by Melanie Ting
She rolled her eyes. “I am. But if you just want to bitch, get a real problem. You play hockey for a living. It’s not brain surgery.”
“Unlike the movies? That’s really important stuff.” Usually I liked Josie exactly the way she was, but right now I wished she were more like a regular girlfriend—sympathetic and caring. Sunny was the only other girl I’d dated seriously, and she would have been making a big fuss once she saw how I worried I was.
Josie didn’t even answer. She put her pack back on and began walking away. Leaving was her answer to every problem. But seeing her disappear made me realize that I was being a huge idiot.
“Stop.” I grabbed my pack and ran after her. She didn’t turn around, so I had to catch up and spin her around. I held her in my arms. “I am so, so sorry. I’m stressed out and taking it out on you. And you’re the best thing in my day.”
She scowled at me. I tilted my head and kissed the straight line of her mouth. I gently nipped at her lips until I felt the stiffness in her body yielding to mine. Finally she put her arms around my neck, and kissed me back fully. This was more relaxing to me than any words.
Even after a long hike in the North Shore Mountains, I was still nervous and fidgety inside.
“You want to get dinner now?” Josie asked when we got to the trailhead.
“Naw, I want to go home, relax, and get prepped for tomorrow.”
She squinted at me, shrugged, and then turned away. “No problem. See you later.”
It wasn’t like I was trying to hurt her or anything, but Josie’s lack of a reaction really bugged me. I watched her as she fastened her helmet on, kicked her bike off the stand, and then mounted it and took off. She never even looked back at me.
If I could have caught her and changed my mind, I would have. Being with Josie would be more relaxing than being alone. But having been so irritable, I was now stuck with a long evening. I got in the truck and noticed that my dad had called. He would undoubtedly have a ton of advice for tomorrow.
The contrast between training with Tony and the Vice camp was like night and day. I shouldered my hockey bag and walked into an arena that looked like it was at least fifty years old. Not that it mattered, since some of the older arenas had the best ice, but I wondered if the management team would be old school as well. I certainly hadn’t heard anything good yet.
I was nervous whenever I walked into a dressing room for the first time. From when I was a kid trying out for rep hockey, every year I would push open that heavy door and wonder what was waiting for me. A great bunch of guys who would be my new best friends? Assholes who would bully the younger guys? Coaches who were nice guys or screamers?
The vibe in this room was fear—sweaty, stressed-out fear. A lot of these guys were just like me, and the Vice was their only chance to make the AHL.
There were some confident guys in the room too. The guys who knew they were going to make the team. At the AHL level, there were guys on two-way NHL contracts who were getting developed. The NHL team paid their salaries, so they were on the Vice for sure. These same guys would get called up during the year. And I wanted to be one of them more than anything. But first, I had to make the team.
The morning was pretty standard. Paperwork, fitness testing, and then lunch. Again the contrasts were striking. Whereas Tony’s fitness testing was exhaustive and input directly to a computer, here everything was clipboards and old-school measurements. We did Wingates again, but this time I managed not to barf. I was feeling really good and really strong after my hard training. And I could tell by the reactions of the assistant coach that my scores were very good.
Lunch was a bunch of carbohydrate crap that Tony would have kicked into the garbage. I managed to cobble together something half-healthy from the cafeteria options. I ended up sitting beside this young guy with wide eyes and a mess of brown hair.
“Hi, I’m Marcus Fox. My teammates call me Foxy.”
“Hey. Eric Fairburn.”
“You’re in great shape,” he told me. “You were killing those fitness evaluations.”
“Thanks.” Foxy was on the skinny side, but that could be deceiving. A lot of the leaner guys were speed demons on the ice. But size helped when you got hit or wanted to deliver hits.
Foxy told me he had played in the ECHL last year, but he was hoping to make the A this season. He was a couple of years younger than me, and this was his first tryout.
“You’ve done this before, right?”
I nodded. But it wasn’t exactly the same. Before I was under contract to an NHL team. I was one of the confident, can’t-miss guys. This time, I had a lot to prove. “I played a season and a half in the A before.”
“So, you got any advice for me?”
I shook my head. This guy was so naïve that he was asking me straight up for help. I lowered my voice. “Well, first off—it’s not like a regular team. Don’t forget, you’re in competition with everyone here. So you probably shouldn’t be asking me for advice. What if I steered you wrong—just to get rid of you?”
His eyes widened. “Shoot. I never thought of that. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
I laughed. “No, I wouldn’t. My advice would be—no hot-dogging.”
“What do you mean? We have to show how good we can be, don’t we?”
I nodded. But if you were a big show-off, nobody wanted to play on a line with you. Everyone else wanted to look good too. So it was better to play well, but in a subtle way. The coaches would notice things like your work rate, how you made your line better, your defensive play, and your assists—so scoring pretty goals wasn’t as big a deal. Of course, I had a rep as an offensive player, so I’d have to score the goals too. It was going to be a difficult balance, but I was looking forward to it. It was satisfying to play games that counted after all this training.
“You want to look good, but make the players around you look good too. That way they’ll pay you back,” I explained. Nobody would sabotage you in what was essentially a team game. But good players could do subtle things to make you look bad.
He looked worried now. I gave him a little shove.
“Forget it, Foxy. Just relax and you’ll be fine.”
Having someone around who was more nervous than me was calming. After lunch, we got dressed and went out on the ice. In the morning, we’d been divided into groups, but now I could see that there were about 40 guys here. Shit. That meant that almost half of us were getting cut. I hoped like hell that my invitation to camp hadn’t been some big favour for my agent or my coach in Switzerland. But I wouldn’t be able to tell until we began our drills and scrimmages.
The head coach had been around during the fitness testing, but he was mainly observing and not saying much. Now he was centre ice, and everyone’s eyes were on him.
Robert Pankowski was a big beefy man with a red face. Thanks to my new stalking skills, I’d looked him up online already. He had played two seasons in the NHL, as a forward for the Flyers. Since then, he’d been working his way up the coaching ladder—first in junior, then the AHL. This was his first AHL head coaching job, and he’d been here for two seasons already.
“Okay, boys. We’re putting together a systems team. We’re going to be looking for players that can play a two-way game, so keep that in mind. I want to see hustle at both ends of the rink.
“This is how it’s going to go. We’ve got a big group, so we’re doing some initial evaluations, and the first set of cuts will be on Wednesday or Thursday. Then another set next Monday. We have exhibition games the following weekend, and we’ll decide our final roster after those games.
“Questions?”
Nobody had any. The coach was pretty intimidating. He had been a tough guy when he played.
The assistant coaches, Ian Lee and J.P. Tellier, ran us through a series of increasingly complex drills. I felt fit, and my confidence kept growing. There were a few guys here who were no-hopers, but most of the guys were decent players. Foxy turned out to be speedy w
ith soft hands, and since he played right wing, I got to do a few line rushes with him. We worked pretty well together.
Just like in training, I could distinguish the NHL guys right away. Of course, unlike Bomber or Reeds, these were guys who had just gotten cut, so they weren’t quite as good. But they were the best players in camp.
I felt good though. I was right up with them, and my conditioning was excellent. Now that I could see everyone else, I had a better idea of where I stood, and things looked pretty positive.
We wrapped up after our afternoon session, and the coaches were huddling already. I got changed and headed home. I looked in the fridge, which was fully loaded. I’d done a big grocery shop, figuring I’d be exhausted this week. I wasn’t tired tonight though. I’d put in a full day’s work, and it had gone pretty well. But something was missing.
I picked up my phone and sent a text.
Hey beautiful. How about if your stupid boyfriend makes you dinner tonight?
I waited a few minutes, and then heard back.
Which stupid boyfriend?
I laughed. Josie wasn’t one to hold a grudge, but that didn’t mean I should keep pushing her. The one who acted like a brat when you took him on a great hike yesterday.
Oh, you mean Eric. What’s for dinner?
Chicken, brown rice, grilled veggies, quinoa salad.
And…?
Dessert?
I’ll be over in an hour.
I’d have to go out and buy some dessert, but I had time. Time enough to change my bed sheets too. Now that I was over my initial nerves, I wanted to relax in the best way—with Josie.
13
Island of the Misfit Toys
Tweeeeeeet!
“Okay, ladies. Once more—but this time, give it some goddamn effort.”
Coach Panner turned out to be an old-school coach who yelled and insulted us all day long. Although I liked him at the beginning, he turned out to be every bad thing that Dirk had said. Coach Panner reminded me of my first rep hockey coach, a guy who was always on the brink of a heart attack because he screamed his way through every game.
“Fairburn! Harder. Pretend you care.”
It was weird that he was calling me out. Thanks to my work with Tony, I was skating well, maybe the best I’d ever skated. And having that extra fraction of a second to reach the puck was allowing me to see the ice better. Honestly, I seemed to be in better shape than pretty much everyone in camp. Coach Panner liked to skate us hard all morning and then see what we had left in the afternoon. I had plenty in the tank, but I could tell he wasn’t impressed.
The assistant coach working with the forwards was Ian Lee. He, on the other hand, really liked coaching me. He liked to dream up fairly complicated plays that had half the guys crashing into each other, but I enjoyed trying something creative.
“Man, you’re good.” Foxy skated up beside me on the boards. “Have you ever played up in the show?”
I shook my head. I’d never even come close.
We finished our drills and then went to change for dryland work. Afterwards we were milling around in the hall, waiting for the head trainer.
“Eric! Over here.” A big dark-haired guy called me over. He was a skilled centreman, but I hadn’t played on his line yet.
“I’m Daniel Ramsey,” he told me, holding out his hand for a firm shake. He had a friendly smile and a relaxed way about him. But if he was the captain, Dirk had warned me about him. “You’re looking good out there. It’s nice to get some fresh blood into camp.”
The guys around him nodded and introduced themselves. Everyone seemed to have played for the Vice last season. They had a confidence that new tryouts like me were lacking.
“Where’d you play last year?” Daniel asked me.
“Swiss A League,” I said, and he nodded.
“You got some skills. We could use a finisher around here. Your last name’s Fairburn, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The way you skate, we should call you Burner. Short for Fairburn, get it?”
And thus, I got yet another nickname. Some guys kept the same names throughout their careers, but I seemed to get a new one every time I changed teams, which was pretty frequently. Daniel’s was the more predictable “Rams.” He was really friendly, and I wondered if Dirk had been mistaken.
The first few days in camp, I’d been acutely aware of a sense of competition and mistrust—like what you’d expect if you threw one piece of meat into a den of lions. Every player was pitted against each other. I missed the friendly team atmosphere of normal hockey.
Once Rams took me under his wing, things seemed to go a lot more smoothly. He tipped me off about a few of Coach Panner’s pet peeves, and I felt accepted into the gang of last year’s players. I relaxed and felt better out on the ice.
Good thing too, because as the finale to each day, Coach Panner went around the room and basically tore into every single guy in the room.
“One thing you better learn from day one is that we play a system here. That system is defence first. If you want to show off your fancy-ass moves like Fairburn here, you should look for a new fucking place to play. We play as team here, and everyone better buy into the two-way game!”
That was kind of confusing. When I looked at last year’s stats, it was clear that the Vice needed more scoring. It was great to be defensive, but you weren’t going to win games with zero goals. I had good hands, and I was hoping that was what I could bring to the team. Coach Panner wanted me to think defence, but Coach Lee wanted me to stay high.
The huge guy sitting beside me in the dressing room seemed unaffected by the coach’s outburst.
“Did you play here last year?” I asked him, and he nodded.
“I’m Devo—Marty Devonshire.” We shook, and his ham-sized hand enveloped mine. I introduced myself.
“Are things always like this?” I asked in a low voice. This was the quietest room I’d ever been in. Outside of Rams bragging about some chick he had bagged last night, everyone was silently getting changed. That undertone of nervous tension remained.
Devo smiled. “You got plans now?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t exactly sure when we’d finish up today, so I hadn’t arranged to see Josie.
“Let’s grab dinner. I’ll fill you in.”
I expected a big guy like Devo to suggest a burger joint or steakhouse, but instead we went to a little Vietnamese restaurant. He ordered a lot of food though. I had salad rolls and a big bowl of pho.
“You’re a pretty good player,” Devo told me. “So, what’s your issue?”
“My issue? Well, I guess it’s that I already had a go-round in the A, and I messed it up.”
He nodded. “In case you haven’t noticed, Vice camps don’t exactly draw the cream of the cream.” He bit into a spring roll. “Yum. I love Asian food. Anyway, all the teams in AHL have an affiliation with an NHL team, right?”
“Yeah. Don’t the Vice have one with the Canucks?”
“Well, kinda. Everything went great until two years ago, when Vince Richardson died. The Richardson family owns the team, so his brother, Thomas, took over. Tom Richardson is a greedy guy, and he wanted a better deal. He played chicken with the wrong guys and ended up with nothing.”
“But the Canucks own the rights to some players?” My agent had mentioned that.
“Yeah. A few. But there’s been so much bad blood that they’ve started loaning players to other teams. It’s not ideal for them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they switch their AHL affiliation soon. The biggest problem for us is that our team can’t compete when we don’t have an NHL team covering part of our salary pool.”
Devo was a smart guy. He was so big and quiet it was easy to underestimate him.
“So, the Vice gets stuck with players that nobody else wants?” I asked. That was certainly true for me.
He nodded. “Anyone who won’t complain about his salary. Take our starting goalie for example. Bloc’s a good player
, but he’s got off-ice issues. He’s going through a court case right now. If it gets resolved, maybe he can focus on his game, but meantime, he’s all over the place.”
“What did he do?”
Devo frowned. “Domestic dispute. He’s pushed his wife out of the house and locked her out.”
“Is that a crime?” It seemed stupidly cruel, but unless it was in freezing weather how was that a crime?
“She was naked at the time.”
I made a face, and Devo nodded. “Yeah, sometimes it’s tough to go to war for these guys. They’re your teammates, but man, I’d rather play with guys I respected—even if they were crappy players.”
“How did you end up here?”
“Got traded here last February. I’m on a cheap AHL contract, and they needed someone big with a few skills. We’ll see how long it lasts.”
I nodded. Teams in the A were mandated to develop players, so your time in the league had an end date—usually after three seasons of pro hockey. If you were really good, they might keep you after that, but most guys were pretty young. I was already one of the older rookies at camp. If I even was a rookie, since I’d played over two seasons of pro. This really was my last chance.
“What about the coach? Is he always like that?”
Devo nodded. “Yeah, he’s pretty tough. But he’s fair, he hates everyone equally.” He laughed, and our main courses arrived.
After a few minutes of concentrated eating, we started talking about more pleasant stuff. He was from Saskatchewan, and he reminded me of a lot of straightforward prairie guys I’d played with. He was a huge guy and he obviously played an enforcer role on the team. But like a lot of those guys, he was gentle and thoughtful. To me, one of the ironies of the games was that the smallest guys were usually the biggest S.O.B.s, because they’d had to fight for every moment of playing time. Whereas the biggest guys were often the smart, strategic guys who only fought as a last resort.
“So, what’s it like playing for the Vice? I’ve heard some bad stuff.”
He shrugged. “I only got here late last season. The room’s kinda divided. I stay out of team politics and do my own thing.” He paused and seemed to be on the verge of saying more, but then shook his head. “I don’t want to prejudice you, you might find things different.”
