Page 1 of Payback On The Ice

1

THEO

There are two stalls with the same name over them.

KOVAČ, black letters on a brass plate, right by the door where the leadership guys sit. Then KOVAČ again, one stall down.

The first one's full. Pads stacked against the back wall, blocker and glove on their hooks, a mask on the top shelf painted forest green with an iron lantern on each side. The second one is empty except for a home jersey on a hanger. Number four. Pressed. Somebody irons that thing.

I stop walking. I don't mean to.

"You're down at the end." The equipment guy doesn't look at me. He's built like a fire hydrant and his polo says DOUG. He points with a roll of tape. "By the showers."

"Great. Love a view."

He walks off.

There are twenty-six guys in this room in various stages of undress and every single one of them has stopped what he was doing. Someone's speaker is playing country. Someone reaches over and kills it.

So that's the welcome.

I walk the length of the room with my bag on my shoulder and my chin up. I've done worse walks. The tunnel at Harrow the night the video dropped. The hallway outside the athletic director's office, where my old captain passed me and didn't stop.

My stall's the last one, next to the laundry hamper. The nameplate is a strip of white athletic tape with LINDQVIST in Sharpie.

They spelled it right. That's almost sweet.

"Very custom," I say to nobody.

A big guy two stalls up, red beard, the kind of Minnesota neck you can't build in a gym, snorts and turns his back on me.

I sit. I unzip. I take my time, because the worst thing you can do in a room like this is look like you're in a hurry to disappear.

Then the door opens and the room changes again.

There's no sound. The air just changes, like pressure dropping. Guys sit up straighter. The red beard pulls his shirt on like his mom just walked in.

Dane Kovač comes in with two sticks under one arm and a coffee in his other hand.

I've watched him on tape for two years. Everyone in this conference has. Tape doesn't do it. He's six-two and built long, dark hair cut close, a face that looks like somebody carved it and refused to waste anything. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't look at anyone. He goes to his stall, the full one, sets the coffee down, sits, and rips the old tape off the blade of a stick in one long pull.

The sound fills the whole room.

I know what he's doing. I'd do the same thing. You make the new guy sit in the quiet until he cracks.

I don't crack. I lace my skates.

"Gentlemen."

Coach Halvorsen is barrel-chested, gray-haired, with a voice that could cut through a Zamboni. He stands in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips.

"Most of you know who this is. For anybody who's been living under a rock, that's Theo Lindqvist. Junior. Right wing." He lets it sit. "He's with us."

Nobody says anything.

"He's with us," Halvorsen says again, harder. "Kovač is running his integration. Ice times, team rules, traditions, all of it. What Dane says goes. Questions?"

"No, Coach." Dane doesn't look up from the stick.