Chapter 4 Sloane
Sloane
The parking lot at Mammoth Center is empty except for a handful of trucks and SUVs that cost more than my annual salary.
Six forty-five in the morning, and I'm clutching a travel mug of coffee that's already gone lukewarm, my tablet loaded with a half-finished content calendar that needs actual footage to mean anything.
Vivian wants "authentic behind-the-scenes material." Fine. I've spent half my life in rinks watching Easton's practices. Time to see what I'm actually marketing.
The cold hits me the second I enter—that particular arena cold that settles in your bones regardless of the season. Ice and rubber and industrial cleaner, the smell of every rink I've ever known. I climb to my usual vantage point three rows up from the glass and settle in.
The Zamboni makes its final pass, leaving the ice pristine and gleaming. Players start filtering out in twos and threes, the hierarchy obvious—veterans taking their time, younger guys with that hungry energy. Coach Kowalski is already at center ice, whistle around his neck, clipboard in hand.
The players form up without being told. Twenty men moving into position like they've done this a thousand times before.
Because they have.
"Line rushes," Coach barks. "First unit."
The drill starts simple—forwards working on breakout timing while defensemen practice gap control.
Reid leads his line up ice, taking a pass at the red line and driving wide.
The defenseman backs up, maintaining position, forcing Reid to the outside.
Reid tries a toe-drag to cut inside. The defenseman's stick is already there, breaking up the play.
"Again," Coach calls. "Kowalski, you're cheating inside. Trust your edges."
Reid resets. This time he sells the outside harder before cutting back, and the defenseman bites just enough. Reid's shot goes high glove—would've beaten most goalies.
The puck hasn't settled before the next line is already moving.
I've watched thousands of these drills with Easton. But the speed here is different. Not just faster—more compressed. Decisions made in half the time with twice the consequence. The margins are razor-thin.
A younger forward—can't be more than twenty-two—tries the same move Reid just executed. Gets the defenseman leaning, makes the cut, but his hands aren't quite quick enough. The puck rolls off his stick.
"Keep your hands soft!" Coach yells. "You're gripping it like a baseball bat!"
The kid nods, face red, and skates back to the line.
Three more rushes. Then Coach switches to breakout patterns.
"Defensive pairs, let's go. Work against the forecheck."
This is where it gets interesting. Two forwards pressure the defense, trying to force turnovers. The defensemen have to move the puck up ice under pressure—and if they mess up, Coach will make them run the drill until they get it right.
Garrett and his partner take their positions in the defensive zone.
The forwards come at them hard, sticks active, cutting off passing lanes.
Garrett takes the puck behind his own net, scans the ice for maybe half a second, then makes a tape-to-tape pass to his partner at the far boards.
The partner immediately wheels and hits a forward breaking up the wing.
Clean. Efficient. Done before the forecheck could establish position.
"That's how it's supposed to look," Coach calls.
The next pair isn't as smooth. The defenseman panics under pressure and throws a blind pass up the middle. It gets picked off immediately. Coach's whistle screams.
"What the hell was that? You looked at nothing and passed to no one." Coach skates over, tapping his temple with one finger. "Your eyes are your first move. See it, then make it. Again."
They run it five more times. Each rep a little cleaner, a little faster. The fourth time, the defenseman makes the right read—chip it off the glass to relieve pressure instead of forcing something that isn't there.
"Better. That's patience."
The drill evolves. Now forwards are crashing the net on odd-man rushes while defensemen try to break up plays without taking penalties.
Bodies start hitting boards. The hollow boom echoes through the empty arena—a sound I've heard my entire life but never gets old.
Skates carve hard, throwing ice spray. Someone takes a cross-check in the corner and responds by finishing his check twice as hard on the next rep.
This is where you see who's willing to pay the price. Board battles aren't pretty. They're won by whoever wants it more, whoever's willing to take the punishment and come back for more.
A forward gets tangled up with a defenseman along the wall. Both going hard for the puck. Sticks slashing, shoulders grinding, neither giving an inch. The forward finally muscles it free and shovels it to a teammate in the slot.
"That's compete level!" Coach shouts. "That's what wins games in March!"
Reid steps in for the next rush, takes a hit along the boards that I feel in my seat, and still manages to make the pass. The forward one-times it. The goalie makes the save but gives up a rebound. Another forward crashes the net, jams it home through traffic.
"That's a goal because Reid sacrificed his body to make the play," Coach says, pointing at the sequence. "Nobody remembers pretty passes. They remember who wanted it more."
Twenty minutes in, and I can see the fatigue setting in. Breath coming in clouds. Faces flushed. But the intensity doesn't drop. If anything, it ratchets up—like everyone knows the real test is operating at this level when your legs are screaming.
Coach blows the whistle. "Power play units. First group, let's see some puck movement."
They run through set plays—practiced sequences where everyone knows where they're supposed to be. Except under pressure, those clean patterns fall apart. A pass is a second late. A guy's not quite in position. The whole thing breaks down.
"Reset. Run it again until it's automatic."
They do. Seven times. Eight. On the ninth rep, it finally clicks—the puck moves fast, the defense can't adjust, and someone finds the seam for a one-timer that beats the goalie clean.
"That's the rep that matters," Coach says. "Not the pretty ones. The one where you're exhausted and you execute anyway."
Then comes the part I knew was coming but still makes me wince.
"Conditioning. Bags on the line."
The collective groan ripples through the team. I've seen Easton skate these enough times to know they're brutal.
"Blue line and back, red line and back, far blue and back, goal line and back. Five sets. Move."
They line up across the goal line and explode forward on Coach's whistle. The first sprint looks clean. Strong strides, good form. By the second set, the technique starts to slip. By the fourth, it's pure survival. Faces red, mouths hanging open, legs heavy.
Garrett keeps pace with players ten years younger. He's not faster—but he doesn't slow down. When a rookie starts to fade, Garrett drops back beside him.
"Come on, kid. Mind over matter."
The rookie looks like he might die, but he finds another gear.
The final set is carnage. Everyone's dead on their feet, but nobody quits. They finish, then collapse at center ice, pulling water bottles from their helmets and gasping.
This is the job. Not the games. Not the highlights. This. The work nobody sees that makes everything else possible.
Coach gives them thirty seconds, then calls them to center ice for video review. They drag themselves over, still breathing hard, and cluster around his tablet while he breaks down yesterday's game film.
I catch fragments—"gap control," "weak side support," "lose the puck battle, lose the shift"—but mostly I'm watching the way they absorb information while their bodies are still recovering.
How they nod at corrections, ask questions, stay locked in even though every muscle probably wants to shut down.
Practice ends at eight-fifteen. Players skate off toward the tunnel in groups, some chirping each other about blown plays, others silent with exhaustion.
I'm packing up my tablet when I realize what I just witnessed.
I came here for content. For footage. For marketing angles.
What I got was a reminder that hockey—real hockey—isn't a product. It's work. Brutal, repetitive, unglamorous work done at six forty-five in the morning when no one's watching. And the difference between good and great is who's willing to do that work when it hurts.
My tablet is full of notes, but the real takeaway won't fit in a content calendar: these guys earn every dollar, every cheer, every moment of glory with hours of suffering in empty rinks.
I look back at the ice one more time. The Zamboni's already making its rounds again, erasing every trace of the morning's work.
Like it never happened.
But it did. And tomorrow they'll do it again.
The familiar scent of garlic and basil wraps around me like a warm hug as I push through the heavy wooden door of Marcello’s.
The restaurant hasn’t changed in the year since Easton and I first started coming here—same checkered tablecloths, same Dean Martin crooning from hidden speakers, same elderly hostess who always pretends not to recognize us before breaking into a grin.
“McKenzie, party of two,” I say, even though we both know she’s already spotted Easton’s unmistakable frame folded into our usual booth.
“Ah, Sloane! Your giant is already here, stealing the breadsticks as usual.”
I laugh, weaving between tightly packed tables toward the corner where Easton is doing his best impression of a linebacker trying to fit into a dollhouse.
At six-four, he makes everything in this cozy place look miniature—but it’s always been our sanctuary.
Neutral ground. A place where I’m just his sister, not the Mammoths’ marketing exec walking a corporate tightrope in the same organization where he guards the net.
“You’re late,” he says without looking up, mid-demolition of what must be his second bread basket.