Chapter 6
TY
I’ve played hockey in a lot of places. Small rinks, big arenas, cities that buzz and towns where the rink is the buzz.
Juniors. International. The Olympics. Every level comes with its own version of “the best.” Faster.
Stronger. Smarter. Every time I stepped up, I thought, this is it. This is the top.
That was until today. Until I walked into the Dominion Ice Center, the still-new, multimillion-dollar hockey palace the Dominion opened after the inaugural season wrapped, and in time for offseason training.
Two sheets of ice. One community rink packed with youth practices, public skates, and enough parents running on iced coffee to power a small city.
One sleek development rink wrapped wall-to-wall in Dominion branding, where pros can and will train in the offseason.
Team offices are upstairs, with floor-to-ceiling glass. It’s state-of-the-art everything.
And somehow the most terrifying thing happening in the building today isn’t the NHL players skating fifty feet away.
No.
It’s a 14U girls’ practice run by my sister. Girls. Thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls that do not come with instruction booklets nor a FAQ sheet. Both would be helpful.
“Okay, last one!” Emma calls, clapping her hands as she skates backward with the kind of ease that says she’s been doing this her whole life. “Finish strong!”
One girl rifles a shot bar down. Another steals a puck clean off her teammate like she’s been studying game tape, while someone celebrates like they’ve just won gold.
I shake my head, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. Yeah. Best of the best.
“Miss McCade!”
Emma turns at the same time I do because, apparently, we’re both Miss McCade now.
A girl skates over, helmet slightly crooked, eyes bright, and completely unbothered by the fact that she just went full speed for the last forty-five minutes.
“My skate lace snapped,” she says, holding up her foot like evidence. “And I tried to double knot it, but then it got stuck and now I can’t feel my toes, but like—not in a bad way? I think?”
Emma presses her lips together, already fighting a smile.
“Okay,” she says, calm as anything. “We’ll fix it.”
“And also,” the girl adds, leaning in conspiratorially, “Hannah says her stick feels cursed, but I think she just needs to stop blaming the stick and pass the puck.”
“I heard that!” someone yells from across the ice.
“Good!” the girl shoots back without missing a beat.
A tiny laugh escapes before I can stop myself. Yep. Here I am. Teaching all these girls. Or at least I shall attempt to. My sister has a lot more faith in me than I thought, leaving this group in my leadership
Emma hands me a spare lace like she’s assigning me a task in a highly organized system I do not yet understand. “You’ve got this, right?”
I look down at the skate. That knot somehow looks more complicated than anything I’ve faced in a playoff game.
“You know, I’m a big deal somewhere. I’ve played in three countries,” I say.
“Congratulations,” she replies, already skating off. “Here, you’re a coach, and you’re the adult. So, now you tie the lace.”
I glance back at the girl, who’s watching me like this is the real test of my career.
I crouch down, fingers working through the knot, tuning everything else out—on purpose this time.
The noise fades around me; it’s not gone, it’s never gone, but it’s quieter at the edges when I concentrate really hard. Makes it more manageable.
“Okay, feels better to me,” I mutter, giving it one last tug, testing the tension.
The girl moves around, rocking forward onto the blade, then back again. Once. Twice.
“Yeah,” she decides. “That’s way better. Thanks, Coach.”
She pushes off without another word, already rejoining the flow like she was never gone.
I stay crouched for a second longer than necessary, watching the pattern re-form. This is another aspect of the game I like, because to me, this is not random. To the average eye it looks random. It even feels random, at first. But it isn’t.
There’s a rhythm to it—who loops wide, who cuts in tight, who hesitates before receiving a pass, who doesn’t. The puck moves in predictable arcs if you know where to look. Pressure builds on one side, releases to the other.
I track it automatically. Always have. Something I discovered at an early age, that my therapist later informed me could be considered part of my years of masking, was that tracking things made it easier than trying to follow the noise.
Didn’t matter where I was. On the ice, at the grocery store, in class. If I can track, I can stay focused.
“Alright, one more!” Emma calls, already skating backward into position. “Let’s run it again—same drill, but I want faster decisions this time. No overthinking!”
A couple of girls groan, and I almost laugh. Good luck with that. If they figure out how to not overthink, I hope they tell me.
They line up, tapping sticks, shifting weight from foot to foot. One girl bounces slightly where she stands—energy with nowhere to go yet. Another adjusts her gloves three times in a row, precise, exact.
The whistle blows and everything snaps into motion.
Edges dig in. Ice sprays. Sticks clash in quick, controlled bursts. The puck moves faster this time—cleaner. Less hesitation. Better.
I push up to standing and watch the play develop.
There’s a moment, half a second, maybe less, where it all clicks into place. The lanes open, the options narrow, the right play becomes obvious.
I see it before it happens.
“Left—” I start, then stop myself.
One of the girls makes the pass anyway.
Exactly where it needed to go. I exhale, something tight in my chest easing just a fraction.
A player cuts across the slot, receives the puck, releases a shot. It’s just wide.
“Oh, hello!” Emma calls immediately. “That’s what I’m talking about—reset and get back to it, Clara!”
The girl who missed the shot doesn’t deflate. She nods once, sharp, already resetting. No wasted energy. I like that.
The drill resets and runs again. And again.
Each time a little faster, a little cleaner.
Mistakes happen, but they’re corrected quickly and then filed away.
It all makes sense, at least to me. More sense than the overlapping chatter, the way conversations stack on top of each other near the boards, words tangling until they lose shape.
Out here, there’s a system. Cause and effect. Action and response. My grip tightens slightly on my stick, grounding as the whistle cuts through everything. It’s sharp and final, and I swear Emma blows on it two seconds longer than she needs to.
“Alright, bring it in!” Emma calls.
The girls slow, coasting toward her, forming that same loose semicircle that somehow always tightens without instruction.
I step back a fraction as they gather, giving myself enough space, while Emma plants her skates, scanning the group.
“That was a big improvement from the start of practice,” she says. “You felt that, right?”
Nods. A few quick yeahs.
“Good. Because that’s what happens when you trust your instincts and each other. Hockey’s fast. You don’t get time to second-guess everything.”
My jaw ticks slightly at that.
Emma continues, unfazed. “We’re building something here. Structure, communication, all of it. And you showed me today you can do it.”
A couple of girls straighten a little taller at that.
“Next time, we push it even further,” she says. “But for today—” She claps once, decisive. “We’re done. Great work. Sticks in!”
They lean forward, tapping their sticks together again, louder this time, a little more chaotic at the edges.
“One, two, three—”
“CARDINALS!”
The sound hits the boards and comes back twice as big. I flinch. Barely, but it’s there. Quick, sharp, gone just as fast. I adjust my grip on my stick again, rolling my shoulders once, resetting myself.
The girls break, energy spilling back out as they skate toward the benches, talking over each other again, reliving plays, arguing about passes, laughing.
Emma exhales beside me, satisfied. “Not bad for your first day.”
I glance out at the ice, where the last puck spins slowly to a stop near the blue line.
“They’re good,” I say.
“Told ya.” Emma bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. “Do you think I’d coach losers?”
We crack up and watch as one of the girls retraces her path to grab that last puck before I glance back at Emma.
“It was the hardest room I’ve ever been in,” I add.
“Welcome to my world.” She snorts, stepping onto the ice and moving in a circle, her eyes on me. “14U is not for the faint of heart. Thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds are very set in their ways.”
There’s a silence that falls between us as she cocks her to the side and squints. “Speaking of worlds, how’s yours? You had therapy again yesterday, right?”
I shake my head no, stepping onto the ice as well, tossing a puck her way. “Next session is in a few hours.”
“It’s a good thing this all happened while you’re off hockey for summer, huh?”
“It does help so I can wrap my head around it. It’s like nothing’s changed, but everything has changed…if that makes sense.”
“It does.” She slaps the puck my way and we move in sync down the ice, not really competing but not really giving anything up either. “I’ve been doing some of my own research, too.”
“You have?”
“Of course,” she says with a laugh and pushes off a little harder, circling back toward me. “You’re my brother. I want to understand what’s going on.”
I catch the puck on my blade, settling it automatically, the familiar weight of it anchoring me. “It’s not like there’s one thing to understand.”
“I know.” She taps her stick lightly against mine. “But there are answers now, right?”
I nod, nudging the puck ahead of us as we skate side by side.
“Yeah,” I admit. “It’s like someone finally handed me the right language for things I’ve felt my whole life.”
Emma glances over. “And before?”