"F1 was late, but their center was high. If I miss the lane, it's odd-man the other way."
"And if you wait?"
"The lane closes."
"It closed."
"Yeah."
"So you chose the mistake you could explain."
He looks at me. The sentence lands clean. I can tell because his mouth opens and closes and no question comes out.
That is rare for him.
"Coaches forgive caution longer than recklessness," he says after a second.
"Bad coaches."
"My junior coach would have stapled me to the bench for that turnover."
"Your junior coach is not here."
"No."
"Neither is the bench he stapled you to."
He looks down at the puck. His stick blade rocks over it once. The kid is twenty-one and fast and open and he still brought old ghosts with him. Everyone does. Some of us just pack quieter.
"How do you know when to go and when to wait?" he asks.
There it is. The question every defenseman spends his career answering and never finishes. The kind of question that follows you off the ice if you let it.
I look at the blue line. I look at the puck. I look at Isaac Hale, who is not my replacement because no one replaces anyone. They just take the minutes after you are done with them.
"You don't," I say. "You just get better at being wrong."
He absorbs this with the same reverence as the Washington hit. "That seems terrible."
"It is."
"Helpful, though."
"Usually."
We run the drill again. This time he goes early. Too early. The shot gets blocked and the imaginary odd-man rush would have killed us in an actual game.
"Wrong," I say.
He grimaces.
"Better wrong," I say.
He looks at me.
"You made the decision before the lane closed. Now we can fix the decision. Can't fix waiting."
He nods. Skates back. Runs it again.
