1. Ryan
RYAN
The practice facility smelled like fresh paint and possibility, which I figured gave us until November before both wore off.
I’d arrived forty minutes before anyone else.
Not because the schedule required it, not because I was making a point, but because I didn’t know how to arrive any other way.
Early was the shape my mornings took. It had been that way since peewee hockey in Eden Prairie, since the first coach who’d told me the ice belonged to whoever wanted it most, and wanting it most started before anyone else showed up.
The Sidewinders’ facility in Glendale was brand new in a slightly unreal way.
Everything too clean, boards too white, glass unscratched.
The Sidewinders logo stared out from center ice, a coiled rattlesnake in burnt orange and black, aggressive and angular, like it had already decided how this was going to go.
I stood at the boards and took it in for a moment.
I liked it. I wasn’t going to say it out loud yet, but I did.
I got on the ice at six forty-five and skated until my legs remembered what they were for.
The rink was cold and quiet and entirely mine, and I ran edges until the silence started to feel like mine too.
I thought about what the Sidewinders’ GM had said when we’d sat across from each other in that conference room in February, making their case.
We’re not building around a system, Ryan.
We’re building around you. That’s what this contract is.
We want someone who’ll put his name on this thing.
I’d flown home and called Griffin. “They want me to be the guy.”
Griffin had said, “You’ve always been the guy. Someone finally noticed.”
Well over a decade of friendship and he still said things like that without effort, like it was obvious. I had hung up and stared at my apartment ceiling for a long time, deciding.
I’d said yes because I wanted it. That was the whole reason, and it was enough. I wanted to be the guy.
By the time the roster filtered in, I was off the ice and in the locker room, tape in hand, watching. Reading a room was half the job when you were supposed to be running it.
Eli Kovac came in first, which told me something.
He was enormous, six-three, carrying two twenty-five on a frame built for contact, and he moved through the locker room with a quiet economy I recognized immediately as someone who didn’t perform anything.
Found his stall, sat down, started getting dressed.
Didn’t introduce himself to anyone. Didn’t need to.
Eli Kovac had been a physical force in this league for six years and his reputation walked in right beside him.
I caught his eye across the room and nodded. Eli nodded back. That was probably going to be the extent of our relationship for the first two weeks and I was fine with it.
Cole Westbrook came in second and worked the room like it was a job he'd been hired for. He walked through the door talking and within four minutes he’d positioned himself as the social one.
Twenty-five, dark hair, and exactly the pretty boy I’d expected, and not in a bad way.
Names, handshakes, a compliment for the locker room layout that he somehow made sound sincere.
By the time he got to me he'd been to everyone else.
I watched him with equal parts amusement and exhaustion.
“Lindqvist.” Cole appeared at my stall with his hand extended, grinning. “Cole Westbrook. Huge fan of the whole stoic captain thing you’ve got going. Very intimidating. I respect it.”
I shook his hand. He had a grip like he’d been practicing it, which I was fairly certain he had.
Cole Westbrook already had endorsement deals in Phoenix.
He was a California guy, had played for two California teams, and was now with the Sidewinders.
Never missed an opportunity to be on the red carpet with a pretty model, never the same one, and yet still had a total golden retriever reputation.
He was the pretty boy of the group by a mile.
I let out a dry chuckle before he moved on to his stall.
Theo Marquis came in without fanfare, which was its own statement.
Twenty-seven, French Canadian, compact, built to convert himself into useful force.
He found his stall without looking for it, sat down, started taping his stick.
Didn’t announce himself. Didn’t need to.
When his eyes landed on me across the room, they held a beat longer than necessary, not hostile, just taking inventory.
I had the impression Theo Marquis intended to outwork everyone in the building and had already started.
I gave him the same nod I’d given Eli. Theo’s chin dipped, fractionally. Understood on both ends.
The rest of the room filtered in over the next twenty minutes.
Kasperi M?kinen, twenty-two, Finnish, who arrived with earbuds in and confident the way players were before the league had a chance to test them.
Danny Hart, twenty-one, with the earnest face of someone’s kid brother, who immediately asked Cole where the best tacos in Glendale were.
A defenseman named Novak who was built like a filing cabinet and said nothing, which I respected.
The chirping started before warm-ups. It started with Kasperi, who made the mistake of walking past Cole’s stall in a shirt Cole felt strongly about.
“What is that,” Cole said, pointing. Not a question. A statement of disbelief.
“A shirt,” Kasperi said.
“That’s not a shirt. That’s a decision you made.”
“It’s from Finland.”
“Finland should want it back.”
Kasperi glanced at me. I kept my eyes on my tape. This was not my problem and I knew it.
“Kovac,” Cole said, pivoting. “You have to see this shirt.”
Eli, across the room, turned his head. Took his time about it. He studied the shirt. Turned back to Cole. Returned to his pads. “No,” he said.
“That’s all? Just no?”
“Yes.”
Cole pointed at Eli. “I have no idea what that means and I respect it completely.”
Theo, from the far end of the room, didn’t look up from his stick tape. “It means he agrees with me about the shirt and chooses not to elaborate.”
“You haven’t said anything about the shirt.”
“I don’t need to.”
Cole spread his hands to the room. “This team,” he said to no one in particular, “is incredible.”
I shook my head. “You’ve been here six minutes.”
“I work fast.” Cole moved on, seemingly satisfied.
Griffin walked in twenty minutes late, spotted me across the room, and pointed at me like he was personally offended.
“Lindy. You were here at six forty-five.”
“Six forty-five is when the ice opens.”
“The ice opens at seven.”
“The Zamboni leaves at six forty-five if you ask nicely.”
He dropped into the stall next to mine and shook his head slowly. “Every year. I roomed with you for three years and you still do this.”
“Every year you’re twenty minutes late.”
“I’m fashionably late. It’s different.” Griffin pulled gear from his bag, grinning. “How’s the heat?”
I’d learned not to ask about Griffin’s reasons for being late. They were never about traffic.
“Trying to kill me.”
“Give it two weeks. After that you become a person who lives in hell and thinks it’s normal.” He glanced over. “Your apartment good?”
“It’s got AC.”
“That’s all you need.” Griffin scanned the room, the careful, reading sweep he always ran, the one that took in the whole room before settling, and his expression settled. “Good group,” he said, quiet enough that it was just for me. “I can feel it.”
I could feel it too. I’d been in enough locker rooms to know the difference between a group of players who happened to share a jersey and a group that was going to become something. This one had the bones.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s not waste it.”
Coach Jack Calloway ran a tight first practice.
He was thirty-eight, younger than half the veteran roster, and he ran practice like he’d been doing it for twenty years.
He hadn’t. This was his first head coaching job.
He’d won a Cup as a player and spent four years as a highly regarded assistant, and none of that showed up as anything except confidence.
The kind that didn’t need the room’s approval.
He and I had spoken twice before camp, long phone calls that had covered systems, culture, leadership philosophy, what the organization wanted to build and how.
I’d come away from both calls with the clean feeling of being on the same page with someone, which was not as common as it should have been at this level.
Calloway ran us through structure for two hours.
Defensive responsibility, quick transition, not necessarily hockey that would end up in highlight reels but won games in November when everyone else was still finding their legs.
I knew the system. More importantly, I knew why it was the right system for this group.
After practice, as the room broke into the comfortable chaos of post-skate, Calloway caught my eye and tilted his head toward the hallway. I followed.
He leaned against the wall, coffee in hand. He’d brought it from his office, a real cup, not a paper one, which I filed away as information about the man.
“First read,” Calloway said.
“Kovac’s physical and Marquis is the smartest center I’ve been on the ice with in years.
Opposing teams are going to hate both of them,” I said.
“Westbrook’s better than he looks, and he looks like a lot.
The young defensemen need time to find their legs, but they’re not scared, which matters more right now.
” I paused. “The room wants to know what we are. They’re waiting to see it. ”
Calloway nodded. “What are we?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I know what I want us to be, and I think you and I want the same thing, and that’s enough to start with.”
Calloway smiled, a quick one, real. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s enough.”