Chapter 21
Reading the Ice
West
Cedar Falls arrives without theatrics.
No photographers. No handlers. Nobody who recognizes me. Or if they do, they don't show it.
The private strip sits thirty minutes outside Cedar Falls—clean asphalt, new hangars, the kind of infrastructure that tells you someone's investing long-term.
Levi Johansen had sent me three articles over Christmas. The global mistletoe event. The charity fundraiser. The kiss that turned into a viral storm and pulled national coverage with it. For a week, Cedar Falls was everywhere — morning shows, sports feeds, international wires.
A small town that knows how to generate noise when it wants to.
Now it's February.
According to Cameron Wilder, snowfall’s at record lows. December dumped hard enough to trigger a road slide. Since then—dry. Cold. Thin.
In cities, weather is background. An inconvenience or a novelty, depending on how much you enjoy seasons.
Here it's news. It's business. It’s operational—tourism, weekend traffic, seasonal hires—all of it contingent on powder.
Because when snow runs thin, the arena becomes the heartbeat for families and tourists looking for winter activities.
The ridgelines are lighter than they should be this time of year. I wouldn't have known that if Cam hadn't mentioned the drought while I was in Anguilla. The men were tracking melt rates. I was tracking SPF levels.
The detail stuck anyway.
I drive toward town.
Mega Max Velocity Park sits on the outskirts—the indoor track Cam sent photos of. One mile of climate-controlled asphalt under a roof.
The parking lot’s full.
Like the hockey arena, if powder isn’t reliable, people drive here instead.
Families. Tourists from next towns over. Anyone who booked a ski weekend and got thin powder instead.
You don’t build something like this for a good season.
You build it for insulation and insurance.
That tells me more about Cedar Falls than any pitch deck ever could.
The air feels cold and clean. The road narrows. Two lanes, no shoulder, pines pressing close on both sides.
Then Main Street opens up.
Mane Street Bistro, windows fogged from the dinner rush, a cluster of trucks parked out front at angles that suggest the parking lines are more advisory than regulatory.
Jane would love this. She'd walk in, order something off-menu, charm the owner into giving her the recipe, and have three new clients by the time we finished dessert. That's how she operates—turning strangers into allies in under ten minutes.
I can see her here. Laughing. Bright. Relentless.
The question is: can she see herself here?
Farther down the street, a confectionery shop at the bottom of a large three-story building of repurposed industrial brick.
There’s a sign that says Candy Jar—the display window is so full of color it practically vibrates against the orange February dusk.
That's Levi's wife's place. Lily. He's mentioned it approximately four hundred times.
I imagine Jane inside. Elbows on the counter. Sampling truffles. Asking Lily how she sources her cocoa beans. Making notes. Probably negotiating bulk orders for some future client event I don't even know about yet.
She'd fit here. The question is whether she'd want to.
Farther out, I catch the shape of an auto shop—Cedar Crest Customs, the sign half-lit by a work lamp inside the bay. Somebody's still under a hood at this hour. Small towns keep their own clocks.
I don’t see the arena yet. Was told it doesn’t even have an official name. The town council is running some kind of contest.
Then a fire station. A guy in a fire department jacket holds the door for a woman carrying a pie dish. She says something that makes him laugh—I can't hear it through the closed windows but his whole posture changes, the way it does when something genuinely lands.
I drive past it all at twenty-five miles per hour.
Not because of the speed limit. Because I'm reading the place the way I read ice—surface conditions, sight lines, where the space opens up and where it tightens.
Where the energy concentrates. Where people actually live versus where they perform living.
No curated storefronts angled for Instagram. The bistro has fogged windows because people are inside eating, not because someone designed the aesthetic.
It's not loud. Doesn't need to be.
Because it gets noticed.
Skyridge Hotel rises at the edge of downtown — modern lines, glass and stone. The only five-star in town.
I check in. Unpack. Text Cam and Levi my safe arrival.
NHL contract ends June 30. Coaching contract would start July 1.
I order coffee from Cedar Grounds downstairs and review the contract again.
February 21 | Saturday morning. Nine a.m.
I slept eight hours. Uninterrupted. No sirens. No neighbor’s subwoofer vibrating through drywall. No garbage trucks staging a percussion concert at five-thirty.
Just quiet.
The particular quiet of a mountain town in February, where even the birds seem to operate on a more civilized schedule.
I shower, dress, and head out on foot instead of driving the rental car.
The sun is sharp and gold against the mountains like it has something to prove. In New York, February feels gray and crowded. Here it feels… clean.
The arena’s a little less than three miles from the hotel, but I stretch it into twenty minutes—long strides, controlled breath, working up a light sweat. Warm-up before warm-up. My body likes ritual. My head needs it.
Somewhere between the first mile and the second, my mind drifts back to the week the Olympic roster dropped.
They called then. Not officially. Not through agents. Cam texted first: You good?
Which in hockey language means: I saw. That’s brutal.
Levi followed five minutes later. If you’re tired of freezing in New York, we might have something interesting out west.
That’s how competitors recruit each other. Casual. No pressure. Like it’s nothing.
We talked that night. Not long. Just enough.
They’re not pretending the AHL isn’t what it is. Guys get called up. Guys get sent down. Careers pivot overnight.
What they want is a place where that movement actually means something. A roster where players aren’t just surviving the demotion or coasting on raw talent. A room built for men who still want back in the NHL—and are willing to earn it the right way.
Structure. Conditioning. Accountability.
Cam put it simply: “If a guy leaves here better than he arrived, we did our job.” Levi added: “If he goes back up and sticks? Even better.”
Not a holding pen. A proving ground.
And that’s what hooked me.
Not just the guys—though it matters that they’re still competitive enough to care.
It’s that they’re not done proving things. Neither am I.
I’ve worn one hat my entire adult life. Center. Captain. Franchise piece.
I’ve been the guy on the ice for years. Maybe it’s time to prove I can run it from the bench without losing the edge that got me here.
For them, this isn’t a vanity project. It’s work. Structure. Standards. A room that means something.
They didn’t pitch hard. They didn’t need to.
I can tell Cam and Levi didn’t build this arena to park money. They were players before they were businessmen. Competitors I respected enough to study.
Cam—left defense, loud and funny off the ice, ruthless along the boards. Levi—favorite goalie in half the league, glove hand impossible, mouth just sharp enough to get under your skin.
We weren’t teammates. But twice we shared an All-Star bench. Same sweater. Same skills drills. You learn a man fast in that setting. Who coasts. Who competes. Who leads without needing to shout.
Same draft class. Same mileage.
They know what it costs to step away from the game you built your identity around.
Now they’re building something new. And I’m here to see if I belong in it.
The formal interview happened two days later over video—in December, still raw from the roster announcement. Their offer came while I was in Anguilla.
And now I’m jogging toward a building with their names on the paperwork—and possibly my future somewhere inside it.
Tomorrow the U.S. men take on Canada for Olympic gold.
Funny how the game keeps moving whether you’re in it or not.
By the time the arena comes into view, my legs are warm and my pulse is steady.
It’s larger than you’d expect for a town this size.
Inside, Cam and Levi are already on the ice—but not alone.
Acluster lines the boards. Not scouts. Not press.
Town.
Maybe fifteen people. Winter coats half-zipped, coffee cups in hand. Some standing like they wandered in on a whim. Others planted like they’ve been here since dawn.
A woman with a clipboard near the lower bowl — though she barely glances at it. Eyes up, moving fast between the page and the arena around her. She says two words into her phone, points toward the Jumbotron rig. Two people change direction before she finishes the sentence.
A fireman in a CFFD sweater near the far tunnel, phone out, eyes moving methodically around the upper bowl. Doing a quiet walkthrough of some kind.
An older woman perched on the home bench with the imperial posture of someone who has opinions about everything and the credibility to back them up.
Cam spots me first. Waves me over with his stick.
"Morning, Coach."
He says it loud enough for the gallery to hear. Testing the title in the vast arena like he's checking the acoustics.
"I haven't signed anything yet."
"Details."
Levi skates over. Handshake—firm, genuine, a goalie’s grip. "How'd you sleep?"
"Like the dead. Is it always this quiet?"
"Wait till there’s an event Karla Berisa gets her hands on. Then tell me it's quiet."
Cam laughs warmly at their inside joke. A few from the gallery snicker too.
And a few others pretend not to watch us.
They’re watching.
I lace up.
Step onto the ice.
The surface is pristine. Whoever runs the Zamboni here treats it like a calling, not a chore.
We fall into rhythm easily. Three men who’ve shared enough ice to skip the feeling-out stage.