Page 72 of Take Two

The funny thing is, the game isn’t the only thing moving with that kind of precision.

My attention drifts away from the puck for the first time all shift, taking in everything happening beyond the glass. Camera operators glide alongside the boards on tracks that must have been laid before dawn, matching the rush up the ice without ever getting in the actors’ way. Another camera hangs high above center ice, floating silently on a crane as it follows the play from overhead, its movements so smooth it barely registers until you look directly at it. Production assistants weave between cables and equipment cases, headsets pressed to their ears while they quietly relay instructions from one end of the building to the other.

Kirk’s voice reaches me from behind the bank of monitors, calm and measured as he directs the camera operators through his headset.

“Camera one, stay with Mercer. Camera three, hold the bench. Stand by.”

Nobody rushes. Nobody talks over anyone else. The instructions come out calm, clipped, almost routine, stripped of urgency, and every camera operator shifts exactly where they need to be without missing a beat. Watching it unfold reminds me of listening to line changes from the bench. Everyone already knows their assignment. They’re just waiting for the next cue, ready before the call ever comes.

It’s strange, seeing hockey through someone else’s eyes.

I’ve spent my whole life reading passing lanes, anticipating pressure, looking for the next opening before it fully reveals itself. That’s the lens I can’t take off. Every time I watch the play develop out there, some part of me is already reading it as a game.

Kirk’s watching something completely different.

His attention barely leaves the monitors as his eyes move from one camera angle to another, following Cyaire as he becomes Daniel Mercer with a thoroughness that doesn’t leave room for anything else. He isn’t watching to see if the play develops the way I drew it up on the whiteboard. He’s watching to make sure Mercer hits his mark before laying into the officials, that the frustration after a missed scoring chance lands in the body before it reaches the face, that every camera is telling the same story from a different angle without any of them contradicting each other.

A sharp whistle cuts through the arena.

“Cut!”

The change is so immediate it almost makes me laugh.

One second the building is shaking beneath thousands of screaming voices, players battling along the boards like they’re one shift away from the Frozen Four, the game hanging in the balance with two minutes left.

The next, everything stops.

The crowd falls silent without being asked twice. Actors coast back to their starting positions, already shaking out their legs and rolling their necks. Crew members step onto the ice carrying water bottles, towels, and makeup kits while wardrobe smooths jerseys and production assistants nudge cameras a few inches into new positions, checking angles on small monitors before flagging their adjustments back to Kirk.

It’s genuinely unbelievable how quickly controlled chaos becomes simply controlled.

I don’t know what’s more impressive, the hockey or the machine built around it.

“Reset, everybody,” Kirk calls from behind the monitors, already studying playback on the closest screen.

The actors skate back to their marks. Extras take their seats. Someone begins counting down through a headset before another voice calmly calls, “Background.”

The conversations slowly return. The buzz spreads through the crowd again, building the way it always does when a building comes back to life after an intermission, voices layering over each other until the arena sounds full again. Foam fingers lift into the air. The student section starts another chant, building the noise one voice at a time until the whole place feels alive, genuinely alive, in a way that no amount of post-production is going to manufacture after the fact.

Kirk raises a hand.

“Action.”

The roar crashes back with enough force to rattle the glass.

If I hadn’t watched it happen myself, I’d swear none of it had ever stopped.

The Red Hawks attack again, cycling the puck low beneath the goal line before working it back to the point with quick, deliberate passes. The Wolverines collapse toward the crease, trying to clog every shooting lane, bodies stacking up between the puck and the net. But the puck keeps moving, tape to tape, forcing them to chase instead of react, always a step behind the Red Hawks’ timing.

“Pressure!”

“Stay on him!”

The student section pounds against the glass as the defenseman walks the blue line, patient, reading the traffic in front.

He finds a lane, but the resulting one-timer meets the goalie’s pad in a sharp kick save, and the crowd goes nuts.

“So close!” somebody behind me shouts, throwing both hands into the air with the particular anguish of someone who genuinely believed it was going in.