.
Joona laughed.
Then Matvei saw her.
The humor left his face more slowly than it once would have.
Tessa gave him a small nod.
He returned it.
Nothing else passed between them.
Joona looked from one to the other without appearing suspicious. Whatever tension he noticed could be explained by the argument he already knew had followed the Montreal headline or Matvei’s general relationship with anyone holding a credential.
Tessa gathered her bag.
By the time she reached the corridor, Matvei was gone.
Russia finished the round robin undefeated.
Its final game against Sweden was tighter than the standings suggested.
Sweden defended well without Viktor, keeping the middle of the ice crowded and forcing Russia to generate most of its chances from the perimeter.
Matvei allowed one goal through traffic and stopped twenty-seven shots in a 2-1 win.
Tessa asked him about the difficulty of tracking through Sweden’s layered screens.
He gave her a complete answer.
Not warm. Not cold.
Accurate.
She thanked him.
He nodded.
The exchange lasted less than a minute.
It occupied her thoughts for most of the night.
The Russia story performed well in Halifax. The Joona features performed better. Elaine sent traffic numbers without acknowledging that readers were responding to stories Tessa had spent months learning how to tell, not merely the names attached to them.
By the final day of the round robin, Finland had secured the third seed and a semifinal against Canada. Russia finished first and drew Czechia.
The tournament paused for one day before the semifinals.
Tessa intended to use the break to sleep.
Instead, she spent the morning at Finland’s practice, the afternoon at Canada’s availability and the evening writing a feature about Joona’s development from a fringe candidate into one of Finland’s most productive players.
She saw Matvei only once.
He stood across the arena concourse speaking with his old goalie coach.
The coach was shorter, thick through the shoulders and animated enough that his hands seemed incapable of remaining still while he talked.
Matvei listened with the patience of someone accustomed to criticism from one of the few people whose opinion he never dismissed.
Tessa considered approaching for an interview.
The story would have been valid. She had wanted to speak with the coach since learning he planned to attend. His perspective could connect Matvei’s summer work to the performance she had watched throughout the tournament.
She did not go.
Partly because the conversation looked private.
Partly because she did not trust herself to interview someone capable of explaining Matvei in ways he might not offer directly.
Tessa turned toward the media room.
“Tessa.”
She stopped.
Matvei had called from across the concourse.
His coach looked between them.
Tessa walked closer because pretending she had not heard would have been absurd.
Matvei introduced them in Russian, then English.
“This is Sergei Antonov,” he said. “My coach.”
“Old coach,” Sergei corrected.
His English carried a heavier accent than Matvei’s but moved with confidence.
“You make him sound old,” Tessa said.
“He is old.”
Sergei struck Matvei lightly in the chest with the back of one hand.
“He was difficult child. Now difficult man.”
“That tracks.”
Matvei looked at her.
The familiar amusement appeared before he could stop it.
Sergei noticed.
Tessa knew because his gaze moved from Matvei to her with sudden interest.
“You are Halifax reporter,” Sergei said.
“I am.”
“You ask about feet.”
Tessa glanced at Matvei.
He looked toward the arena doors.
“I have written about them.”
“She watches,” Sergei said.
The statement sounded approving.
“I try.”
Sergei began explaining how Matvei’s movement had changed since the summer, using his hands to demonstrate the difference between pushing toward a play and arriving under control. Tessa listened without removing her recorder.
She wanted the conversation.
She did not want to use it without establishing that this was an interview rather than an introduction.
“Would you be willing to talk on the record later?” she asked.
Sergei looked at Matvei.
“Why later?”
Tessa pulled the recorder from her bag.
Matvei gave her a look that might have been resignation.