Chapter 11
“Yes, good, good!” Frankie shouted as she skated back to the blue line then passed another puck to a player who then passed it to his teammate and circled around the net. He parked himself by the far side of the net and waited for the perfect pass back to him so he could tap it in.
In theory and on screen when you’re watching a game, it looked easy, like he was wide open and sure, he was, but there were so many factors involved in getting him the puck for that easy tap in.
“Cycle! Find a lane!” She yelled, watching the group of guys on the ice in blue practice jerseys circle around the players wearing black ones.
The timer on her watch beeped and she blew her whistle then looked down at the white board in her hand.
Sighing, she gave her head a shake then skated to the bench to grab a drink of water as the guys did the same.
Her first line for power plays wasn’t working the way she wanted it to but it was very much a work in progress and luckily, this is what training camp was for.
”I think if Mason releases the puck half a second earlier there it could slip through to me,” Cam said as he skated up beside her.
Frankie swallowed and nodded, glancing back at the net. “I agree,” she said. “But he wasn’t in the right spot. He needs to try to get to the point and it might need another pass before it gets to you. You’re right though, it’s happening too slowly with this play.”
”So what’s the fix then, coach?” He asked, a boyish smile on his face that she knew drove all the girls crazy.
He was a charmer, no denying it, but she was impressed by his dedication to the game and his professionalism on the ice, especially in practice.
He wanted to get better and in doing so, helped everyone around him to do the same.
The rest of her team skated up to join her and Cameron by the bench so they could all take a breath and have a drink. Everyone knelt in a half circle in front of her and waited for whatever came next.
She turned around and looked at the choppy ice around the net and tried to visualize the moment during a game.
They’d been at it for an hour and a half so far and she was happy with their progress but she could tell some of the players were getting frustrated by repeating the same sequences over and over again.
But that’s how you learned plays, that’s how you became comfortable with your line mates movements, how you anticipated what their first pass would be, their speed.
“The fix is we can’t assume when someone will stick check and I can tell that some of you are expecting it,” she said.
“Well, our first pre-season game is against Detroit and some of their penalty killers are known for it,” said Myles Christian, a right wing forward who had come to the team from Anaheim.
Frankie nodded because she knew he was right, but Detroit also signed two new defenders at the top of the summer who were shoe-ins to make the season opening roster and would be in the line-up during their pre-season game in two weeks.
“That may be true,” Frankie said, looking between the players on the ice in front of her, all of them waiting and questioning her next move, silently judging her decisions based on their own experience and not hers.
“But we can’t play like we think we know what’s going to happen next, we need to play based on what’s happening now because when we anticipate the next move, oftentimes we’re wrong and then they clear the puck or worse, get a hold of the puck.
Boom, short handed goal. We need to make them think they know what’s going to happen next and prove them wrong. ”
“And how do we do that?” Myles asked.
“You do a fake out,” Jake Ashton called out from where he knelt at the back of the group with his goalie helmet cradled in his arms, his stick standing tall like a trident in his free hand.
“Exactly,” Frankie said, pointing at him and smiling wide.
“With Clarke sitting by the back door, they’re looking for a puck that gets to him because of how often he scores that way so instead of him getting the puck just to bounce it in, we use that to drag the goalie across to that side of the net then quickly get that puck across to the other side. ”
She circled a spot with a dry erase marker on a large white board attached to the glass beside the bench that had the lines and shape of a hockey rink on it. She drew three larger arrows to make a triangle shape.
“Here is where Dawson will try to get to. What do you think, should we give it a try?”
Cameron thought about it for a moment and Frankie watched him as he seemed to work through the play in his head, his eyes fixed on the whiteboard. A moment later he nodded and pushed himself up off of the ice, pushed back the sweaty hair clinging to his forehead and slid his helmet back on.
“Let’s go boys,” he said with more enthusiasm than anyone else had had all day.
She was grateful for his support when a few players on the team were often overtly apprehensive of her coaching decisions.
As much as she didn’t want to pick up on it, she didn’t miss the way they would side eye one another or the way they’d sometimes gather in between shifts to whisper about something that she knew had less to do with her plays and more to do with her.
Frankie smiled at him and he gave her a salute before he skated back to his spot by the net.
“Alright, let’s give this one a go!” She shouted as she skated across to the far side of the ice then pushed the timer on her watch again and blew the whistle.
Forty five minutes later, Neil, the head coach of the team blew the whistle to signal the end of practice. Frankie gave a fist bump to a few of the guys as they skated off the ice and she noticed Cam by himself in front of the net taking shots.
“Is he okay to stay out a bit longer?” She asked Neil as he gathered a pile of paperwork on the bench and slid it into a leather pouch along with an iPad and tucked it under his arm.
He looked to the far side of the ice just as Cam skated around the back of the net, scooped the puck up with his blade and came around to toss it into the top corner. The Michigan was pretty, but very rarely did it work in a realistic game scenario.
“Yeah, he insisted. He doesn’t even want a goalie, just wants to shoot.”
Frankie smiled, feeling the itch to go shoot some pucks herself. “We’re all just kids still, aren’t we?”
Neil chuckled and gave her a nod. “Sure are. We all started out loving the game just like that.” He grabbed his own stick and gave Frankie an appreciative grin. “Great work out there today. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of those plays come to life soon.”
“Oh, thanks,” Frankie said, unsure of how to respond to the unexpected praise. She was only doing her job but being acknowledged for her hard work was nice every now and then. “I appreciate that, Sir.”
“We’ve been over this, Frankie. We’re teammates, you and I. Call me Neil.”
”Sorry,” she sheepishly said. “It’s just a habit.”
”No sweat, kid. Enjoy your day off tomorrow and I’ll see you on Thursday for the bus to Stellarton, okay?”
She nodded and watched as he disappeared down the tunnel towards the locker room. In two days the team would be making the hour and a half long journey from Halifax to Stellarton for what they were calling their inaugural community practice.
Nova Scotia was a small east coast province with tight knit communities who loved hockey, and the province produced a deep pool of Canadian hockey talent from future hall of famers like Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon to women’s national team star and Toronto Sceptres captain Blayre Turnbull so bringing the newest franchise to another town helped to bolster support for the team but also show its commitment to community involvement and outreach.
Unable to stop herself, Frankie slipped her own gloves back on, grabbed her stick, and stepped back onto the ice. She skated towards where Cam was circling around the net.
“Here!” She shouted, tapping her stick on the ice.
He looked up at her in confusion at first but then he smiled and passed her the puck.
She watched as it slid across the ice towards her and she drew her stick back.
She waited mere milliseconds, knowing when the perfect moment would come, and then she slapped it forward.
Her stick flexed deep as her blade connected with the puck, and it went soaring towards the net where it rang off the top bar and landed with a thud over the line.
“Holy, snipeshow!” Cam exclaimed.
Frankie grinned and skated around in a few tight circles, displaying her edge work before she gathered a nearby loose puck and took another shot. This time the puck rippled the back of the net and she raised her arms in the air in celebration.
“I was quite the player in my day, Clarke,” she said and as she met Cam’s gaze, she found herself wishing it were a different Clarke twin across from her on the ice. The delight and ego boost she’d get from getting to show off in front of Jules was very enticing.
Their dinner a week earlier had replayed in Frankie’s mind nearly every day since.
She could still feel the embarrassment of realizing that she’d chosen an incredibly popular romantic spot for dates but luckily Jules had gone along with it and what followed after they settled into the evening was something Frankie wouldn’t soon forget.
Under the soft, low light, Frankie couldn’t take her eyes off of the woman seated across from her and what made it even better was the fact that Jules had opened up to her, she had shared something with her that Frankie sensed she shared with very few people, if any at all.
There was something in the way Jules had looked at her when Frankie said she saw her; disbelief, appreciation, the struggle to accept that someone actually wanted to listen to what she had to say. It was written all over her face and visible in the blue of her eyes that softened when Frankie spoke.