13. Off Season
OFF SEASON
April exposed what the winter had left behind.
Snowbanks shrank from the roads in layers, uncovering sand, lost mittens, and months of accumulated garbage.
The lake darkened first at the edges. One morning the bay was white; two days later, a long black lead had opened through the middle.
Caleb took the skates from beside the apartment door and hung them on a nail in the stairwell.
And he trained.
He followed every workout Connor had written.
Hill sprints on the road behind the arena.
Squats and split lunges in the arena’s small weight room after the evening program at the youth center closed.
Stick work on a square of synthetic ice Frank arranged to have sent from Thunder Bay.
Its rough surface wore through his tape nearly every session.
Twice a week, the Prospectors rented an hour at the arena for whoever could make it.
Attendance depended on mine shifts, kids’ schedules, and whether Kowalski remembered to send the group text before noon.
Connor coached when he was there. When he wasn’t, Caleb worked from the folder.
The recovery column was the only part Caleb treated as optional.
By the end of the first week, he understood why Connor had included it.
He came down the apartment stairs on Saturday gripping the railing, both thighs so tight that he had to take the final steps sideways.
Maya set down the glass she was polishing as he made his way across the bar.
“You injured?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re moving like Tremblay.”
“Rude.”
“Tremblay moves like that because he’s forty-six. What’s your excuse?”
Caleb lowered himself onto a stool with both hands braced on the bar. “Training.”
Maya poured him a glass of water. “Try doing less of it.”
Connor gave him nearly the same advice that evening. He drew a line through two sessions in the folder and told Caleb that recovery counted as training. Caleb objected, but Connor just handed him an ice pack and went to make coffee.
The youth center’s evening program began in the third week of April.
The grant paid for one additional staff member, food three nights a week, and enough open hours for teenagers to stay past five.
Caleb helped with the Friday skate, then stacked chairs and wiped tables while Maya worked through forms in the office.
Those activities kept hockey from taking over his entire week.
The kids didn’t care that Frank Desjardins wanted to see him again.
They cared that the vending machine had eaten four dollars, that the left speaker cut out during movies, and that Caleb was tall enough to retrieve a ball from the gym rafters if someone found him a ladder.
Upstairs, the narrow room off Maya’s kitchen had been Caleb’s for months, though it still looked temporary.
He had been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor, with Maya’s boxes stacked against one wall and most of his belongings still in his bag.
By April, Maya had cleared out the remaining boxes and found a used bed frame through someone at the bar, and Riley had delivered a new mattress one Thursday with the whisky order, insisting that it was both new and legally acquired.
“Those are two very different claims,” Maya said.
“You’re welcome,” Riley replied.
The room held the bed, a small dresser, and little else. Caleb put his Bible in the top drawer instead of leaving it out and kept the walls bare. At night, the bass from the bar travelled faintly through the floor. He had grown accustomed to it and noticed whenever Maya closed early.
Riley came by on a Tuesday in May without a crate or an invoice. Maya saw her approaching and put down the order sheet before Riley reached the door.
“I’m taking a break,” she announced.
“You opened twenty minutes ago,” Caleb said.
“Then I’ve earned it.”
Maya went outside. Caleb turned the order sheet around and continued from where she had stopped.
Forty-five minutes later, Maya returned carrying a coffee in a paper cup she hadn’t taken with her. She set it beside the till and retrieved the order sheet.
“Not a word,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Good.”
Caleb went back to stacking glasses, grinning.
The date Connor had written in the blue folder arrived at the end of May.
Caleb woke before his alarm. He checked his gear twice before leaving Veil Lake and managed half a piece of toast before giving up on breakfast. During the drive to Thunder Bay, Frank’s exact words kept circling: Development skate. No promises. The reassurance diminished with every kilometre.
He reached the arena twenty minutes early. After two minutes in the parking lot, he decided that waiting would only give him more time to imagine everyone already inside. He took his bag from the vehicle and followed the signs to the dressing rooms.
The development skate was being held at a practice rink with new boards, hard white lights, and none of the familiar dead spots Caleb had learned at home.
Twelve players dressed in a locker room built for twenty.
Their names meant nothing to him except Thibodeau, printed on a strip of tape above a stall near the door. The stall itself was empty.
Frank met Caleb in the corridor and handed him a grey practice jersey.
“Ready for today?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Frank nodded toward the rink. “You’re here so I can see what you do when everyone is faster than you expect.”
Connor had driven him down but remained behind the glass with a coffee. He chose a seat well away from Frank and made no attempt to join him. His blue jacket appeared at the edge of Caleb’s vision whenever the drills turned toward that end of the rink.
The first drill went badly.
Frank described a controlled breakout using terminology Caleb did not know.
When he finished, everyone else appeared to understand the rotation.
Caleb set up on the wrong side, corrected late, and spent the rest of the repetition chasing the play.
The puck passed through the space he should have occupied.
A defenceman with red gloves collected it and turned the drill back the other way.
“Reset,” Frank said. His voice remained level.
The second repetition was cleaner. On the third, Caleb read the winger’s hips, moved before the pass, and cut off the lane.
He carried the puck up the ice with one defender closing from the middle.
The obvious play was wide. Caleb held it for one more stride, drawing the defender’s stick toward him, then slipped the puck through the space behind it.
The winger on his left met the pass and shot. The goalie made the pad save, and another player cleared the rebound.
Frank blew the whistle and called the next drill.
By the middle of the skate, Caleb was breathing harder than he ever had in Veil Lake.
Each new repetition began before his breathing had settled from the last. The other players changed direction, recovered, and rejoined the play without coasting.
When Caleb reacted late, the effort of recovering left him behind the next pass as well.
The faceoffs were worse. He lost the first four cleanly to a center named Lambert, who barely moved. On the fifth, Caleb tried to anticipate the drop and went early. Frank sent him out of the circle.
Someone in the line behind him laughed. The sound brought back an arena door and his fourteen-year-old self passing it with his skates in his hands on his way to the pond because he had not been allowed inside.
Frank called the next repetition. Caleb stepped back into the circle and set his stick on the ice.
Late in the skate, he followed the puck too low in the defensive zone. He recognized the danger after Lambert had already moved into the open high slot. The pass reached him, and the shot was in before Caleb could recover.
Frank blew the whistle.
“Church,” Frank called. Frank had never used the nickname before. He pointed with his stick toward the high slot Caleb had left open.
“Tell me what happened.”
Caleb fought for breath. “I got sucked into the corner.”
“Why?”
“I thought the D needed help.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“He had the puck carrier contained. You left the middle for a battle he already had under control, and Lambert walked into the slot. Again.”
They ran it again.
This time Caleb held the middle. The puck went behind the net, came up the wall, reversed. His legs wanted him to chase. He stayed where the play required him, caught the return pass on his stick, and moved it out cleanly.
Frank said nothing. Connor, behind the glass, lowered his coffee and gave Caleb one small nod.
The skate lasted eighty minutes. Caleb felt all of them when he stepped off the ice. His undershirt was soaked through. His hands shook while he unlaced his skates, not from fear or cold but from the complete absence of anything left in his arms.
Frank waited until the others had gone to shower.
“The good news,” he said, “is Connor wasn’t wrong about you.
The… not-bad news, just… less-than-good news is that there is a lot more work needed than I had hoped.
Conditioning. Structure. Faceoffs. Knowing when the simple play is the right one.
” Frank folded his arms. “Those can be taught. They take time, and they take work. September is still a conversation if you want it to be.”
Water dripped from Caleb’s wet laces. Before the skate he had feared discovering he did not belong anywhere near this level. Instead he had learned a quieter truth: he belonged here but he would have to work for it.
“I want it to be,” he said.
“Good. Get changed.” Frank headed toward the corridor, then stopped. “And learn to take a faceoff without announcing what you’re doing with your whole left shoulder.”
Connor stood when Caleb entered the lobby and took the gear bag from his shoulder.
“Food first,” he said.