Chapter Thirteen
Tom: I’m Tom Crowler, and this is Phil Easton, and we’re here at the All-Star Game in Dallas, Texas, answering your questions.
Phil [reading from a notecard]: Tom, what’s your go-to karaoke song?
Tom: [looking at Phil] Um…
Phil: Mine’s usually “Country Grammar” by Nelly ‘cause you don’t have to be good at rapping or singing to do a Nelly song. Tom’s not much of a karaoke guy. You do the next card.
Tom [reading from a notecard]: Phil, how do you like to unwind? Oh, no, he’s going to say—
Phil: Fishing! Meditation for mind and body in the great outdoors! How about you, Tom? What do you do to relax? Remember, cardio doesn’t count!
Tom: Ugh.
Top comments:
puckpuckstick: Who’s here in 2024 watching the most codependent duo in hockey history?
SFClions: Tom’s haircut is so adorable here. Baby!
firecrackers_spark: When you take your hockey robot to the All-Star Game, but he malfunctions when you ask him to have a personality.
phileastfanclub: @firecrackers_spark—Bro I am a fan but even I can’t tell which of them you’re talking about.
(From “Get to Know Your All-Stars,” posted to YouTube by the official NHL account, 02/04/2017)
Even as a shiver of dread wound its way down Phil’s spine, all he could think was thank God, he’s a terrible coach.
He liked so many things about Ben—his quiet, restful presence around the house; his acerbic humor; his tendency toward thoughtfulness rather than decisiveness; and his hands-off approach when it came to helping Phil with his injury.
He never forced Phil to accept anything, although, as Phil’s quasi-boss, he could.
Ben only asked, then let Phil make his own decisions about what he did or didn’t need.
He acted the same with Charlie, presenting the options Charlie had and letting him make his own choices.
On one level, Phil had known all along that none of those behaviors matched any hockey coach he’d met before.
On another, hearing it out loud filled him with horror.
He tried to think of something to say in response, but before he could find words, Ben continued.
“I’m an investigative journalist. The GM hired me to look into…some stuff.”
“What stuff?”
Ben winced. “He thinks, uh… Well, he thinks you’re being sabotaged.”
The thought was so outlandish that Phil once again fell silent.
“He thinks you’d have won the Cup years ago if someone in the organization weren’t working against you from the inside.”
Plenty of teams didn’t win the Cup for decades at a time.
It was one of the hardest championships to win in professional sports.
Phil accepted that he would probably retire without a Cup ring.
He would fight for the opposite, but he also had to be able to live with it never happening.
Lots of great players never won. Winning the Stanley Cup required the perfect storm of a solid team both offensively and defensively, not too old and not too young, a regular season with little to no injury among the team’s core, and the luck of the draw that whoever you were up against in the playoffs had missed out on some part of the same combination.
The idea of Pulvermacher being so invested in their playoff losses that he had a journalist infiltrate the coaching staff was so unexpected Phil couldn’t parse the information for long moments.
The Sea Lions had only existed for fifteen years.
Vancouver hadn’t won a cup in thirty. No one needed to conspire to make a team lose at hockey. And even if they had…
“Why did he hire you?” Belatedly, Phil realized the question might sound insulting. He had no idea what kind of journalist Ben was. “I mean, there’s Player Safety. Or the NHL commissioner’s office. Or—”
“That’s not really how Martin does things.”
“Martin.”
“Yeah. Martin Pulvermacher. The Sea Lions’ GM. Also known as my uncle’s brother-in-law.”
A useless sense of satisfaction at having been right settled over Phil. “Right. He’s a Mormon too. So the GM calls in a favor, and you, what, drop everything to go investigate a hockey team for corruption? Without using any of the proper channels?”
“Pretty much.”
“Why?”
Ben sighed and raked a hand through his hair.
He kept it combed down at the rink, all professional, but at home it was usually some flavor of messy and now stuck up at strange angles.
With the low bathroom light throwing odd shadows, the parts sticking up reflected gold while the rest shone in a light bronze.
“Martin called me up in June after you guys lost the Western Conference Finals.”
Phil grimaced. The reminder stung. It was the closest they’d come to a Stanley Cup since he’d been here.
“He said he got the impression the team owner, Van Giesing, wished you’d gone out in the second round already. He also thought Van Giesing was trying to get rid of him.”
“In the second round? Why on earth would the team’s owner want us to lose—”
“If he’s betting against you using insider information, he wants you to lose.”
The bottom of Phil’s stomach dropped out. His mouth fell open. “He wouldn’t.” He wished he believed it.
The look Ben gave him was almost pitying. “Of course he would. He’s a venture capitalist. All they care about are profits.”
“Did they—but—how can you even know?”
Ben rested his hands on the side of the tub and examined them carefully. “When your knee got reinjured, I saw Trout on an illegal betting site. I’m pretty sure he put money on you being out for the season. A lot of money.”
Phil tried to take a deep breath and found he couldn’t.
The air tasted thick with eucalyptus, and the sharp steam in his lungs matched the anger climbing up from the pit of his stomach.
He’d known for a while now that chances were whatever Ben was keeping secret would be bad, but he’d never envisioned it this bad.
His life, his career, his health, all in the hands of people who cared more about what lined their pockets than who was on their payroll.
That settled it. Phil would retire. He couldn’t go into a new round of contract negotiations. Not with these people. They didn’t deserve it.
“I’m sorry.” Ben’s wretched voice jarred Phil from his thoughts.
“You didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t stop it.”
Briefly, Phil envisioned a world in which Ben had stopped it, a magical place where he had somehow fired Trout and stopped Tom from getting into a dumb hockey fight Phil had to intervene in and had told Phil all of this earlier.
He would have been on the road with the team in Canada, could have maybe stopped the terrible 5–1 loss in Toronto, could have intervened when Hayes started spouting off in the locker room…
But then, if he had been there, Luca Mazetti would still be in the AHL, and Hayes would have had no reason to complain.
No one would know what kind of person Hayes was underneath it all, and Breezy would have had no reason to put forward the charity idea. That would have been a shame.
“You couldn’t have known my knee would blow out. It might have happened at any game anyway.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been trying to figure Trout out—and giving him free rein over the D-men. I knew he was meeting with Van Giesing, but I couldn’t figure out why, and I still don’t have any hard evidence.”
Phil leaned forward, hugging his knees to his chest in the warm bath. “I guess you’re not there to represent our interests. You’re there to represent the GM’s interests.”
Ben made a noise of frustration at the back of his throat. “Not because I want to. Look, I’m so sorry for all of this. I’ll get out of your house. I’ll quit the job. I’ll—”
“Did I say I wanted that?”
“No, but—”
“The last thing the team needs is a major scandal or for their head coach to jump ship. If we want to make a playoff run, we need stability.”
The last thing Phil needed was an empty house with no Ben cleaning the already spotless kitchen and no Charlie ragging on his playlists and leaving his sweatshirts in the gym.
Doubt crept up on Phil for a second. Did he really want them to stay? Or had the shock clouded his judgment and left him clinging to the only two people standing between him and a lonely, useless retirement?
No, he knew better. He’d known better for a while now—known he wanted Ben and Charlie to stay for their own sake rather than his.
Besides, if Ben left, who would uncover the betting scheme?
He chanced a look at Ben, still sitting close to him by the tub. Worry lines dug deep into his forehead.
“I’m the worst coach in the NHL,” Ben said.
“True.”
Ben grimaced.
“You said it yourself. But I’ve been helping you with it, haven’t I?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Do you or do you not need a place for you and Charlie to stay?”
Ben’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “I do. I lied to you about why I’m here too. It was never about your knee. My apartment isn’t being renovated. I just couldn’t afford rent.”
“So you have to stay.”
“I can’t! I’m not a real coach. I’m staying here under false pretenses.
When I manage to prove your organization has been illegally betting on your career, I won’t be working with the Sea Lions anymore.
And if I let Charlie believe we can stay, I’ll end up disappointing him when we have to leave after all. ”
“Why would you have to leave?”
Ben dropped his face into his hands. “Phil…”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you angry?”
Phil laughed. It sounded foreign and ugly.
“Not angry? I’m so fucking angry I could choke on it.
I’ve spent my entire career with this franchise.
I helped build it from the ground up. I sacrificed holidays and birthdays and decent food for hockey.
I sacrificed my marriage and my goddamn knee.
And it turns out my boss’s boss’s boss was rooting against me all along? Damn right I’m angry.”
Ben’s jaw clenched. His face, normally open and kind in these four walls, had shuttered into the stern, serious expression he wore as Coach Morris, the person he apparently wasn’t. “Right. I should leave. I should–”