Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Max Stevens
Post-game press is my least favorite part of the job.
Thirty minutes of answering the same three questions in a different order while someone points a camera at my split lip.
Tonight’s split lip is a good one — Calloway landed one before the linesmen got there, and the cut has that throb that means it’ll be colorful by morning.
The PR guy, Sully, has been circling me since the tunnel with his clipboard and his blood pressure.
“Short answers,” he says. “Nothing about the fight. Focus on the win.”
“Sully. Have you met me?”
“Max, please.”
I’m adjusting my collar in the mirror when I catch movement in the doorway behind me.
The mirror reveals the press area filling up, cameras positioning themselves, and there’s Toni.
NHL badge. iPad. Standing at the periphery where the compliance box is, because apparently her job tonight includes monitoring whether I say something catastrophic to Sports Illustrated.
I look at myself in the mirror. At her in the mirror.
She is not looking at me, seemingly absorbed in her work.
Sully taps my arm. “Ready?”
“Born ready.”
The press conference is a table, four mics, and fifteen reporters who all want the same clip.
I sit. Toni moves beside the media platform to speak discreetly with Sully before the conference starts.
When she steps past me, her knee brushes mine under the table.
Barely there. Tiny contact. My entire nervous system wakes up at once.
She makes no eye contact or any sign of knowing that she just jolted me out of the cool, calm exterior I was practicing in the mirror.
I do the short answers. The win was a team effort.
The call was the right call. Knox is fine.
I’m fine. Everything is fine. I say the word fine six times and mean it zero times, and the reporters nod and write it down because that’s the deal.
Then someone asks about the compliance program. I feel Sully go still to my left.
“The league’s oversight initiative,”
the reporter says.
“Can you speak to how that’s been going? Working with the performance officer?”
Short answer.
“It’s been productive.”
That’s the answer. Sully has his pen ready to award me a gold star. I look at the back of the room. At Toni, still on her tablet, absolutely not watching this press conference.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s been — yeah. Good.”
The reporter waits. Reporters always wait. They know if you leave air, someone fills it. I fill it.
“She’s —”
I stop. Start again.
“The program is rigorous. Very data-driven.”
“Do you find it helpful?”
“I find it—“
I pick up the water glass. Put it down.
“Yeah. Helpful. She’s, uh—”
In the back of the room, Anthony Dudek has appeared from nowhere. He is standing next to Toni. He is watching me at the mic table with an expression of pure anticipation.
“She runs a tight program,”
I say.
“Any special changes to your game you’d attribute to the work?”
“The—yeah. The read in the third period. That was … she had a drill. For that specific situation. So…”
I sound like a man who just forgot what words are.
Sully is writing notes on his clipboard. I suspect it is my obituary.
“Would you say it’s changed how you approach the game?”
I look at the back of the room again. I shouldn’t. Toni has looked up from her screen now. She is watching me at the microphone with the professional expression, the one that gives nothing away.
Except her left shoulder is slightly higher than the other one.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s changed things.”
The way I say it isn't the press conference voice. Different register entirely. I realize it as it comes out. So does Sully — pen stopped. So does Anthony, whose grin has achieved a width I didn’t know his face permitted.
Toni looks back at her iPad. Her left shoulder stays where it is.
“Thank you, Max,”
the moderator says, and moves on.
Sully leans in. Very bluntly. “What was that.”
“Press conference.”
“The last part.”
“Still the press conference.”
He scribbles on the clipboard and shows it to me. It says: MEDIA TRAINING. MONDAY!
In the back of the room, Anthony has his phone out. He’s texting. I can see from here it’s the team group chat. By the time I get back to the locker room, Fuze has already responded with fifteen fire emojis and a GIF of a man falling off a cliff labeled MAX AT THE MIC.
Trey is sitting at his stall reading the chain with the expression of a man reconsidering every career decision that led him here. “Short answers,” he says, without looking up.
“I gave short answers.”
“Max.”
“Most of them were short.”
He closes his eyes. Opens them. “She’s standing right there when you said that.”
“I’m aware.”
“The whole room is aware.” He finally looks at me. The captain expression is fully deployed. “Are we going to have a problem.”
I pull my jersey over my head. “Nope.”
His gaze bores into me, it’s a silent, knowing stare. “Okay,” he says. He doesn’t believe me for a second. Neither do I.
Trey keeps staring at me another second too long before finally shaking his head and looking back down at his phone like he’s spiritually fatigued.
That’s when Fuze clears his throat dramatically. “And here we observe the North American penalty idiot attempting courtship through public humiliation.”
Anthony adds, “Toni blinked at him twice. That’s basically foreplay.”
A laugh ripples through the room.
I yank my pads off harder than necessary. “You guys done?”
“Absolutely not,” Lucas says immediately.
Trey drags a hand down his face like a man who should have gone into accounting. “Nobody antagonize him before puck drop.”
“Counterpoint,” Fuze says, spinning slowly in his chair. “It’s become one of my favorite hobbies.”
Anthony points toward me. “Buddy, you looked at her during that press conference like she personally invented oxygen.”
“I did not.” The worst part is I remember exactly which look he means. I did look at her like that. Like she'd personally restarted my circulatory system.
“You absolutely did,” Knox says.
“You tucked your chin down,” Anthony says.
I stare at him. “What?”
“You do that when you like somebody.”
“I do not.”
“You literally looked shy,” Fuze says.
The room goes silent.
“Jesus,” Knox mutters. “That’s worse.”
“Honestly,” Fuze adds thoughtfully, “I’ve seen less tension between goalies and their ex-wives.”
“I hate every one of you,” I mutter.
“That’s not denial,” Anthony notes. I throw a towel at his head. He catches it without looking.
Lucas leans forward, fascinated. “Wait, so are we pretending this isn’t happening?”
“Yes,” Trey says immediately.
“No,” Fuze says at the exact same time.
Anthony grins. “The room has voted. It’s happening.”
I stand and grab my stick. “All of you need hobbies.”
“We had hobbies,” Knox says. “Then you and the compliance trainer started eye-fucking each other through practice drills.”
The room detonates.
Even Trey cracks for half a second before catching himself. “Language.”
“That’s fair,” Anthony says solemnly. “Respectful eye contact, then.”
“Deeply respectful,” Fuze agrees.
I point at all of them. “One bad line change tomorrow and I’m fighting every single person in here.”
“See?” Fuze says, sitting back triumphantly. “He’s already talking about fighting. Toni’s influence is incredible.”
My phone buzzes against the bench.
I already sense it’s the group chat before I look.
Fuze: MAX STEVENS FOUND THERAPY TITS
“I’m going to kill him,” I say.
Across the room, Fuze points at me immediately.
“See?” he says. “Growth. Last month he would’ve started with punching.”
This is the team dynamic that turns Trey into the exhausted dad of twenty-five idiots. Trey has been reading me the entire time. Of course he has. Now, they all know.