Chapter 25
OCTOBER
Sometimes, in the quiet moments before a game, I thought about that beach house in LA.
Fourteen months later, he still didn't have answers. Neither did I. We just kept choosing each other in the spaces between everything else, and neither of us brought it up.
The puck dropped, and I stopped thinking about anything but the ice.
Calgary had come to Vegas with something to prove. They were bigger than us, meaner than us, three games into a losing streak that had their coach screaming during morning skate. I'd watched the tape. They were frustrated and physical and looking for someone to take it out on.
I was five-six and weighed a buck-sixty soaking wet.
I'd helped drag my team to the Cup Final and earned a contract extension that had made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
To a team like Calgary, I was everything that was wrong with modern hockey: small and fast and successful despite the fact that I had no business being here.
They wanted to remind me where I belonged.
The first hit came forty seconds in.
Karlsson caught me along the boards, a clean check that drove the air from my lungs and sent my helmet bouncing off the glass. Legal and hard, the kind of hit that was meant to set a tone.
I got up and kept skating.
The second hit came two minutes later. Dorsey this time, catching me in the neutral zone with my head down.
My own fault. I knew better than to admire a pass in traffic, but the lane had been there and I'd taken it, and now I was picking myself up off the ice while the crowd noise swelled around me.
"You good?" Bouchard pulled up beside me during the TV timeout, his voice low enough that the cameras wouldn't catch it.
"I’m good."
"They're hunting you."
"I noticed."
His eyes stayed on me a beat too long. He'd been doing that since the weight room last February, since that night he'd asked about my phone and I'd crossed the room too fast to answer it.
"Dorsey's talking," he said. "Says he puts you through the glass before the night's over."
"Let him try."
Bouchard's mouth thinned. He'd watched players come and go, had learned when to fight and when to let things play out.
"Stay off the boards," he said finally. "Give yourself space."
"I know how to play hockey, JL."
He peeled off toward the faceoff circle, and I watched him go.
He still showed up to every practice first, still put in extra work after everyone else had gone home.
He'd been doing this since before I could legally drive, and he'd never won a Cup, never made a headline that wasn't about quiet consistency.
The league was full of guys like him, the ones who held everything together while players like me got the attention.
The third shift, I made Calgary pay for it.
Karlsson committed to where he thought I'd be, and I wasn't there, cutting through the space that opened up when he bit on the fake.
The puck found my stick, and I was gone, accelerating into the zone with nothing but ice ahead of me.
Their goalie came out to challenge, and I went five-hole, quick and dirty, watching the puck slide through before he could get his pads together.
The horn sounded. The bench erupted. I skated past Karlsson on my way back to the celebration and didn't look at him.
That was the job. Take the hit, get back up, and make them regret it.
Ro was waiting at the bench, his glove extended for a fist bump. His eyes moved over my face, checking for damage, and I shook my head slightly.
Calgary answered three minutes later. Then again before the period ended. We went into the first intermission tied 2-2, and I had a bruise forming along my ribs where Dorsey had caught me with an elbow that the refs hadn't seen.
"Ice it," the trainer said, holding out a pack.
I iced it. Bouchard was two stalls down, unlacing his skates with that same methodical focus he brought to everything. He hadn't said a word since the TV timeout, but his attention kept drifting toward me.
Ro dropped onto the bench beside me, still in full gear, his hair dark with sweat. He pulled off his gloves and examined his knuckles, a casual gesture that wasn't casual at all.
"Dorsey," he said. "He does not stop."
"Let him keep trying."
"If he hurts you—"
"He won't."
Ro's jaw tightened. He'd been like this since my first month in Vegas, since that night at Prism when he'd lifted Chase onto his shoulders and shown me what it looked like to exist without apology.
"I can handle Dorsey," I said.
"You can handle many things. Does not mean you should handle them alone."
Across the room, Bouchard glanced up from his skates. His eyes moved between me and Ro, and then he went back to his laces without comment.
The second period was worse.
Calgary had made adjustments during intermission, collapsing on me every time I touched the puck, taking away the lanes I usually found.
I adapted and found new ones. I threaded a pass through traffic to set up Bouchard for a one-timer that rang off the crossbar, and the crowd groaned at the near-miss.
"Good feed," Bouchard said when we passed each other on the bench. Two words. From him, that was practically a love letter.
Dorsey caught me again on the next shift.
This one was late, half a second after I'd moved the puck, his shoulder driving into my chest hard enough that my skates left the ice.
I landed on my back and slid into the boards, and the whistle blew, and somewhere in the stands seventeen thousand people were screaming.
No penalty. The refs kept their arms down.
I got up. My ribs were on fire now, the bruise deepening with every hit, but I'd played through worse. I'd played through a cracked rib in the playoffs, through a hip that screamed every time I pushed off my left leg, through exhaustion so deep I couldn't remember driving home after games.
This was nothing. This was Tuesday.
Ro was on the ice for the next shift. I watched from the bench as he positioned himself near Dorsey, not engaging, just present. A reminder. Dorsey glanced at him once and skated a little wider, giving himself a little more space.
That was Ro. He didn't have to fight to change the game. He just had to exist, six-foot-seven and two hundred forty pounds, and people made different choices around him.
Bouchard settled onto the bench beside me, his breathing steady despite the shift he'd just finished.
"Dorsey's getting frustrated," he said quietly. "He expected you to stay down by now."
"Sorry to disappoint him."
"Don't be sorry. Be smart." He kept his eyes on the ice, watching the play develop. "Frustrated players make mistakes. But they also stop thinking about consequences."
I understood what he was telling me. Dorsey had started this game trying to send a message. Now he was trying to prove something, and that made him dangerous in a different way.
"I'm not hiding from him," I said.
"Didn't say you should." Bouchard's jaw worked for a moment. "Just saying there's a difference between being brave and being stupid. I've watched a lot of guys not learn that difference until it was too late."
The second period ended 3-3. I had an assist, four hits absorbed, and a body that was starting to ache.
Somewhere in Colorado, Joel was watching. I didn't let myself think about that too much.
The third period started fast.
Calgary came out desperate, a team that needed points and could smell blood in the water.
They hemmed us in our own zone for the first two minutes, cycling the puck, wearing us down.
I blocked a shot with my shin and the pain rang up through my knee, but I stayed on my feet and cleared the puck up the boards.
Dorsey was waiting for me.
He timed it perfectly. I'd just released the puck, my weight committed forward, nothing I could do to brace.
His shoulder caught me in the chest and I went into the glass hard enough to rattle the stanchion.
The crowd noise spiked. My vision blurred and then sharpened again, the arena lights too bright.
I stayed down for a second longer than I should have. Just one second, my glove pressed against the ice, waiting for the ringing in my head to fade.
When I looked up, Ro was already moving.
I knew what was coming before his gloves hit the ice. The code demanded it. Dorsey had crossed a line, and someone had to answer. That was how this worked. That was how it had always worked.
Dorsey turned. He had time to drop his own gloves, get his hands up, and square his stance. It didn't matter. Ro grabbed a fistful of his jersey and threw the first punch before Dorsey could do anything but absorb it.
The fight was short and brutal. Ro had six inches and forty pounds on him, and he used every bit of it. Three punches landed clean before the refs got between them, and Dorsey's nose was streaming red by the time they pulled Ro away.
The crowd was on its feet, chanting something, Ro's name maybe, but the sound reached me through a layer of cotton.
I made it to the bench. The trainer was already reaching for me, but I waved him off.
"I'm good."
Bouchard appeared at my shoulder. He didn't say anything, just stood there while I caught my breath, his body angled between me and the cameras to block the view.
Ro was heading to the penalty box, five minutes for fighting, and he caught my eye through the glass as he settled onto the bench. His knuckles were split. His face was calm.
I nodded. Thank you. I've got this.
He nodded back. Go score.
The refs sorted out the calls. Dorsey got five for fighting and two for roughing, which meant we had a power play. Two minutes with a man advantage, and I was already calculating the angles, the lanes, where the space would open up.
"Piper." Coach's voice cut through the noise. "You're on PP1."
I grabbed my stick and went over the boards.