Page 134 of Changing the Playbook
They deserve better than this.
Better than a captain who’s already got one foot out the door.
Something cracks inside me—not broken, exactly, but opening.
I stand. “I need to tell you something,” I say. “After this game, I’m done. I’m not entering the draft and this is my last game for Pine Barren.”
The reaction ripples through the room in slow motion.
Shock, confusion, disbelief painted across every face.
“What?” Maine’s voice breaks.
I force myself to meet their eyes. “I’m hanging up my skates after tonight.”
“But…” Kellerman looks lost, younger than his nineteen years. “You’re going to get drafted. You’re supposed to be our success story.”
“Not anymore.” The words sit heavy in my mouth. “I’m choosing… something else. Someone else.”
Nobody speaks.
I clear my throat, needing to fill the horrible silence. “You guys gave me everything when I couldn’t give anything back. When I was riding the bench in a walking boot, feeling sorry for myself, drowning, you still called me Captain. You still included me and made me feel like I mattered when I was useless.”
Nobody moves.
My voice catches, but I push through. “I owe you better than that garbage first period. I owe you everything I’ve got left. So the rest of this game isn’t about scouts or the draft or contracts or what comes next. It’s about us. This room. This brotherhood. I want to leave it all on the ice. One last ride.”
The quality of the silence shifts, transforms.
Maine stands first, quick and decisive. Others follow, one by one, until they’re all on their feet. There’s no battle cries or theatrical speeches, just quiet determination settling over us. I extend my hand, and they pile theirs on top. Twenty hearts beating with shared purpose.
“Devils on three,” I say. “One, two, three?—”
“DEVILS!”
The roar shakes dust from the ceiling, and for the first time tonight, something pierces the numbness. Not quite hope. Not quite happiness. But maybe enough. And when we burst back onto the ice for the second period, the rink feels different.
Not friendly—never home again—but familiar.
The puck drops, and everything changes.
I play with nothing left to lose.
When the opposition forward sets up in our zone, I drop to block a slap shot that catches me square in the thigh. Pain blooms immediate and vicious, tomorrow’s bruise already announcing itself, but adrenaline transforms it into fuel. The crowd roars approval, and I remember why I fell in love with hockey.
Two minutes later, I dig a puck out of a corner scrum that would make a rugby player wince. Someone’s stick catches me across the lower back—accident or intent, doesn’t matter. I stay upright through pure stubbornness, spinning away from the pressure, butfuckit hurts.
Thirty seconds later, Maine’s breaking toward the net with that sixth sense that makes him special, and I thread the pass through a forest of legs and sticks. He doesn’t hesitate. The goal horn blares, and Maine bee-lines straight for me. His glove crashes into mine hard enough to sting through the padding.
The bench erupts when we return.
Not because it was pretty or because scouts are watching.
Because we’re alive again.
Because we remembered why we play.
We’re possessed now, playing with the desperation of men who just remembered what they’re fighting for. Every check finished with authority. Every battle won. When Rook makes a spectacular glove save on a breakaway—full extension, like flying—he points his stick directly at me.
