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Trent
There’s something to be said about the game of hockey.
Most would argue that it’s a crude, brutish sport, but I always found the brutality of it quite comforting.
Even elegant in its savagery.
But then again, I’ve always had a penchant for all things unrefined and primitive.
Maybe it has something to do with having grown up in an environment that nurtured such things. A neighborhood that had been primed to reward those who abused their primal, basic instincts over those who preferred to suppress theirs.
Roxbury has never been for the faint of heart.
In fact, having a heart was seen as a pesky inconvenience. You quickly learned to kill that part of you. And if you didn’t, well, then the streets would take it upon themselves to do the killing for you.
They grow them hard down there.
Mean and cruel.
It’s the only way you can survive.
From a young age, I learned this lesson well—showing any kind of weakness would eventually be your end.
And in hockey, that lesson stands.
Hesitate even for a second, and you can be sure that your enemies will exploit it.
Now, I could have stayed back in Roxbury and become one more gangbanger, trying to hustle a few Benjamins into his pockets, knowing that my luck would run out sooner or later, and I would either spend the rest of my days behind bars or gunned down on the street by a rival gang or a deal gone bad.
Or I could take the less traveled path—one that would force me to crawl my way out of the gutter by any means necessary, even if there was never any guarantee I’d be successful in doing so.
Having grown up in that life, I didn’t see there was much of a choice.
Not one that would keep me breathing past the age of thirty, at least.
So, even though the odds were stacked against me, I took a detour in the road that would have undoubtedly led me to my demise.
Yet, when that type of bloodlust has been instilled in you from such an early age, it’s extremely difficult to find something that could quench it.
That’s when hockey came into my life.
Like most general managers before me, I paid my dues on the ice first.
I played the game, knowing it would get my foot in the door, but I knew I didn’t have the talent to go pro. What I did have, though, was an analytical mind that helped my coaches decide who they should be looking to play and recruit to the team.
I was good at it.
Real good.
So good that big-named teams started paying attention, throwing out absurd money offers for me to join their ranks and improve their teams from within.
Have you ever seen the movieMoneyball?
Well, replace baseball with hockey, and Brad Pitt might as well have been playing me on the silver screen.
Except I’m not as clean-cut as Brad.
Fuck.
