The problem isn’t talent. It’s never been talent. It’s the weight of a team that’s been bracing for impact for too long, moving tight and careful instead of loose and instinctive, playing afraid of losing instead of hungry to win.
I know that problem intimately because I am that problem.
Coach Duff is still dealing with some personal matters that cause him to be in and out of the arena. So I’ve been running practices the same way I run everything—gripped too tight, controlled to the millimeter, leaving no room for error or instinct or the kind of beautiful improvised play that wins games in the third period. I’ve been coaching fear.
Shep skates past me during a line change and drops his voice low. “Franklin’s been up there for twenty minutes.”
“I know.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not even slightly.”
“Cool.” He taps my stick with his. “Power Play at four. Don’t bail. The people are counting on you.”
“I’m not going to bail.”
“You have a history of bailing.”
“I’m not going to bail, Shep.”
He grins and skates away, and I blow the whistle for the next drill. Franklin watches from above with his arms crossed and his expression doing the math on a team that needs to win eight of its last thirteen games to have any shot at the playoffs.
And the playoffs are important to his bottom line.
Eight of thirteen.
It’s possible. Barely. If something changes.
I watch my team run the drill—see the places where they’re good, genuinely good, talented in ways I sometimes forget to acknowledge because I’m too busy cataloging the gaps—and I think about what Gisele said this morning.
You’ve spent three years convinced you have to hold this team together alone.
I blow the whistle.
“Good,” I say, instead of the correction I was going to make. “That’s what it looks like. Do it again.”
Shep actually stops skating to stare at me.
I ignore him and call the next sequence.
Nobody Puts Gisele in a Corner
Gisele
There’s a particular kind of strength that looks a lot like holding everything together—fixing the problem, finishing the work, proving you can handle it all without dropping a single piece. And then there’s the quieter kind, the one that shows up after the lights go down, when you’re too tired to perform and someone else steps inwithout being asked. Not to take over. Not to impress. Just to stay. Funny thing about that kind of strength… it’s a lot harder to walk away from once you’ve felt it.
Playlist: “Woman” by Doja Cat
The model’s hair is on fire.
Not literally. But the color Derek approved for the campaign shoot—a rich, dimensional auburn that looked stunning on the mood board and even better in the test shots—has decided to have opinions this morning. Specifically, it has decided to pull copper. Aggressively copper. The kind of copper that belongs on a penny, not on the head of a woman whose face is currently appearing in seventeen thousand square feet of Luxe Beauty promotional material.
“It’s fine,” I say, because someone in this room has to be calm and it’s going to be me. “Give me twenty minutes.”
Derek looks at the model. Looks at me. Looks back at the model with the expression of a man watching a very expensive problem develop in real time. “The photographer is booked until two.”
“Then we have time.” I’m already reaching for my color cart, running the math in my head. Toner. Cool-toned to knock back the warmth. The model watches me in the mirror with the careful eyes of someone who has been in this industry long enough to know when to trust and when to run. She decides to trust. Smart woman. “Sit back. Don’t look at it. Look at me.”
