Chapter Twenty-Six
The first sign that Matvei’s hip was getting worse came during a morning practice Tessa was not supposed to understand differently from anyone else.
The Convoy had returned from a two-game road trip with one point, an overtime loss in Buffalo followed by a regulation loss in New Jersey.
Matvei started both games. He allowed four goals in the first and five in the second, though one went into an empty net after McDonough pulled him for an extra attacker.
The numbers looked bad.
The goals looked worse.
Not all of them. Two came through traffic. One changed direction off a defenseman. Another followed a turnover that gave Matvei no time to reset before the puck moved across the crease.
But there were also shots he had stopped for most of the season.
A low attempt that slipped beneath his pad because he dropped a fraction too late. A rebound he failed to seal near the post. A shot over his glove after his push across the crease ended short of where it normally would have.
The television analysts called it fatigue.
The radio hosts called it regression.
One columnist wrote that the goaltender who carried Halifax through January had begun looking like the one who nearly lost the crease the year before.
Tessa knew what none of them did.
Matvei’s hip had not improved after the Washington game.
It had tightened the next morning. The trainers treated it, adjusted his practice workload and gave him exercises intended to strengthen the muscles around the irritation without aggravating it further.
He had not missed a start because the medical staff did not believe playing created a significant risk of making the injury substantially worse.
At least, that was how Matvei explained it.
Tessa had made him repeat the distinction.
“No damage?” she asked.
“No.”
“No risk?”
“Small.”
“What does small mean?”
“It means small.”
“That is not a medical term.”
Matvei had been lying on his living room floor at the time, one leg bent while he completed an exercise with a resistance band around his knees. Tessa sat on the couch above him with her laptop open, pretending to edit a story while watching every careful movement.
“They say if I do treatment, it gets better,” he said.
“When?”
“Playoffs.”
“By the playoffs?”
“Near hundred.”
“Near?”
“Nobody is hundred in playoffs.”
The team had approximately four weeks remaining in the regular season.
The medical staff believed the hip would calm if Matvei continued treatment and avoided unnecessary strain. He might not feel completely normal before April, but they expected him to be close enough by the postseason that the injury would no longer materially affect his movement.
That was the important context.
It was also information Tessa possessed only because she slept in his house.
Publicly, the Convoy said nothing.
Matvei had not appeared on an injury report. He had not missed practice entirely. When the team reduced his workload, McDonough explained that the goaltenders were entering a demanding portion of the schedule and both needed to manage their repetitions.
That answer was ordinary enough that nobody questioned it.
Tessa would not have either.
Before.
Now she watched Matvei move through practice and saw everything.
He favored the left side when dropping into a stretch. He took longer to rise after drills. When Pat sent a sequence from below the goal line to the opposite post, Matvei’s first push arrived cleanly and the second lacked power.
Cole stopped the same sequence.
Matvei did not.
Pat blew the whistle and called both goaltenders toward the crease. The three spoke for nearly a minute. Tessa could not hear the conversation from the press level.
She did not need to.
Matvei nodded, skated toward the bench and remained there while Cole completed the final five minutes of the drill alone.
Rick leaned back in the chair beside Tessa.
“You think they’re resting him?”
“Probably.”
“He looks tired.”
Tessa wrote something meaningless in her notebook.
“Long road trip.”
“Two games.”
“Still travel.”
Rick looked toward her.
Tessa kept her attention on the ice.
She had become too skilled at providing technically accurate answers that did not explain anything.
Matvei was tired.
The team had traveled.
Neither statement was the reason he sat on the bench while Cole finished the drill.
Practice ended without Matvei returning to the crease.
He stayed on the ice for the team stretch, then left through the tunnel beside Pat. Tessa watched the doors close behind them.
The media gathered downstairs.
Matvei did not appear when the dressing room opened.
Cole sat beneath his stall answering questions about the increased workload. He gave the same answer backups always gave when reporters asked whether they wanted to play more.
Of course he did.
He also supported Matvei.
Both things could be true.
“Do you feel like you’ve earned a longer run?” a radio reporter asked.
Cole adjusted the towel around his neck.
“That’s not my decision.”
“But do you think your play has warranted it?”
“I think I’ve played well. Belly’s played well for us all year too. A couple games don’t change that.”
Tessa wrote the quote down.
She liked Cole.
That complicated the story further.
He had been consistently good. In another situation, asking whether he deserved more starts would have been entirely fair. Cole carried a .919 save percentage into March. He controlled rebounds, communicated well with the defense and rarely made games harder than they needed to be.
If Matvei were healthy and struggling, the debate would be legitimate.
If Matvei’s hip prevented him from playing like himself, the debate still existed, but for a different reason.
The question was no longer whether Cole had outplayed him.
It was whether Halifax should protect Matvei from himself before the playoffs.
Nobody knew enough to ask that.
Tessa did.
She could not.
When Cole finished, Tessa approached Pat near the training-room entrance.
She knew before asking that the conversation would lead nowhere.
“How did Matvei look to you today?”
Pat’s face remained neutral.
“Fine.”
“He left the final drill early.”
“We’re managing his workload.”
“Because of the recent travel?”
“Because it’s March.”
“Is he dealing with anything physically?”
Pat held her gaze.
Players trusted goaltending coaches with different information than they trusted most members of a staff. Pat knew Matvei well enough to recognize both the injury and Tessa’s question beneath the question.
If he suspected anything about them, he gave no indication.
“Everyone’s dealing with something physically,” he said.
“Anything that might affect his availability?”
“No.”
That was technically true.
“His movement looked limited pushing to his right.”
“You writing a biomechanics paper?”
“I’m asking what I saw.”
Pat looked toward the closed training-room door.
“He’s not on the injury report. He’s available. That’s what I can give you.”
Tessa nodded.
“Thanks.”
She had expected nothing else.
The answer would be useless in a story.
It also told her the team had deliberately decided the hip did not qualify as public information.
She returned upstairs.
Matvei texted before she reached the elevator.
Matvei: Treatment. Leave later.
Tessa stared at the message.
He had known she would notice his absence.
Tessa: Are you starting tomorrow?
The reply took several minutes.
Matvei: Maybe Cole.
That should have eased her concern.
Instead, it confirmed the team understood the injury had begun affecting him more than they admitted.
Cole started the next game.
The Convoy called it a scheduled start.
Nobody challenged the explanation because Cole had been expected to play one of the two games in the back-to-back anyway. He stopped twenty-six of twenty-eight shots in a 4-2 win against Columbus, reinforcing every argument that Halifax possessed two goaltenders capable of starting.
Matvei sat on the bench wearing a baseball cap and tracked the game without visible discomfort.
Tessa watched him more than she should have.
He did not play.
The hip still shaped her entire night.
Halifax started him two days later against Florida.
For the first period, he looked better.
His pushes carried more force. He stayed connected to the posts and beat passes across the crease before shooters arrived. He stopped eleven shots and Halifax entered intermission tied.
The second period exposed the problem again.
Florida scored from the left circle after Matvei failed to reach the top of the crease quickly enough. The shot was good. The angle he gave the shooter was not.
The second goal followed seven minutes later.
A low shot struck his right pad and remained directly in front of him. Matvei normally would have sealed the rebound or pushed it beyond danger. Instead, the puck sat near the crease until another forward reached it.
The third came early in the final period on a play that did not require lateral movement at all.
A clean shot from above the circle beat him beneath the glove.
Atlantic Centre quieted.
Not hostile, but worried.
Tessa felt the crowd realizing the same thing everyone outside the team had begun discussing.
Matvei was not himself.
Halifax lost 4-1.
He stopped twenty-two of twenty-six shots.
The final horn sounded.
Tessa began writing.
She described the goals.
She did not describe the hip.
Matvei appeared in the dressing room after the game. He sat rather than stood, elbows resting against his knees while reporters gathered around him.
“Do you feel like you’re fighting your game right now?” someone asked.
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised the room.
“What feels off?”
“Timing.”
“Is that mental, physical or technical?”
Matvei looked toward the reporter.
“All same sometimes.”
Tessa knew how much he hated that question.
Separate the mind from the body. Separate technique from pain. Separate a person into explanations simple enough to fit inside a headline.
Another reporter asked whether fatigue had become a factor.
“No.”
“Are you healthy?”
Tessa’s grip tightened around her recorder.
Matvei did not look at her.
“Yes.”