Chapter One #3
During the last five years, he’d pictured Camille in one of the fitted sundresses she had about forty of, sitting in the garden sipping lemonade while he played catch with the dog they could get when he stopped playing and spent more time at home.
Before he’d married Camille, he’d pictured a kid or two and a soccer ball.
But Camille didn’t want kids, and Phil wanted her, so he’d changed his dream. And then they’d stopped wanting each other, and now not even the dog showed up in his imagination. It was just him, alone in the backyard, throwing a ball at the wall over and over again.
Did it matter if his knee was too fucked up for that?
Maybe, just maybe, if he could skate in time for playoffs, he could sit alone in his garden with a cup ring for company. That would take out some of the sting.
He took an Uber home and made idle chitchat with the driver about the weather and the Bobcats.
Franziska, the trainer he worked with most often, had emailed him a schedule along with exercises he could start, so he hit up his home gym.
He updated his grocery order and let his cleaning lady know he would be home for the foreseeable future.
Then the clock struck 1:30 p.m., and he was out of things to do with his day.
The Sea Lions weren’t playing today. Instead, Phil spent the afternoon watching Anaheim decimate Ottawa 6–1. Preseason projections had Anaheim as a wildcard at best this year, but they currently had the Sea Lions beat in the standings. They ought to be better than this.
He muted the game and checked the team’s Instagram instead.
At the top of his feed, he spotted footage of the team practice in Colorado.
Kayleigh must have posted it just now. For some reason, people always wanted to see Denver practices because of the altitude.
Phil couldn’t say he’d noticed much of a difference when they played there, but the NHL did love a gimmick.
Tom and Jax were playing together again.
Phil squinted down at his phone to make sure he had seen right. But there they were, doing passing drills up and down the ice, all but ignoring Mike Vanderbilt, the third guy on their line.
Why put Jax on Tom’s line, pull him off as soon as he fucked up in a game, and then put him right back on?
Was he supposed to have learned something in the zero opportunities he’d had to try?
What did Morris intend on doing the next time the team played the Magpies?
Or when every other team in the league exploited Jax’s very obvious weakness and chirped him about the trade?
Phil dropped his phone face down into the cushions.
Instantly, his fingers itched for it.
He wanted to ask Tom why he’d cared enough to ask for a line change when he never had before and why Jax had fucked up so badly last night. But then he’d have to face Tom’s questions about his knee, and Phil didn’t want to admit his season, if not his career, was likely over.
He wanted to ask Jax for a long-term strategy when dealing with his ex-teammates, but he didn’t know Jax well enough to be so confrontational.
Most of all, Phil wanted to ask Morris why he let players dictate the lineup.
Unfortunately, Phil had no gauge for whether he was the type of coach to welcome feedback or the type to bench Phil for daring to have an independent thought.
He didn’t know much of anything about Morris at all, which was weird.
Head coaching gigs got tossed around between the same fifty-odd middle-aged white guys.
New names seldom entered the mix. Unlike Tom, Phil didn’t follow hockey news religiously.
He didn’t memorize the name of every assistant coach in the league, but if someone got a head coach gig, Phil ought to have at least heard the name once or twice.
He couldn’t recall having heard “Ben Morris” anywhere.
Now, watching the team practice on Instagram, Phil couldn’t even find Morris on the ice.
What was the point of a new head coach if he let the players do whatever they wanted?
If he let them be jerked around by a shitty subordinate like Trout?
Maybe Phil’s disappointment that Morris’s laid-back demeanor had done nothing to protect him had influenced his train of thought, but on a purely professional level, Phil wondered why none of the coaches had listened to the trainers about his goddamn knee.
Beyond his own frustration and the likely end of his career, treating players as expendable couldn’t be a long-term solution. Especially players who had been with the team as long as Phil. They were assets to be used, sure, but longevity was a good quality in an asset.
Mind made up, Phil flipped his phone over again. He tabbed out of Instagram and headed to Google instead. He would find out everything he could about Ben Morris and why he let his subordinates and his players run roughshod all over the team.
Phil’s knee twinged, and he adjusted his ice pack.
It was better than watching more hockey when he couldn’t play.