Page 1 of Caught Offside

CHAPTER ONE

Patrick took the hit along the boards and kept his feet. The drill was simple enough: a D-to-D pass and transition through the neutral zone before the reset, but Pruitt had decided to make it interesting by throwing his shoulder into anyone who wasn’t moving fast enough. He absorbed the contact, swept the puck to his stick side, and fired it cross-ice to the far blue line without looking up.

“Fonty!” Pruitt’s voice echoed off the glass. “Your cousin’s showing you up again.”

Olivier Fontaine caught it clean and sent it back with a wrist shot that sailed wide. “He’s not my cousin, Pru.”

“Sure about that? Same last name, same sad face, same⁠—”

“Get back in line, Pruitt.” Coach Barlow didn’t uncross his arms. The whistle stayed clamped between his teeth.

“Just saying, Coach. The resemblance is uncanny.”

“You’re both delusional and shit at chirps. Get back in line.”

The Chicago Syndicate was unlike any team Patrick had ever played for. Coach Barlow was a hard-ass who got results, but part of why the guys respected him so much was that he also knew when to have fun with his players.

Pruitt gave a mock salute and looped back into the drill. Patrick kept skating. The chirp was old enough to have moss on it. The room had run through every variation of the shared surname in the first week of camp, and Pruitt still hadn’t let it die. Patrick had stopped correcting him in October. Fontaine was as common in Quebec as Smith was in the States, but explaining that again would only feed the bit.

The sad face he let stand. Pruitt meant it as a chirp, and taking it as one was easier than looking at how close it landed. Patrick Fontaine had been the quiet one in every locker room he’d ever skated into, respected and not quite known. You didn’t last in this league by needing the room to love you. You lasted by being useful. He’d made his peace with that a long time ago. Or told himself he had.

The morning skate had the half-focused energy of mid-January, the stretch when games blurred together. They’d won four of their last five. Unless the Syndicate completely fucked off, they were not only in playoff contention, but they’d hopefully secure home-ice advantage. Coach ran them through breakouts and shifting combinations, barking corrections Patrick had internalized two reps ago. His legs felt good and his edges were sharp. He liked practice more than games, sometimes, because the structure was clean and the work was honest. Do the drill, read the play, make the pass. No crowd noise out here, no moments where instinct overrode the plan.

They finished with a scrimmage. Patrick read a forward’s hips, stepped into the lane, and killed the play before it reached the net. Kovacs, the third-line forward with the quick release and worse hands, caught the loose puck on the boards and tried to dangle through two defenders. He lost it, recovered, and threw a low shot that the goalie kicked aside. Kovacs tapped Patrick’s shinpad on the way past, the gesture of a man who acknowledged a good defensive read without needing to say so. They’d been doing that exchange for three years. Barlow blew it dead a few shifts later.

“That’s time,” he called. “Save the hard stuff for Nashville. Two days out. I want legs under you, not bruises.”

Dev dropped onto the bench beside him, base layer still on, dark hair damp against his forehead. He drank from his water bottle without speaking. They’d shared a wall for three seasons and never once made small talk. Some guys needed the room loud. Patrick and Dev needed the opposite.

“You stepped up on the rush twice in the scrimmage,” Dev said finally. “Gap was good.”

“Felt good.”

“Don’t let Barlow see you enjoying yourself.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He showered until the hot water worked into the knot between his shoulder blades, the one that had lived there since a boarding call in Columbus three weeks back. He was built for the position, broad through the chest, thick in the legs, carrying weight that looked like nothing until a two-hundred-pound forward bounced off him in front of the net. The job had left marks, a scar across his left cheekbone from a high stick in juniors and a nose broken once and set clean.

He dressed and was in his car before most of the guys. The garage under the facility was cold enough to fog the windshield. He started the engine, let the heat run, and saw the missed call from his agent. He called back before he listened to the voicemail.

Marc Pelletier picked up on the second ring. “Patrick. How was practice?”

“Fine.”

“Articulate as always.” Marc had the practiced ease of a man who’d spent twenty years managing athletes who answered in monosyllables. “Listen, I want to get ahead of something. You’re going to hear more noise about Santa Fe.”

“I’ve been hearing noise about Santa Fe since September.”

“Media noise. Bloggers, mock drafts. This is different. The league’s announcing a formal timeline in the next few weeks. Protection lists due late June, expansion draft in July. The Zia Suns get one unprotected player off every roster.”

“I know how expansion drafts work, Marc.”

“I know you know. I’m telling you because the front office called me this morning. They wanted you to hear it from me. You’re in their plans. Cap’s tight, but they’ve run the numbers. They don’t want you getting in your head, worrying about your future in Chicago. It’s solid.”

A line of condensation tracked down the inside of the windshield. Overhead, the fluorescent lights hummed their flat note. Patrick wanted to believe Marc, but he knew better. Nothing in hockey was solid. Once you went pro, you stopped being a person and became a commodity. Right now, Chicago was talking a good game, but if his numbers flagged at all, he could still find his ass on a plane to New Mexico next summer.

“Okay,” Patrick said.