Page 5 of Playmaker

That part wasn’t a surprise. This city took its sports seriously, and everyone was excited as hell to have a WHPL team. Pittsburgh had been putting in bids to the League since the inaugural year, and they’d finally been selected during the most recent expansion. I’d heard some of the other cities had been a bit more tepid in their receptions; the teams had played in front of near-sellout crowds, but the local media and sports culture just pretended they didn’t exist.

Not Pittsburgh. I’d come here during my first season for an exhibition game when the League was still feeling out cities for upcoming expansions. The crowd had been huge andwild, the hunger for women’s hockey palpable in ways it hadn’t been in other cities. When the League announced Pittsburgh would be part of the most recent expansion, I didn’t imagine anyone was surprised.

So no, it wasn’t a shock to see the local news here. I kind of hoped they weren’t on the guest list, though. I was looking forward to spending time with my new teammates and coaching staff without camera lenses and microphones in our faces. There’d be plenty of that once training camp started, and even more during the season. Not my favorite part of being a pro, but if that was the price of admission—and it was—I’d take it with a smile.

As I stepped into the restaurant, I was pleased to see that there weren’t any giant cameras or blinding lights set up. I recognized Tanya Jackson, who I was pretty sure was the Bearcats’ team reporter, but she didn’t have a microphone in her hand or a camera nearby. Probably just here to meet the team like everyone else. After all, she’d be traveling with us, interviewing us in locker rooms, and basically our shadow for the duration; made sense for her to make introductions now.

Since she was a familiar face and didn’t seem to be busy, I made my way over to her. I was two steps away when she turned, and her face lit up.

“Hams!” She opened her arms. “I was so excited when I saw you were coming to Pittsburgh!”

I smiled and accepted the brief hug. “I’m looking forward to playing here.” As I released her, I kept my smile in place. “Better weather than Omaha, right?”

Tanya laughed and rolled her eyes. “That’s a low bar. But after a couple of winters in Minneapolis”—she grimaced—“I won’t complain about the weatheranywhere.”

“Pfft.” Marci, the team’s PR director, appeared beside us, handing one of two glasses in her hands to Tanya. “Blah, blah, blah, horrible winters.” She took a sip from the other glass. “Get back to me about bad weather when you’ve spent a summer in New Orleans.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Eww. No thanks.”

“Uh-huh.” She tipped her drink toward me. “Exactly.”

With the weather small talk having broken the ice, we chatted about the trials and tribulations of moving, what we liked about Pittsburgh so far, and the neighborhoods we were living in. Marci and her husband had been here for years—she’d been working for the men’s team up through last season—and they’d bought a house near Cranberry. Like me, Tanya had found a nice rental in the North Hills, about halfway between Cranberry (where the team practiced) and downtown (where we played).

“How are you handling the hills?” Tanya asked with a playful smirk. “I feel like after Nebraska, you’d get altitude sickness stepping onto a curb.”

I laughed. “Hey, you joke, but after a year there, my ears pop driving up hills that I wouldn’t have even noticed before. That place isflat. But it’s nice having some actual hills here. And trees. God, I love thetrees.”

For a second, I was afraid they’d think I’d lost my mind, being so happy about stupid trees, but they both nodded.

“I went to college in New Mexico,” Marci said. “I’m all about trees now.”

“New Mexico, huh?” I arched an eyebrow. “But you didn’t want to take the job with the Albuquerque team?” That team had made me an offer as well, and I’d gone back and forth for a while before settling on Pittsburgh.

“Ugh.No,” Marci said. “Don’t get me wrong—I liked it there. I really did. But that dry climate and I donotget along.” She made a face and lowered her voice a little. “There was also no way in hell I was working with Vanessa Barkley.”

Tanya and I both leaned in, eager for the gossip.

There wasn’t anything scandalous—and like everyone in this room, Marci was way too media-trained to tell us if there was—but apparently Marci and Vanessa had played hockey together in college, and they hadn’t gotten along well.

“Too much alike,” Marci admitted. “We’re both happy being chefs in our own kitchens, but neither of us wants to be the other’s line cook, if that makes sense.”

Oh, it did. There was nothing worse than two people trying to lead the same group in opposite directions, especially when they were trying to lead each other as well. From the sound of it, Marci and Vanessa were perfectly friendly as long as they were just colleagues. Put one in charge of the other? Well… I could see why Marci hadn’t taken the offered position.

I chatted with Marci and Tanya for another ten or fifteen minutes, and then we all drifted in different directions to mingle with everyone else from the team.

There were a lot of familiar faces in this room, which didn’t surprise me. Hockey was a small sport, and most of us had crossed paths at one time or another, whether in our youth days, major juniors, college, or international competition. At the very least, I could put names with faces even if we didn’t know each other personally.

I got a little thrill at the sight of Val—Jenny Valentine. We’d played together for a season in major juniors, and she was a power forward. She was five-foot-nothing, so she didn’t have much reach, but she had speed to burn and could maneuver both herself and a puck through people in ways that seemed to defy physics. I couldn’t wait to see her play at this level.

Talking to her—and towering over her because she was like six-two—was Anastasia Ilyasov. When her name had been called during the expansion draft, I’d shouted so loud I’d startled my roommate. What could I say? I was thrilled to be playing alongside the woman who held our major junior league’s records for both hat tricksandshorthanded goals.

Not far from Anastasia and Val, Simone Yates had her toddler on her hip and a glass of wine in her other hand. I was thrilled to have her here, too. Sims and I had been D partners at one World Junior Women’s and at the Olympics, and I had my fingers crossed the coaches paired us up again. She was a solid stay-at-home defender, which gave me the freedom to play more offensively without worrying I was leaving our zone unprotected. We were a perfect match. I hoped the powers that be agreed.

I wanted to go say hello, but she was chatting with her wife and a couple of women I didn’t recognize. I thought one of them might be Euli Eskola, an amazing defender from Finland who I’d played against once or twice. The other looked like Nora Bille, a defender from Denmark who I’d almost gotten into a fight with at junior worlds. There was no bad blood there—it was hockey, and despite the sexist rules, fightsdidhappen sometimes—but I didn’t know either of them personally yet.

I didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, so I kept wandering the room in search of familiar faces.

I locked on to one such familiar face, and my mood dipped a little. Colin Harvey.Anyonewho knew hockey would’ve recognized him in an instant. He was a great guy from all accounts, but the fact that he was here bugged me. They’d invited players from the men’s league? Probably to give us some more legitimacy. Ugh. As if we needed that endorsement. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I appreciated that the men’s league had been so enthusiastic and supportive, and they’d played a huge role in getting our league off the ground. I wasn’t oblivious to that. But couldn’t we stand on our own now? Did weneedthe guys at our events to make them real?

---