Chapter Text
Faceoff. Noun. the start or a restart of play, in which the referee drops the puck between two opposing players.
“I don’t care where I play”: off-season trade sees Strand move to Dallas
By Marjan Marwani
Tyler Kennedy ‘TK’ Strand (C) is 28 years old and has played for eight different NHL teams in the decade since he was drafted (first round, to the Calgary Flames in 2011). I won’t sugarcoat it, that is a lot of teams, especially for someone as skilled as Strand.
It’s not uncommon for fourth-liners to bounce around, sent back and forth across the country in exchange for draft picks or pinballing in and out of farm teams, but Strand is no fourth-liner. He is an intense, scrappy Center with a deadly left-handed shot, incredible bursts of speed on break-aways, and stick-handling prowess that a coach’s dreams are made of. He scored an impressive 25 goals in his first year with Calgary, beating eventual Calder winner Gabriel Landeskog on that front (although Landeskog scorched Strand in overall points, his assist total was nearly double. More on that later.) And yet, Calgary only kept him for another half-year, trading Strand for a veteran defenseman and a third round draft pick in January 2013. Then General Manager Brian Burke was famously tight-lipped about his reasoning for a deal that seemed, to many, shockingly uneven and in which trading partner Steve Yzerman of the Tampa Bay Lightning seemed the clear victor.
In the years since, it hasn’t been nearly as difficult to figure out why an interim GM would have so eagerly traded away a star rookie who was putting points on the board and W’s on the scorecard.
Strand played the balance of the 2013 season with the Lightning, before Yzerman traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs. That deal was admittedly a little more balanced; Strand went for two forwards whose talents added together were at least equal to his alone. Still, it was strange. Tampa didn’t have an amazing season that year, but Strand put up impressive numbers and salary cap issues seemed nonexistent. Yzerman, similarly, was hesitant to provide a solid reason for sending a star away so soon after acquiring him.
Strand went to Anaheim after Toronto, then Vancouver, Winnipeg (the site of an infamous locker-room brawl with former defenseman Dustin Byfuglien), St. Louis, and then finally Pittsburgh. He has rarely played an entire season with the same team, and his status as a frequent-flier has become something of an industry joke. It’s not uncommon at the trade deadline to hear a reporter amusedly wonder where Strand will be sent this time. At this rate, he could have blown through nearly half the teams in the league by the time he’s 30.
And now, he’s on his way to Dallas. I caught up with Strand via telephone at his home in Denver last week. He doesn’t have to sell it because he never owned it; Strand informed me that he has stopped purchasing property when he gets to a new city because he never knows how long he’ll be in it. I asked him if he’s excited to play in Dallas, and in a somewhat bored-sounding voice, he informed me, “I don’t care where I play. I just want to be on the ice.”
I’m not going to put words in his mouth and tell you that I know for sure that response is synonymous with ‘no’. I will tell you that when I asked if he’d ever been to Texas, he told me that he hadn’t and didn’t elaborate, and that our phone interview was very brief and not particularly informative.
The problem with TK Strand, to put it regrettably bluntly, is that people just don’t like him. At 5’10 he is smaller than the average NHLer these days and he makes up for that – or possibly deflects from it – by being a mosquito on the ice, buzzing around and getting under everyone’s skin. He is always deep in the scrum at the crease. He has a habit of tapping the sticks of goaltenders with his own, clearly trying to knock it out of their hands and get away with it. Sometimes he does, and when he doesn’t, he argues all the way to the penalty box. He has a fighting record that is either impressive or concerning, depending on how you look at it, often initiating conflict with players who are much larger than him and skating off toward the locker room with blood on his face and a smirk on his mouth. He can be a selfish player, taking the puck up the ice by himself and ignoring calls for passes from teammates, leading to a consistent disparity in goals-scored vs assists. He has a history of dirty hits and has been fined by the league more than a few times for collisions the Department of Player Safety has deemed intentional and dangerous.
That sort of player is not the worst thing to have – when they’re on your team. The league is full of them, from Nazem Kadri to Brad Marchand to Tom Wilson. They can be incredible playmakers, they can fire up a listless game with a few well-aimed punches, they can frustrate elite players from opposing teams and render them ineffective. When a scrapper is working for you, players usually love them just as much as they despise playing against them. Strand knows his role and he plays it well. The issue surfaces when he turns that fire onto his own teammates, as has happened likely more than we know, because hockey players are famously stoic about these things and the press is not going to be informed about it every time a disagreement in a locker room turns physical.
We do know about a few. That time in Winnipeg I mentioned earlier; the whole story never came out, but there were rumors of notoriously no-nonsense Byfuglien throwing Strand’s street clothes into the shower after Strand tried to punch him. There are easily-accessible clips on YouTube of Strand shoving a member of his own team in Vancouver after a bad defensive play that likely cost them a game. Other teammates had to physically hold him back, right there on the ice and on national television, and Strand had been benched for two weeks in punishment for the embarrassment of it all. There are similarly available clips of various teammates over the years being asked about Strand at pressers after a game, resulting in either rolled eyes and tense non-answers, or people outright saying things like, “The guy is a dick.” Just a few weeks ago, the Penguins’ well-renowned nice-guy Kris Letang was asked about Strand’s latest trade away from Pittsburgh, and even he couldn’t entirely hide in his noncommittal answer that he wasn’t sorry to see the back of Strand.
Born in New York City in 1993, Strand’s life has not been devoid of hardships. His father, Owen, is a firefighter and was the only surviving member of his crew when the South Tower collapsed on 9/11. Strand, when asked, has angrily replied in more than one interview that he doesn’t talk about that – which, I will point out, is entirely his right. I’m glad that in more recent years, reporters have stopped asking. Strand’s mother, Manhattan litigator Gwyneth Morgan, was killed last year in a traffic accident. The league sent their heartfelt condolences in a Tweet, and Strand missed three games while attending her funeral, and then was back on the ice as fiery as ever. He has never publicly discussed the loss.
Strand is also openly gay. He is the first and only professional hockey player in the league to come out while still playing. He announced it relatively flippantly in an Instagram post two years ago, and if the rumors are true, has turned down multiple requests from the league to let them publicly drape him in rainbows and use him as a shield against the numerous, frequent, and long-standing accusations of institutional homophobia within the hockey world. I believe those rumors, and while it’s undeniable there would have been some merit in Strand allowing himself to be more of a public ambassador for the NHL’s You Can Play project, especially in terms of inspiring younger members of the LGBTQ community to not allow bullies to chase them away from organized sports – it is also undeniable that Strand’s sexuality is his own business and he is under absolutely no obligation to be a pawn in a PR campaign if he doesn’t want to be.
I don’t see a lot of use in speculating how Strand’s term in Dallas will unfold. It’s easy to assume he won’t be here long, because he’s never anywhere long, but it’s also not in anybody’s best interest for us to write him off before he’s even arrived. Strand is talented, despite all his issues. He’s quick on his feet, he’s a smart player when he’s not losing his temper, and his ability to undress a goalie has featured in many, many highlight reels over the last ten years. And you never know, there is always the possibility that he’s a troubled kid who just hasn’t found his home yet, and I am choosing to remain hopeful.
Carlos scrolls to the end of the article. He sees the staff photograph of Marjan at the bottom of the page, and recognizes her. She used to be part of the press pool. He remembers her pretty face and her kind voice, and the colorful scarves always tied in elaborate knots around her head. She used to ask decent questions, he recalls, better ones that just the annoying standard how do you feel about the loss?
He scrolls back up and scans the article again, slowing down over a few parts. He’s certainly aware of TK Strand, has played against him more times than Carlos could possibly have kept track of. He wasn’t aware the man had cycled through quite this many teams. His reputation as a hot-head and an agitator precedes him, but there are dozens of players like that in this league. Carlos has never considered Strand to be significantly worse than any of the rest of them, but maybe he just wasn’t paying close enough attention. The person described in the article doesn’t exactly sound like someone Carlos should be thrilled to have as a new teammate.
Carlos kicks his feet up onto his coffee table and reclines, leaning back further into his sofa. He tips his head back onto the top of the cushions and closes his eyes. To his left, the air conditioner kicks on and disrupts his quiet. He needs a new home, probably. His downtown loft is old and the appliances are all starting to go. The dishwasher has been leaking a little the last few weeks. He could just replace them, but it would feel a little silly to put a new dishwasher into a place that needs too much other work. He should just sell this place as-is and buy a home closer to the arena. A few guys have places in Preston Hollow, and Carlos has been to their expansive houses and they’re very nice. He isn’t exactly hurting for cash. The problem, Carlos knows, is that he would feel even more alone than he already does if he was the sole living thing haunting a six bedroom mini-mansion. He’d feel way too small to sleep by himself in a king sized bed, he’d walk past empty bedrooms wishing they were filled, he might end up losing it a little and getting way too many dogs just to have some company in cavernous halls.
His phone vibrates on the couch beside him. Carlos opens one eye and cranes his neck a little to look down at it. The ID on the lit up screen says Paul Strickland. Carlos smiles a little and reaches for it.
“Hey,” he answers.
“Hey there, superstar,” Paul’s cheerful voice says. “How’s my favorite client?”
“Can I find out who else you manage and tell them you said that?”
Paul laughs. “Please don’t. I didn’t mean it, I say that to everyone.”
“I figured.” Carlos laughs too.
“Psyched for the start of the season?”
“Yeah, always,” Carlos answers enthusiastically. “I go a little crazy in the summers.”
“How’s your family?”
“Good.” Carlos feels himself smiling again, remembering the month he spent at his parents’ ranch over July and August. His mother had fed him way too well, he’d helped his father with the young calves that had been born in the spring, he’d gone out with one of their four horses nearly every morning. Carlos loves his job but he’s never more at peace than when he’s on horseback in the hilly woodlands as the sun is coming up.
“Good, that’s good. Let me know when they want to come watch you play this year, I’ll take care of tickets and a hotel room and all that.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“I was talking about your portfolio to our in-house accountant last week, there are some new investments he wants to discuss with you at some point, doesn’t have to be immediately but maybe we could get you in for a meeting before the season starts.”
Carlos nods. He’s so hopeless when it comes to anything financial, Paul is worth every penny Carlos pays him when it comes to just that, let alone everything else he helps with, the things Carlos knows about and the stuff that gets quietly handled completely outside of his notice. “Sure, that sounds good. Is that why you’re calling?”
“Partly.” There is noise in the background; other voices, and then the sound of Paul closing a door to block them. “Also just wanted to connect ahead of training camp, see how you’re doing. See if you need anything.”
“I’m good.” Carlos stretches, pointing his toes momentarily and then relaxing again. “First practice is next week. I’m excited to see everyone again, and meet the new guys.”
“You saw about TK Strand?” Paul’s voice is quiet, suddenly, and serious in a way that makes Carlos nervous.
“What’s his deal?” Carlos asks.
“I don’t totally know,” Paul answers. “I mean, people talk. Apparently he’s just kind of a dick. I put some feelers out and tried to find out if it’s more than that, but if it is, no one wants to say so.”
“Is that really all it is, though? I can think of a handful of guys just off the top of my head that have a reputation for being a pain in the locker room, and they haven’t bounced around as much as Strand has. Especially considering how good he is.”
“It’s unusual, that’s for sure,” Paul agrees.
“Great,” Carlos mutters. “So, half my job this year is gonna be babysitting a problem kid who the rest of the class doesn’t like.”
“Can I make a suggestion? Outside the scope of my duties as your manager?”
“Sure.”
“Reach out to him, before camp starts. If he’s already got a rep for being a troublemaker, he’s probably gonna come in hot, knowing everyone already thinks shitty things about him. Maybe he could find a way to chill out a little if he feels like he’s actually getting a fresh start.”
Carlos nods, and mulls that over in his mind. It isn’t a terrible idea.
They chat for another few minutes, about Paul’s wife and daughter, about a few GM changes in the league, about nothing really at all but it’s nice to catch up. When Carlos hangs up, he stares at the home screen of his phone for a minute or two. Deciding to take Paul’s advice, he swipes to the second page of apps and finds Instagram. Carlos has an account but he almost never uses it. He purposely put it on the second page so he wouldn’t be tempted to waste away the hours scrolling through things he doesn’t really care about, late at night when he can’t sleep.
He types Strand’s name into the search bar. He has no idea whether the guy is on here, but gives it a shot anyway and does find a verified account that seems to be him. Most players Carlos follows have a shot of themselves mid-stride on the ice as their profile picture. Strand’s, when Carlos clicks on it to get a closer look, is an artistic shot of the Brooklyn Bridge with streams of sunlight shining through it. He glances briefly through the posts. There aren’t many of them. A few more photographs of what he assumes is New York City. A selfie with a fluffy dog. The coming out post referenced in the article. A picture of Strand with an older man in a firefighter’s uniform, who looks a lot like him and who Carlos assumes must be his father. His stomach had churned uneasily when he was reading the article earlier, and had reached the part about Strand’s family.
Eventually Carlos clicks on the private message icon. He types and retypes a few times, reconsidering what he’s written more than he probably should. He rolls his eyes at himself for putting way too much thought into this and just sends the message.
Hey, man. Happy to hear you’re going to be joining us this year in Dallas. It’s a great city. When are you getting in? Let me know if you need anything, I could come get you at the airport if that’s not weird. Might be nice to see a friendly face in a new city.
Carlos cringes a little as he reads it over again, but it’s too late, it’s been sent. He stares again at the screen, not expecting his message to be answered right away, but then typing is indicated at the bottom of the page.
I’m already here, is all the message from Strand replies.
Carlos presses his lips together and waits, thinking there might be more. When there isn’t, his thumbs press out another message.
Ok. Well like I said, let me know if you need anything. If not I’ll see you next week
Strand sends back, Ok, and nothing else.
Carlos exhales and waits, and when that truly is the end of the conversation, he pushes his phone into the front pocket of his shorts and tips his head back against the couch, folding his hands over his stomach and closing his eyes. He’s not able to shut his brain down, and his attempts at the meditative techniques he’s been working on since last year aren’t working so he gets up and goes to his bedroom to change into shorts. Running usually works better than meditating, anyway.
Every arena Carlos has ever been in feels exactly the same.
He knows this one intimately, the practice facility in Frisco where he has spent a generous portion of his time for the last several years, and he knows the one in Victory Park where they play just as well, but it wouldn't matter. It wouldn’t matter if it were one of dozens of arenas he plays in throughout the continent, it wouldn’t matter if it was the community club in Austin where he learned to skate, it wouldn’t matter if it was a facility across the ocean where he’d played tournaments in Junior, it wouldn’t matter if it was a building he’d never stepped foot in before.
The air is crisp and feels icy when it’s inhaled into his lungs. It’s only September so it’s still sweltering outside in the Texas heat, but the temperature drops the moment he steps inside and it’s more than just the air conditioning. The cocktail of rubber flooring and Zamboni fluid makes up the familiar scent. The sounds, male voices echoing off the rafters and the noisy scrape of blades on the ice. If Carlos closes his eyes, he could be anywhere in the world. He could be in China or Finland or Germany. If he found a hockey arena, it would feel just the same.
It would feel like home.
He hears someone shouting his name over the din, “Reyes!” called loudly from the mess of guys already on the ice below. Carlos is standing with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder at the top of the bowl of seats, surveying the stands and rink below him like a king surveying his lands from the top of a castle tower. There’s no ego in it – at least, Carlos hopes there isn’t. This is his house and his team because he’s their Captain, and caring for them is his job.
When he looks down, he sees Jake Oettinger, their starting goalie, waving cheerfully up at him. Carlos grins and waves back. A few of the others already on the ice – Riley Damiani, an excitable young Center, and Ryan Suter, a veteran defenseman – join in, all hollering at him like overzealous soccer moms. Carlos cracks up. He enjoyed his time off but he’s stoked to see them again, and to be back in this place. Training camp always has an anticipatory buzz to it. They’re all beginning something new together, even though it’s the same thing they began together the year before and the year before that. The end goal is the same. The journey along the way is always new and exciting. He’s been training just to keep himself in shape but he hasn’t been on the ice in three months, and he can’t wait.
Carlos turns back, exiting the stands and heading down the long hallway toward the staircase that will take him to the dressing rooms. He finds his locker, drops his bag down and starts to get changed. He kicks off his sneakers and toes them into a cubby below the seat, and his t-shirt is halfway over his head when he hears, “Papi Carlos!” exclaimed behind him, with an exaggeratedly rolled R.
Carlos feels his face break into another smile, and turns to see Tyler Seguin grinning at him, wearing hockey pants and little else, his dozens of tattoos stark on his bare chest in the harsh lighting of the room.
“Hey, man,” Carlos returns. Tyler crosses the room, bouncing a little like an excited puppy, and pulls Carlos into a rough, tight hug.
When he pulls out of it, he cups Carlos’s face in his hands. “Missed this handsome mug,” he says, and Carlos snickers and shoves him away.
“He slapped my ass before he even said hello to me,” Jamie Benn remarks, appearing when Tyler moves out of the way. They’re his Alternate Captains, and they’re on the first line together, so Carlos is closer with the two of them than with anyone else he plays with.
Carlos greets Jamie, as well, who shakes his hand in a friendly, but much less overtly familiar way. Jamie’s always been more professional. Tyler is a little bit wild, but Carlos loves them both.
“I missed you!” Tyler protests, dropping his arms dramatically down to his sides and looking to Carlos for back-up. “How am I the asshole, just for missing my best friend? He was in Toronto for a few nights in July and I had to beg him to come hang out with me.”
“I don’t know about beg, you asked me once,” Jamie argues, rolling his eyes.
Carlos laughs and lets the warmth of it flood over him. He doesn’t really want to be on Tyler’s side, just on principle, but he missed them too. Half the team is Canadian, and the rest of them are scattered around the country or overseas, and it’s all a long way from Texas.
“I missed you guys, too, while we’re being sappy about it,” Carlos tells them.
Tyler puts on a face, clapping a hand to his bare chest and pretending to sniffle pathetically. “Sweetheart,” he simpers, and Carlos flips him off.
“Thanks for instantly making me regret it.”
Tyler cackles loudly and bounces again, bounding in toward the other two and yanking them into a group hug. “The dream team is back!” he crows, and Jamie groans in annoyance but neither of them pull out of the embrace until a noise near the door catches their attention.
Over Jamie’s shoulder, Carlos spots TK Strand standing in the doorway, with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and a pair of sunglasses up on the top of his head, pushing his brown hair back. He’s clean shaven, wearing a pair of fitted denim shorts and a plain white t-shirt. His eyebrows are raised slightly, taking in the sight of three grown men hugging in the middle of the room.
“I can come back,” he drawls, sounding bored.
“Give us 20 minutes,” Tyler says, turning back to them and lifting one of his legs.
“Get the fuck off me,” Jamie cracks up, extracting himself from their arms and roughly shoving a snickering Tyler away.
“You guys are unbearable,” Carlos tells them, ignoring a kissy-face from Tyler and walking over to greet their new teammate. He holds his hand out. “Hey, I’m Carlos. Welcome, good to meet you.”
Strand takes his hand and shakes it, briefly but firmly. “TK.”
“Come on in.” Carlos waves him into the room. Gesturing to the other two, he begins, “This is – ”
“I know who they are,” Strand interrupts.
Carlos watches a small frown overtake Jamie’s face, and he can tell from Tyler’s expression that the man is biting back something snippy he’d really like to say in response.
“Welcome to Dallas,” Jamie says politely, Canadian manners unavoidable even when someone isn’t necessarily deserving of them, shaking Strand’s hand as Carlos had.
“Thank you,” Strand says. It isn’t sarcastic, but it isn’t exactly warm, either. More than anything he looks suspicious.
“We’ll leave you to your tour,” Tyler says to Carlos, his eyes flashing a little once he’s turned away from Strand enough that only Carlos sees the expression on his bearded face.
“See you on the ice,” Carlos tells him. He tries to communicate be nice with his own eyes, but he doubts he accomplishes it.
They both quickly pull on the rest of their pads and their practice jerseys, and they head out and down the hallway and Carlos is left alone with Strand.
“Uh, your cubby is just over here,” Carlos says, leading him across the room to a corner where he’d noticed Strand’s name when he first came into the room. “We probably need to get out there, but after I can show you around the building. We spend a lot of time here, there’s a weight room, a kitchen, a sauna, all that shit.”
“Okay.” Strand lifts his bag off his shoulder and sets it on the bench. Within the half-walls of his cubby, his padding hangs on metal hooks. There is a gray practice jersey hanging on one side, and Strand lifts it off the hook and spreads it out in his hands so he can see his last name printed on the back.
“Number nine,” he says quietly, almost more to himself than to Carlos, who isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to respond. After a moment, Strand looks back at him. His eyes are clear and green, and framed by thick lashes. “I should get some kind of discount once I hit ten. You know, like buy nine coffees and get the tenth free.”
Carlos forces a laugh. Strand’s eyes flicker down to his mouth and then back up to his eyes, and then he looks away and focuses back on his jersey.
“Maybe you’ll end up sticking around here for longer than you think,” Carlos says, after too much time has passed and it’s bordering on awkward. He crosses the room back toward his own locker, lifting up his shoulder pads and fitting them on over his head.
“We’ll see,” Strand says, in a disinterested voice.
They dress in silence, not facing each other. Carlos tightens his skates sitting down on the bench and can see movement out of the corner of his eye but he resists looking up at it. From what he can see out of his peripherals, it looks like Strand is texting. When he’s ready Carlos does look up, and finds Strand fully dressed and sitting down, frowning at something on his phone.
“Ready?” Carlos asks, feeling badly about interrupting but not wanting to just walk out and leave Strand alone.
The other man looks up at him, and nods shortly. He shuts his phone off and slips it into a pocket of his bag before he stands up and follows Carlos out the door, grabbing his helmet as they go. Carlos shows him the rack halfway down the hallway where the sticks are kept, and Strand seems pleased to find his have been shipped on time and are here waiting for him. His fingers trail over the tops of a few and he selects one. Carlos notices the rainbow tape on the blade when Strand removes it from the rack and heads toward the rink without another word to Carlos.
Carlos watches him go and for a moment he just breathes. In for four, out for seven. He’s donned rainbow tape as well, during league-mandated inclusions initiatives. He’s worn the rainbow jerseys, he’s made the obligatory Instagram posts; he’s never done those things when everyone else wasn’t also doing them, though. Walking out into the first day of training camp with a new team with Pride tape, when there are no cameras here, no public, no social media likes or retweets to be gained, is a statement.
It’s a statement Carlos himself has never been brave enough to make.
He takes another deep breath, and then he grabs his own stick, a Bauer Supreme 3S Pro with boring, worn white tape, and heads for the ice.
Stepping onto it feels more like coming home than it does when Carlos arrives at his literal home after an exhausting road trip. All his other thoughts seem to dissipate the moment his skates touch the frozen ground and the cold hits his face. He glides for a moment, looking around the cavernous bowl from the bottom of it. Others slide past him, some of them waving at him or sending cheerful greetings in his direction. Carlos stops a few times to greet them, exchanging handshakes and high-fives and amicable questions about their summer break. Then he takes off and skates a couple of laps around the perimeter of the ice to warm up his legs. The wind makes his eyes water, and the familiar burn tingles in his thighs, and Carlos can’t keep the smile off his face.
He notices Strand as he’s rounding the end of his fifth lap, hovering on his own near one of the goal lines. Everyone else is grouped together in collections of three or four, chatting, laughing, teasing each other. Happy to see each other again. Jamie, Carlos notices, has found the handful of rookie players who have been invited to join them at camp in the hopes that they’ll make the regular roster. His hands are gesturing, pointing things out within their surroundings as he smiles at them, reassuring and big brotherly. That should have been Carlos’s job. Strand had thrown him off his rhythm. He’s pleased to see Jamie picking up his slack, and he sends a grateful nod in the man’s direction as he passes them. He’ll introduce himself to the new kids later, after practice. Maybe he’ll take them out for dinner one night this week, make them feel welcome. He’d done that last year, and it seemed to have been appreciated.
For now, Carlos heads toward Strand instead. Green eyes watch him approaching, a wary expression on his face. “Can I introduce you to some people?” Carlos asks him.
Strand’s lips press together. Carlos can almost see it all playing out on his face – he can see the snarky comments that are being held back, because Carlos is being nice, welcoming, and it’s not so easy to be rude to someone like that. It’s some of Carlos’s mother’s favorite advice, to fight nastiness with kindness. If only to catch them off guard, she’d add, with her dark eyes twinkling.
“If you want to,” Strand answers eventually. “But I studied the roster. I know everyone’s name.”
Carlos considers him. Strand is clearly not expecting he’ll be here for long, but he still has to spend at least a few months on this team, and Carlos can’t understand why he wouldn’t want to make the best of it while he’s here.
“Okay, pop quiz, then,” he says, trying to turn it into a joke so hopefully Strand will stop standing here looking like he isn’t even remotely excited to be here. Carlos points across the ice. “Who’s that?”
“Alex Petrovic,” Strand says, of the intimidatingly tall defenseman.
“Hm, not bad.” Carlos scans around the rink and points to another, an older, bearded man. “Him?”
“Who the hell wouldn’t know Joe Pavelski,” Strand deadpans, “at least make me work for it.”
Carlos grins at him, expecting to see Strand smiling back because he thought they had a bit of friendly banter going, but Strand is staring straight ahead with a flat expression and lifeless eyes. Carlos frowns, and the empathetic person that lives inside him wants to ask him what’s wrong, but then there is a commotion at the other end of the rink that draws their attention.
The coach explodes onto the ice with a big smile on his face, skates on his feet and an emerald green Stars sweatshirt over his rounded belly. Everyone cheers and bangs their sticks against the surface of the ice, and Carlos abandons Strand and skates over to join the throng. He doesn’t look back to see if Strand is following him.
“Howdy, y’all!” Coach Ryder exclaims, his words bended by a thick Texas accent. “Welcome back!”
“Yeehaw!” Tyler shouts, lovingly mocking.
“I will yee your fuckin’ haw if you don’t put some respect on the great state of Texas,” the coach warns, sticking a playful finger and a wide grin in Tyler’s face.
“I genuinely don’t know what that means,” Tyler laughs, and Coach Ryder affectionately calls him a knucklehead.
“Is everybody ready to work?” he asks the group, and there are more banging sticks in response.
Out of the corner of his eye, Carlos can see Strand standing a ways away from everyone else, isolating himself.
Coach Ryder continues, clapping his hands together, “There are some unfamiliar faces in our midst. Some fantastic new prospects, our rookies, a few veteran players who come to us from elsewhere in this beautiful league. We will get better acquainted with all our new friends tomorrow at the team breakfast, as long as you don’t tell my wife I made you run passing drills without making proper introductions first. But for today, let’s get the summer rust off those joints, get some sweat on you, what d’you say?”
Carlos whoops with the others, and the coach grabs a small handheld whiteboard from the boards next to the players bench and beckons everyone closer so he can map out the drill they’re going to start with. In the crowd, Carlos ends up with Joe on one side of him and Jake on the other, and he loses sight of Strand among the sea of helmets.
He showers quickly after the first practice is over, muscles already aching pleasantly in a way that suggests he won’t be too sore tomorrow. It’s always worse when he doesn’t feel it, after a workout. That always means when he wakes up the next morning he’ll be limping for the rest of the day. Carlos doesn’t turn around, but from somewhere behind himself he can hear laughter and it makes him smile. Voices bounce off the walls, echoing in the tiled room. He’s genuinely missed this. He was alone too much, over the summer. Being back here feels like getting his family back.
In the locker room, once he’s dressed in his street clothes once again and they are too, Carlos does find the rookies and introduces himself, welcoming them to the team and promising they can come to him with any questions or issues they might have. He remembers all too well what it was like to be 18 and brand new, and so intimidated by everything about his new surroundings. They smile shyly at him, and Carlos does his best to be warm and approachable, and walks away from the interaction feeling good about himself.
He notices Strand, alone in the corner of the room while everyone else is chatting and laughing in small groups, and Carlos tries to ignore it. He’d been nice, he’d been welcoming, and Strand had mostly rejected it. There’s no road map for this but Carlos thinks if there was, he’s already met his obligation. For a moment, he curls one hand into a fist, digging blunt fingernails into his palm. Then he rolls his eyes at himself, tells himself internally to stop overthinking it, and goes over across the room.
“Can I show you around?” he asks, pasting a smile onto his face.
Strand looks at him over his shoulder. His hair is still damp from the shower, parted on the left side and combed neatly across his head. Carlos bets he’s one of those annoying guys whose hair dries perfectly every time, while Carlos ends up looking like he’s wearing a clown wig if he doesn’t purposely style his.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Strand answers, in a tone of voice that suggests to Carlos he’s only saying that because it’s less awkward than just outright saying no. “I have to head out.”
Carlos nods, upholding their mutual façade. “Okay.”
Strand looks at him, green eyes studying him for just a second or two, and then he’s slinging his bag over his shoulder and he’s walking away toward the exit, and Carlos is left standing there feeling rejected even though he hadn’t really wanted to do what he’d been offering in the first place.
“This is gonna be interesting,” Jamie says quietly, to Carlos’s right.
Carlos looks at him, finding concern in his brown eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees.
He gets his own duffel bag, putting it over his shoulder and bidding goodbye to the few stragglers still in the room before he leaves it. He heads down the hallway, winding his way through the maze of corridors as he moves toward the door that will lead him back to his truck in the parking lot.
He doesn’t get very far, before a female voice is shouting his name obnoxiously. Carlos spins around, to see Nancy in a doorway he’d just passed by. Her hair is in a ponytail and her face is broken into a massive smile, staring at him from just outside her office.
“Babe!” she yells, and Carlos laughs loudly and jogs over to her.
He wraps his arms around her and picks her up off the ground, hugging her tightly. “Holy shit, I’m so happy to see you.”
“I missed you!” Nancy says, hugging him back just as tightly and then holding his face in her hands when he puts her back down.
Carlos smiles up at her. “I missed you more. How was your summer?”
“Good, but severely lacking in you,” she answers, shoving him ungently on the shoulder. “Is it bad taste to hope you get injured so you have to spend more time with me this year?”
“Yes!” Carlos cries. “Don’t put that karma on me.”
“Sorry,” Nancy says, not sounding sorry at all.
“Hi, Carlos.”
He looks over into the smiling face of Tommy, the resident MD. She comes over and kisses his cheek, and Carlos smiles back at her. Nancy beckons them into her office and they both follow her. She shuts the door behind them, and speaks in a conspiratorial whisper, even though they’re alone.
“So, what’s he like?”
Carlos is 99% sure he knows who she’s talking about, but he asks anyway, if only to seem like he isn’t already immersed in the gossip he’s sworn to himself only this morning that he would stay above.
“TK Strand,” Nancy clarifies, with a hard look that says she knows Carlos didn’t need to ask for it.
“I don’t really know,” Carlos says honestly. “It’s only the first day, I didn’t get to know him that well.”
“I feel a little bit sorry for him,” Tommy says, frowning matronly.
“I will reserve judgment.” Nancy exhales and shakes her head. Her ponytail bounces across her broad shoulders. “He comes with a lot of baggage, doesn’t he?”
Carlos nods. He doesn’t say it out loud, because it wouldn’t be fair, but he isn’t entirely thrilled at the prospect of having to convince everybody to be nice to someone who maybe doesn’t completely deserve it and probably wouldn’t do the same for anyone else.