Chapter Thirty-Two #3
“What did you mean then?”
The room quieted slightly.
Matvei looked toward the Cup.
For a moment, Tessa thought he might retreat into another short answer.
Then he spoke.
“Last year, everything is bad. I lose games. I lose start. I think too much about knee, goals, what people say.”
He looked down at his hands.
“In summer, I do not want think about all that. I want play. I want win.”
“Did winning tonight feel the way you imagined?”
“No.”
Several reporters smiled.
“How was it different?”
Matvei looked around the room.
At Pat.
At Cole speaking with his family near the hallway.
At Joona holding the playoff MVP trophy over his head while Carver attempted to take it.
“At first, I think winning means I stop puck,” Matvei said. “Maybe I play good, then team wins.”
He shook his head.
“It is not only me. Viktor comes back. Joona scores. Cole plays when I cannot. Everybody.”
He touched the rim of the Cup with one hand.
“This is winning.”
Tessa felt the answer in her chest.
“What did you think when Viktor handed you the Cup first?”
“That he should give other.”
“Why?”
“Older players.”
“Viktor said you grew up in this organization.”
Matvei looked around the room.
“I come here nineteen.”
“What does Halifax mean to you now?”
He looked toward her.
“Home.”
The word belonged to everyone listening.
It belonged differently to Tessa.
She wrote it down.
One reporter asked about his mother and sister.
Matvei’s expression softened again.
“My mother watches all games,” he said. “She is nervous more than me.”
“Was she able to watch the final seconds?”
“No.”
The room laughed.
“She closes eyes.”
“What did she say to you on the ice?”
Matvei answered in Russian first, then translated.
“She says she always knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I win.”
His voice changed slightly.
Tessa imagined the years his mother had spent driving him to rinks, finding money for equipment and carrying the weight his father later claimed as his own.
The main story widened.
It was not only the final save.
Not only Joona’s goals.
Not only Viktor’s Cup.
It was all of them arriving at the same ending through separate paths.
Tessa asked the last question.
“When you look back at the difficult season you had last year and the doubts that followed you into training camp, what does tonight prove?”
Matvei looked at her.
He understood the trap inside words like prove. He had resisted it all season, refusing to turn a win into permanent redemption or a loss into evidence of collapse.
His answer remained consistent.
“Tonight proves tonight.”
Tessa smiled.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we celebrate.”
The reporters laughed.
Matvei’s eyes stayed on hers.
For one second, the meaning beneath the answer became private.
Tomorrow would exist after the deadline.
After the cameras.
After Tessa finished writing.
She clicked off the recorder.
“Thank you.”
Matvei nodded.
She stepped away from the Cup.
The press box had become nearly empty by the time Tessa returned.
Celebration sounds still traveled through the building. Music rose from the dressing room several floors below. Fans remained outside Atlantic Centre, chanting in the plaza and blocking streets the city had already closed in anticipation of the result.
Tessa sat in Frank’s old seat.
Her laptop showed six open documents.
She closed four.
The city reaction could wait for another reporter.
The notebook could wait until morning.
Only two stories mattered.
The main story.
Joona.
Tessa opened the game story first.
The lead from the final seconds remained at the top.
On the first day of training camp, Matvei Belov said his only focus was winning.
She read the sentence.
In September, she had viewed the answer as refusal.
She had asked what he worked on during the summer. She expected positioning, confidence or details about the knee. Matvei gave her one word and left before she collected enough material to build the story around him.
Tessa had chosen not to use it.
At the time, placing winning beneath a photograph of a goaltender coming off the worst season of his career would have made him sound dismissive.
It could have implied he believed wanting victory distinguished him from every other player at camp.
The word had been too blunt for the complexity she understood only after speaking with Pat and Viktor.
Now she understood that the word had never lacked complexity.
Matvei simply had not possessed the trust to explain all of it to her.
Winning meant reclaiming his body after the knee injury.
Winning meant no longer allowing every goal to become evidence of decline.
Winning meant trusting the next shot enough not to move before it arrived.
Winning meant Cole supporting him while competing for the same crease. Viktor returning. Joona scoring. The entire roster refusing to stop.
Tessa wrote.
On the first day of training camp, before the Halifax Convoy knew what Joona Salonen could become, whether Viktor Sundberg’s knee would hold or if Belov himself could recover from the most difficult season of his career, the goaltender reduced his ambition to one word.
“Winning.”
She continued.
The word no longer looked arrogant.
It looked complete.
Tessa described the final save. The puck changing direction off McCrae. Seattle’s defenseman receiving it near the open side. Matvei throwing himself across the crease after controlled movement became impossible.
She included McDonough’s view.
Open net.
She wrote the official’s signal and the instant of silence before Atlantic Centre understood the season had ended.
Then the Cup.
Viktor lifting it.
Handing it to Matvei.
Joona carrying two trophies after entering camp without a roster guarantee.
Tessa moved through the story without forcing herself into it. The season supplied enough emotion without requiring her to declare what it meant personally.
She used Matvei’s postgame explanation near the end.