“Friday,” he replies, watching me.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
“I think so. The team is ready. Coach is ready. My parents are driving up on Friday afternoon.”
I nod. “Right, I remember.”
He sets his coffee down and looks at me. I think he’s about to say something serious, but instead, he says, “You remember Blue, right? One of the guys I live with.”
I nod.
“At practice yesterday,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “Okay, so we have this drill we run every Monday. It’s a forecheck drill. Three guys against two — three of us coming in hard, two of theirs trying to Camdenk it out the other way. The whole thing is timing. F1 — the first guy in — has to take a specific angle so he forces the puck to F2, who’s the second guy, who’s me. And then F3 reads what I do. It’s a chain. Everybody has a job.”
“Okay.”
“Blue is F1.”
“Got it.”
“Blue, since the first day Coach drew this up two weeks ago, has been taking the wrong angle. Every time.” He rolls his eyes. “Every. Single. Time, Lucy.”
He says my name, and I’m all ears. “How wrong?”
“Like significantly wrong. He’s supposed to come in shoulder-first on the right side of the defenseman and force the puck back to me on the boards. He instead comes in straight at the guy’s chest like he’s going to ask him to dance.”
I laugh.
“Which means I’m standing where I’m supposed to be standing, on the boards, for a puck that is now going the wrong direction down the ice. We’ve been working on it for two weeks.”
“Wow,” I observe his face, loving that he’s lighting up.
“We ran this drill maybe twenty-five times. He has gotten it right twice.” He puts his fingers up.
“What does Coach do?”
“Coach has been losing his mind. He yells, he pulls out the whiteboard. He even played the pass with us to show Blue howto do it. He’s pulled tape from the Toronto game and showed Blue an actual NHL guy doing the real thing. None of it is working.”
“Oh no.” I frown at him.
“Okay, so yesterday, Coach had us run it. Blue takes the wrong angle. It’s nothing new. Coach blows the whistle. He’s standing at center ice and he’s just looking at Blue. Like he’s grieving. The whole rink goes silent. We’re all just standing there waiting to see what’s going to happen. Then Stanley skates over from his line. Right past Coach. Coach sees him coming and just — gives up. Coach skates to the bench. Sits down. Folds his arms. Stanley takes Coach’s whistle off Coach’s neck on the way past.Takesit.”
“He didn’t.”That’s so gross.
“He took the whistle. He skates out to the blue line. He blows it like he’s Coach. He says, and I quote,Boys, I am going to teach Bluey how to be a hockey player today. Reset.”
I smile.
“Stanley’s now running the drill. He puts Blue at F1. He puts a traffic cone where the defenseman is supposed to be. He skates over to the cone and says,Golding, this cone is a man. This cone has a body. This cone has shoulders.” Benson is using his best Stanley voice. “Golding, do you see how I am touching the cone’s shoulder. The right shoulder. Not the chest. The shoulder.”
I chuckle at his voice.
“He runs Blue through it. Blue goes. Blue takes the right angle. The first time in fourteen days. The puck goes where it’s supposed to go. Stanley loses his mind. He’s skating circles around the blue line goingI AM COACH. I AM COACH NOW.”
“Hockey practice sounds like a lot of fun.”
He smiles widely. “It can be.”
I ask, “What did Coach do?”
