"Mornin'."
For the first time since we'd become teammates, I wasn't entirely sure what came next.
Fortunately, Coach Reynolds stepped away from the whiteboard and gathered the room's attention. The meeting itself was business as usual. Matchups. Special teams. Video clips. A reminder about tonight’s game. Nothing about me. It was all about hockey. By the time Coach left, the room had settled into something closer to normal. Tannen rose from his stall and looked around the room.
"We good?"
A few players laughed, some nodded.
Tannen folded his arms across his chest. "We've got Vancouver tonight. They think they're walking out of here with two points. I disagree."
That earned a few grins.
His gaze moved around the room before settling briefly on me. When he spoke again, his voice remained steady. "We're a team. We win together. We lose together. We deal with our business together."
Nobody interrupted.
"If anybody's forgotten that, now would be a really good time to remember."
The message wasn't subtle. It wasn't supposed to be.
Several players nodded immediately. Others murmured their agreement.
The moment passed almost as quickly as it arrived.
Just another captain addressing his team before a game. At least that's how it looked from the outside. From where I was sitting, I knew better. Tannen wasn't just talking to the room. He was talking to me. And for the first time all morning, some of my worries about what our friendship would look like going forward began to ease.
The rest of the session unfolded the way it always did. Stretching. Drills. A few chirps between teammates. For an hour or so, hockey gave me something else to focus on. The illusion lasted right up until I stepped off the ice.
I barely made it through the tunnel before a voice behind me stopped me.
"Thane."
I knew that voice. I stopped in my tracks.
A few players passed us on their way toward the locker room. Equipment staff moved through the corridor carrying gear and water bottles. Nobody paid us much attention. To anyone watching, it probably looked like two teammates having a routine conversation.
It wasn't.
I turned around.
Tannen stood a few feet away with his hands shoved into the pockets of his training jacket. "Got a minute?"
"Yeah."
He nodded toward a quieter stretch of hallway away from the traffic. Neither of us spoke immediately after we stopped. For years, that silence would have felt impossible between us.
Tannen was my best friend.
My linemate.
My captain.
There had never been much we couldn't say to each other.
Until now.
Finally, he looked at me. "You really couldn't tell me?"
