Ryan
Practice before the playoffs feels different.
Tighter. Quieter in the wrong way. The room has taken stock of what the final push cost and is still deciding whether it has enough left for more.
My hip is stiff. Awkward fall from the clinch game that I haven’t reported because Maren has enough on her clipboard. I stretch through it on the far end while the ice fills up around me. No cameras today. Media availability isn’t for another two hours.
I take a hard lap to test the hip. It holds.
Colt Riley circles past me skating backward, helmet crooked. “You look like my dad before tax season.”
“Move.”
“That means good morning in Ryan.”
“It means move.”
Colt moves. He keeps talking, which is a different problem.
The breakout drill starts at ten sharp. Coach Sully runs it tight: two waves, neutral zone reset, clear out and go again. Volkov in net for the first sequence.
Finn is over the red line before the whistle.
“O’Sullivan,” I say.
Finn pulls up. “I was getting position.”
“You were getting eager. There’s a difference.”
Finn mumbles something toward the ice. Zach hears it and looks away.
I do not ask what it is.
Third rep, Finn runs the drill exactly right. Clean timing, puck on tape.
Fourth rep, Colt misses the outlet and the whole sequence dies ugly.
“Again,” Coach says.
Colt groans. “The puck took a weird bounce.”
“Puck doesn’t know that,” I say.
“Morally, this is on the ice.”
“Morally, get back.”
Colt gets back, still muttering.
The drill resets. Finn cheats high again. Subtle. Just enough to be wrong.
“Finn.”
Finn circles back. His shoulders are up near his ears. He blinks fast in the arena light.
“Stay patient through the first wave.”
“I know.” Sharp.
“You’re coming in early.”
“I said I know.” Something off under it.
I let it go.
Sixth rep. Finn takes wall contact, absorbs it wrong, staggers one step, recovers in time for the play to develop. Nobody says anything. The drill keeps moving.
Evan glides past me after. Low: “He took that weird.”
“Angle.”
“Mm.” He does not sound convinced.
I do not answer.
The next rep starts before the whistle is fully out of Coach’s mouth.
Finn jumps early.
Not a little.
Two hard strides, stick down, shoulder already set like he is trying to erase the last thirty seconds through someone else’s ribs.
“Finn,” I bark.
Too sharp.
Too public.
He hears the correction and goes harder.
Colt turns for the outlet at the wall. Finn closes on him from the wrong side and finishes the contact anyway, shoulder catching shoulder, both of them slamming into the boards hard enough to make the glass jump.
The whistle cuts through the rink.
Colt comes off first, one glove up. “Jesus, Finn.”
Finn shoves away from the wall. “You had your head down.”
“It’s a drill.”
“Then keep your head up in the drill.”
The ice goes quiet in pieces.
I skate in.
“Enough,” I say.
Finn turns on me too fast. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, I heard you the first six times.” His voice cracks at the edge, angry and young and too loud. “Stay patient. Don’t cheat high. Don’t take the angle. Don’t breathe wrong. I heard you.”
A couple of heads turn away.
That is worse than staring.
“Take a lap,” I say.
Finn laughs once. Ugly. “Sure. Anything else, Dad?”
The word hits the room wrong.
Zach mutters, “Finn.”
Finn points his stick at him. “Don’t.”
Coach Sully’s whistle snaps once. “O’Sullivan. Wall.”
Finn skates to the boards, chest heaving, jaw tight.
Colt flexes his shoulder and tries to make it nothing. “I’m good.”
Nobody believes him completely.
I look at Finn.
Finn looks anywhere else.
His hands stay tight around his stick.
The power-play unit takes the next twenty minutes, and the room does what rooms do when pressure finds a crack.
Pretends the crack is not there.
I work through it on autopilot: the right corrections, the right reads, a redirect here, a tap there. Colt jokes about something to Zach that isn’t actually funny and Zach laughs anyway because Colt’s timing is lousy but his intentions are fine.
Finn pulls up after a contact rep and stands at the boards longer than a resting player should.
I grab a water break.
I pass Finn on the way.
Finn straightens. Gloves flexed.
“You good?” I ask. Casual. Already moving.
“Fine.”
I do not slow down.
I drink my water, watch Finn rejoin the drill, and file it away. I do not like what I have.
The kid laughs two minutes later when Colt chirps him about his tape job. Loud. Too loud. The laugh men use when they want everyone to know nothing’s wrong.
I have heard that laugh from myself at twenty-four. After the hit in Calgary. After the trainer asked if lights looked weird and I said only when the power was out, because concussion protocol was a perfect time to become a comedian.
I played the next night.
I do not remember the second period.
The memory slides in before I can stop it. Remembering would require admitting the room has been teaching this lesson longer than Finn has been in the league.
Finn takes another rep and comes off blinking hard.
My first instinct is to call Maren.
My second is to wait.
I do not trust the second one.
At the bench, I snap my stick.
Bad angle off the boards, leverage wrong, shaft cracked clean through. Loud. Stupid. I have to skate all the way to equipment while two of the younger guys watch with their eyebrows up.
“Happens,” Roman says, not looking up from his stretch.
“I know it happens.”
“Just saying.”
I take the new stick and do not say anything.
Sully catches me near the tunnel on the way in. He walks alongside me for four steps without talking, which is Sully’s version of an announcement.
“Finn’s been taking hits different,” Sully says.
“I noticed.”
“And?”
I look at the tunnel ahead. “Medical cleared him after the Phoenix game.”
“Medical cleared him for the playoffs. Not for whatever’s happening with his equilibrium on contact.” He looks at me sideways. “You want the room to trust you, keep your temperature readable.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
I keep walking.
I am already thinking about how to get Finn to Maren without making it worse.