And I try not to let it bother me that I’m giving tips to my competition.
On the ice, Otto is standing with the Camp Coach, Trevor, a former assistant coach who’s been bumped up to player development. I met him at the end of last season, and he was a solid guy. Blunt and no-nonsense, but he always looked at me like he was waiting for me to put my foot on the gas.
“All right, boys,” Trevor says when we all get to the ice. “Or should I say men?”
A few of the guys look at me and chuckle.
I try to laugh with them.
“Now let’s find out who’s ready to play and who showed up for a free jersey.”
Trevor leads us through warmups, but I’m still stiff from the drive this morning and from two nights of not sleeping so I could soak up the feeling of Kayla next to me. My knees have been feeling good all summer, so I’m not as worried about them as I expected to be only a couple of months ago.
But I’m slower than usual.
And it shows.
The first few drills go worse than I want to admit.
I stumble over a cone during an agility drill, then get turned around during a two-on-one rush and fall for a fake I should’ve seen coming. The puck slides right past me, clean as day.
I mutter a curse into my mask.
Meanwhile, Hall bounces into drills like he’s got springs for legs. He’s fast and eager, with energy that’s a little too boundless. He makes plenty of saves, but he slips too far on one play. On another, he charges the puck too aggressively and overshoots, leaving the net wide open.
The kid’s got heart. Just no brakes.
Yet Trevor nods like he likes what he sees. “Good energy, Hall. Keep it up.”
When I make the next stop with perfect form—read the shot, track it, stop it—I expect at least a nod from Trevor.
I get nothing.
We keep going. And after a couple of hours, I finally find my groove.
Hard shot from the top? Glove save.
Traffic in front of the net? They can’t fool me.
Sneaky play off the boards? I block and clear it without blinking.
For a few minutes, I feel like me again. Not the guy trying to prove something. Just the guy who gets things done.
Then I catch sight of Otto and Trevor talking at center ice. Helmets off, heads close.
Their voices carry just enough.
“Hall’s raw,” Trevor says. “But he’s got instincts. Guy like that could be ready in a year, maybe two.”
Otto nods. “High ceiling.”
Then Trevor asks, “And O’Shannan?”
Otto shrugs. “Dependable, as always. We know what we’ve got there.”
It’s like someone tore open my chest and dumped a bucket of ice into the cavity.
Dependable.
