6
Character Building, Apparently
Nash
Greeley lets thirty seconds go by. “You know what I figured out this weekend?”
I don’t answer.
“Your film.” He takes a sip of coffee. “I watched the stuff the scouts have. It’s all highlight reels.
Somebody cut it for you, somebody who knew what to cut out.
” He smiles into his cup. “I bet there’s a whole other reel.
The one with the penalties, the one where you lose your shit in front of the bench. I bet that’s the one nobody sent out.”
I keep looking at the mustaches.
“I’m just saying. Must be nice to walk in with a clean tape.”
“You don’t know shit about my tape.”
“You grabbed me Friday with the whistle already gone.” He shrugs.
“I know what that looks like on paper. What it looks like to a guy in a suit deciding whether to spend a pick on a kid with a temper.” He sets his coffee on the arm of the chair.
“Hollis told me you’d be like this before you got here.
He watched you in juniors. He said you’d be a problem by October.
He’s going to be so happy he was right.”
I push off the wall and walk over to his chair, close enough that he has to tip his head back to look at me, and I keep my hands at my sides. “Say one more thing about my tape.”
Greeley doesn’t move. He looks up at me, still smiling, and it hits me that he’s been waiting for this since I walked around the corner.
“You’re standing really close to me, Kennebeck,” he says quietly. “In front of the coach’s door.”
The door opens. Berwyn is in the doorway with his phone still in his hand, and he takes in me standing over Greeley’s chair and Greeley sitting in it with his coffee, and his face doesn’t change at all.
“Kennebeck,” he says. “Back up.”
I back up.
Greeley stands with his cup and says, “Morning, Coach,” in a voice I haven’t heard him use once in two weeks.
Berwyn’s office is small and cold and smells like old coffee. Greeley takes the left chair, and I take the right. Berwyn sits behind the desk and looks at us, one and then the other, for a while before he says anything.
“I can’t coach you on the ice for another month,” he says. “You both know that.”
“Yes, Coach,” says Greeley.
I nod.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know what happens on the ice. It means I hear about it the long way around.” He leans back. “So I heard. Now I want to hear it from you. Greeley.”
Greeley sets his coffee on the edge of the desk and sits forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded, and his whole face goes open and serious.
“Honestly, Coach? It’s on me too.”
I turn my head and look at him.
“It got heated in the battle drill,” he says.
“It’s the first real week, and everybody’s competing for spots.
I was going hard. He was going hard. I got in his space after the whistle.
I shouldn’t have been in his space. He reacted.
I get it.” He glances at me, sincere, almost warm.
“Nash is a great player. Everybody knows that. I want this line thing to work out, whatever it ends up being. I just want us on the same page. For the team.”
For the team. Thirty seconds ago in the hallway, it was your tape and you’re standing really close to me.
He isn’t sorry, and he isn’t worried about me, the team, or the line.
He planned the hallway, the chair, and being there when the door opened, and now he’s going to sit in here being the reasonable one and walk out clean.
He’d watch me get cut and then go get lunch.
“Kennebeck,” Berwyn says. “Your turn.”
“He put his hand on my face.”
Greeley shakes his head slowly, like I’ve misunderstood something. “I was trying to get him off me, Coach.”
“I wasn’t on you,” I say. “The puck was gone. The whistle was gone. You put your glove on my cage and pushed my head back into the glass and told me to stay down.”
“That’s not—”
“Rookie. You said, ‘Stay down this time, rookie.’”
Berwyn holds up a hand, and we both stop. “Did he put a hand on your face?”
“Yes.”
“And then you put him into the boards.”
“Yes.”
“With the whistle gone.”
“Yes.”
Berwyn looks at me for a long time. He doesn’t look at Greeley.
“Here’s where we are,” he says. “In a month, official practice opens. I’ve got one second-line center spot and two centers who both think it’s theirs, and I’ve got a captain who told his whole team nothing happened on his ice Friday and a team that didn’t believe him.
” He picks up a pen and clicks it once. “I don’t care who started it.
I care who’s going to finish it, because whoever finishes it isn’t going to be on my second line. You understand me? Both of you.”
“Yes, Coach,” says Greeley, immediately.
“Yes, Coach,” I say.
“Greeley. Go.”
Greeley stands and picks up his coffee. At the door he turns back. “Thanks, Coach. I really appreciate you hearing us out.”
Berwyn doesn’t answer him. The door shuts, and Berwyn waits until Greeley’s shape is gone from the frosted glass. I start to stand.
“Sit,” he says, and I sit back down. “You know what that kid just did?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“He made me look like the problem.”
“He didn’t make you look like anything.” Berwyn sets the pen down. “He sat there and said it’s on me too and for the team, and you sat there looking like you wanted to put him through my window. Which one of those reads better to me? To a scout? To anybody who wasn’t in that hallway?”
I don’t answer.
“I saw you standing over him when I opened the door. I don’t know what he said to you. I’d bet my house it was something. And I don’t care. You know why?”
“Because it doesn’t matter what he said.”
“Because it doesn’t matter what he said.
” He leans forward. “You were right in here. He did put a hand on your face. I believe you. And it doesn’t help you one bit, because you told me after you’d already used your hands.
Next time something matters, you say so.
Out loud. Before your hands get involved. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Go.”
Greeley is waiting at the end of the hallway by the stairs.
“Hey,” he says, as I come up. “Thanks for not making it weird in there.”
He’s smiling the hallway smile, not the office one, and I stop in front of him. “You’re a piece of shit, Greeley. It’s on me too. For the team. You don’t give a fuck about the team. You don’t give a fuck about anything except that spot.”
“And you do?” He tips his head. “At least I’m good at pretending, Kenny. You should try it. It’d help.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He pushes the stairwell door open with his shoulder and a stupid grin on his face. “Oh, and check the board before the skate. Dannebrog’s making some changes.”
“What changes?”
The door’s already swinging shut behind him.
The captain’s skate is at three. When I get to the rink a half hour early, the whiteboard in the hallway has changed.
BARNES — GREELEY — WALESKA.
And on the third line, between two juniors I barely know: KENNEBECK.
There’s no question mark next to Greeley’s name. There’s a new one next to mine. Behind me, in the locker room, somebody’s speaker is playing something with too much bass.
Dannebrog comes out of the equipment room with his gloves under his arm, sees me looking at the board, and doesn’t slow down. “It’s a look. Just for today.”
“Who asked for it?”
“Nobody asked for it. I’m the captain. I want to see both of you at second. You had Friday. Greeley gets today.”
“Did he talk to you?”
Dannebrog stops walking. “He said he wanted a fair shot. That’s all he said. Is that a problem?”
For the team.
“No,” I say.
“Good. Get dressed.”
The skate goes bad for Greeley almost immediately, because Rafe is on his right wing and Rafe is not happy about it, and he makes that clear from the first drill.
Greeley calls for the puck on the breakout, loud, the way I did Friday, and Rafe looks right at him and carries it himself.
Greeley calls again at the blue line. Rafe cuts inside, drags it around a defenseman, shoots from a bad angle, and scores.
Greeley skates up to him. “I was open.”
“I know,” Rafe says. “I scored.”
Next rep, same thing. Rafe doesn’t pass to Greeley once, not on the breakout, not on the rush, not on the cycle.
He scores twice more by himself, and each time he skates back past Greeley without looking at him.
On the third, Koda bangs his stick on the ice from the other wing and yells, “Waleska!” like he’s cheering at a game.
Dannebrog blows the whistle. “Waleska. Use your center.”
“My center’s slow.”
“Use him.”
Rafe looks at Greeley, then at Dannebrog. “When he’s worth using,” he says, and skates back to the line.
From the third line, with two juniors who keep drifting too high, I watch it happen.
Greeley is still good. He makes the right calls in the right places.
But a center is only as good as his wingers, and Rafe is going to make sure Greeley’s look at second is the worst twenty minutes of his life.
It isn’t for me. Rafe hates being moved off my line because he hates being told what to do, and because Greeley told him to move his feet on Monday in front of Dannebrog, and Rafe doesn’t forget anything.
The result is the same either way. Greeley’s line gets hemmed in its own zone three times in a row, and on the third, Greeley yells at Rafe in front of everybody and Rafe laughs at him.
On my line, I make it simple. I call for the puck early and move it on one touch. The juniors don’t know where to go, so I tell them, loud, every time. Near the end, I win a draw clean, get it back, walk around a defenseman, and put it top shelf, and the juniors mob me like it’s a game.
Across the ice, Koda is on Raygoza.