Page 4 of Home Ice Advantage

If it was up to Eric, he would have walked to work every day. As it was, he’d had to buy a car so that he could make it to the practice facility on time. Sometimes he walked it anyway, just to be stubborn, but on days like this he couldn’t really afford to be late.

It was stupid, to be so concerned about it when he probably wasn’t even going to get it. If they were going to give him the fucking job, he probably would have had a hint of it beforehand. They would have called him in for interviews, given him some kind of an idea, anything. His mother’s faith in him aside, Eric was starting to feel less hopeful and more frustrated.

Sure, the Beacons hadn’t had a great record over the last three seasons, but that wasn’t surprising given that their stars were aging or injured, their goalie had knee and hip issues and they hadn’t drafted particularly highorwell for the last ten seasons.

That wasn’t anything that Eric could help. He’d done his job as best he could. Showed up to work every day. Argued with Leclerc when he felt that the man had overstepped. Done his best to soothe the ruffled feathers of the young players on the team.

He paused outside of the facility to take a picture of the letters emblazoned over the door: Beacons Ice Arena. It was stupid and almost sentimental, marking a moment that might even be insignificant. But he did it anyway.

Inside, Eric was pleased to find that a lot of the guys were already there and either on the ice warming up, or in the locker rooms getting dressed. Whatever else you had to say about the team’s record last year, Eric had made sure they had a good culture. Everyone showed up and did the work. If Conroy didn’t name a head coach soon, though, they were going to start running into issues.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he fished it out. The screen saidConroy. Eric swallowed down his nerves, swiped and answered. “Yeah?”

“Aronson, can I talk to you in the office?” Conroy asked briskly. Even though his name was synonymous with Boston now, he still sounded like he’d rolled off of the fields in Sudbury, Ontario.

“Sure. Be right up.”

“The office” was located up the stairs from the ice level, a space the coaches and general manager shared in the practice facility. It served its purpose of demarcating the line between the public and the staff, particularly when they needed to talk to players alone after practice.

Or, in this case, talk to an assistant coach who was hoping that he would be a head coach before practice.

“Sit down,” Conroy said, when he opened the door.

Eric didn’t want to. He’d always hated sitting in the chair across from the desk and not behind it. It felt a little like being back at school in Boisbriand, getting chewed out by a teacher because he’d gotten into another fight or had been slacking too much on his studies in favor of hockey.

He did it anyway. Sat silent without fidgeting, just raised an eyebrow and waited for Conroy to break it to him.

“I want to preface this by saying that this isn’t a reflection on your work performance or the trust that the organization has in you at all,” Conroy said, and all of the tension in Eric’s body released at once, like his strings had been cut. Here it was. “We’re just thinking of going in a different direction.”

“I understand,” Eric said, like someone else was using his tongue. “Is the new hire already under contract?”

“We’re still in the preliminary stages of negotiating the deal; it’s not set in stone yet. But we wanted to talk to you about it so you could be prepared to work with him, because it’s looking likely that he will accept, and we can get things really started before training camp is over.”

“Who?” Eric asked. It was blunt, and he couldn’t quite keep the annoyance from his voice, but he was justified in that, he felt.

Conroy was in his sixties now, but he was still a handsome man, lean and distinguished looking. His steel-gray hair was carefully cut and maintained; he wore clothes that looked like his wife had picked them out for him. He’d made the graduation from the ice to the front office without looking back, while Eric was still hanging in the middle, not quite a player, not quite more, no matter how hard he worked.

Conroy said, “Ryan Sullivan.”

Eric said,“Tabarnak.”

If anyone else had tried to process the last twenty-four hours of Ryan’s life, they probably would have been confused as hell, too. In slightly less than one day, he had turned forty-five, his wife had locked him out of the house, and he was driving to Boston to formally interview for a job as the thirtieth head coach of his childhood Original Six hockey team. It was a lot to wrap his head around and not solely because of the fact that he hadn’t even coached his peewee team for a full season.

The logical thing to do would be to sayyesto the offer. It was insane to even consider turning down an opportunity with only thirty-two positions available, positions that only opened every now and then and were often more like a game of musical chairs played by the same rotating cast than actual hiring opportunities. He probably wouldn’t have the ability to do this again, if ever, and if he did, it would likely be years in the future. He’d probably have to put his time in in juniors, maybe jump straight to the minors if he was lucky. There wouldn’t be a head coach’s chair gift wrapped and waiting for him.

And the thing was...it wasBoston. He’d grown up loving the Beacons. He’d grown up dreaming of playing for them. He’d had the jerseys, the pajamas, the ticket stubs, the binders full of hockey cards, the whole nine yards.

Still. There was a reason he’d left home and hadn’t come back, and there was a reason he felt bad about it. Ryan had grown up in Southie. Ryan’s dad and four older brothers and their families all still lived there. Ryan had let Shannon talk him into moving to New Hampshire because of her family, but to a lesser extent, he’d agreed because ofhisfamily. Newfields was only three hours away, but three hours was enough when none of the Sullivans ever left the Boston city limits.

He shouldn’t let them prevent him from taking a huge opportunity. And this was the Beacons. This was—if the interview went well, anyway—the chance to take the Beacons and make them into somethingbetter. Something amazing.

Ryan had played hockey for a long time, and by the end of his career, he was basically coaching already. The younger guys coming up were so different from him, from the way he’d had to learn to play. He could see the benefits they’d had, with the newfangled training regimes and parents who understood the importance of skating clinics as early as possible, but he could also see the blind spots.

The opportunity to put all of his ideas together, to make a team that washisand that really focused on development...it was tempting. It was really tempting, no matter how close to his family he’d have to live.

In his gut, Ryan knew he would accept the job. He was a ship at sea otherwise. The rest of his life was going to involve hockey, somehow. It had been his single-minded obsession to the exclusion of almost everything else from the time he’d first gotten onto skates. And at his age the options were basically coaching, a front office position or nothing.

He didn’t have to ever work again, but if he didn’t, what was he going to do, go home to Newfields and beg Shannon to take him back?

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