Page 10 of Rookie Recovery

Maybe he was just a seventy-five-point-five percent alcohol by volume induced hallucination.

Nobody that perfect existed in real life.

Most of the guys were in the weight room when I finally reached Bobcat’s HQ.

Rowan, the team’s resident bad boy, was stewing on the bench on his own. His knuckles wrapped in hockey tape. All black clothes and dark hair and muscles and moody, brooding scowl. I was aware of his reputation from my time in the pro circuits. He was a gloves-off before the face-off type of guy.

Luckily, I’d never been on the receiving end of his fury. Unlike my teammate—ex-teammate—Gus, who in retrospect went that extra mile simply to piss Rowan off. I was glad, however, to be on the same side as him now. To have the weight of the legendary MacKenzie throw-downs in my corner.

He nodded his unaffected Cool Guy greeting to me, and I replied with a standard British, “Alright, mate.”

Zac was spotting Aaron, who was doing deadlifts on the mat. Not that he needed spotting, of course, but I already got the sense Zac and Aaron came and went as a pair, so whatever Aaron was doing, Zac wouldn’t be far behind. And vice versa. If Aaron was doing deadlifts on the mat, Zac was ‘spotting’. Or perhaps he was simply enjoying the view. Couldn’t say I blamed him.

Aaron was the typical floppy blonde haired, all-American, prom-king type of gorgeous. He was also the team captain, which, IMHO, was a tad too obvious. But whatever, not my call.

JJ and Rainer stood next to the dumbbells rack, looking at something on Rainer’s phone.

JJ, a defensemen, was the opposite to Rowan’s patented ‘go Hulk or go home’ brand of skating. He almost seemed too nice. He was the first to welcome me to the team, the first to show me around, the first to … insist I neck the one-million-abv shots last night. Hmm.

Niklas Rainer, I still wasn’t sure about. Other than he was cute, with his ginger beard and flannels and general lumbersexual vibes, but he was also straight straight straight.

“He rises!” JJ yelled as I walked in to greet them all, only twenty-five minutes late. He held out his hand, and Rainer reluctantly slapped a twenty into it.

“Bro, none of us expected you to show up today,” Aaron said, stepping away from the trap bar.

“We’re literally here on a Sunday because of Bowie,” Rowan said, in a way that sounded like he was pissed off, yet the casual use of my nickname did warm fuzzy things to my insides.

Bowie, not Archie. Not Bowman.

“Training camp’s in a couple of weeks. I expect Coach Turner just wants to see what he’s working with,” I said, hoping to God I came across as someone who’d been through the mill a couple of times, and not the pathetic, homesick, rookie I felt like.

I wasn’t a rookie, though. I’d been skating for thirteen years and playing hockey in one of its various forms, ice, field, roller, for much longer. But it was easy to feel like a rookie compared to all my teammates. Guys that had grown up suckling the teats of ice hockey, the sport pulsating in their blood, who’d dreamt of nothing else their entire lives but playing pro.

For me, growing up in a tiny rural village in the middle of Wiltshire, England, there weren’t a lot of ice-based activities that didn’t involve racing my brothers down the hillside on milk crates once every two to three years when it snowed for a day. On my birthday one year, Harry, my second eldest brother, gave me an old pair of Bauer skates. They were his friend’s, who’d asked for them one Christmas but never used them and subsequently grew out of them.

I was twelve. And I was instantly addicted.

Sometimes on Saturdays, if it fit around my brothers’ rugby schedules, Mum would drive me to Swindon ice rink, and I would skate until they kicked me out. I taught myself how to stop, how to skate backwards, how to go really fast, how to transition, crossover, pivot. When I got older, I’d hitch lifts. With friends’ parents, with neighbours, with other village adults who felt sorry for the poor neglected middle Bowman child. I may have laid it on thick. Eventually, I started catching the bus on my own.

And sometimes in January and February, when the weather dropped to its predictable Bleak Mid-Winter temperatures, the fields behind Mum and Dad’s would flood and freeze over, and I could get out to skate. Of course, the fields belonged to Alan Whitmore, the local dairy farmer, so as well as dodging cracks and suspicious puddles and errant branches spearing my ramshackle rink, I also had to dodge thawing cow shit and tetanus-laced rusty farm equipment. Worth it though.

I didn’t realise a career in pro-hockey could be a thing for an ordinary Brit like me until about halfway through my first year at uni—and my first year with the Bulldogs—when they offered me the ‘A’ patch for my jersey.

It was always meant to be rugby.

My brothers all played rugby. For big teams, too. Gloucester, and Wasps, and Cardiff. Olly even played for team England at the Six Nations one year. But rugby hadn’t been my dream.

There was no question of whether I enjoyed it. I loved it. The scrappiness, the mud, the huge, huge men. It was more a case of not being very good at it.

And I’d never been academically minded either. The main reason I studied philosophy, because ultimately, would it matter if I got a first, or a 2-2?

As it turned out, I didn’t need to finish the final year of my degree. One night, while playing a Bulldog’s away game in London, I was scouted.

Some fancy big wig with a suit and tie, a preposterous American accent, and a mouthful of gum, told me he wanted to sign me to his team, and asked for my agent’s details.

I had laughed in his face, so sure was I that it’d all been a prank. Agent? For real?

But no, he was serious. So, with the help of my brothers, I hired agents (one for the UK, one for the USA), applied for the necessary visas (B-1, then P-1), packed up and shipped over what few belongings I had, said goodbye to Mum, Dad, my brothers, and Farrell the kicky cat, and moved to the land of ridiculous portions, massive cars, incredible cinema, and very loud people.

---