Page 95 of The Pucking Player

“Pushkin,” he corrects, smirking as he checks his phone—probably another photo from his nanny of little Amneris’s latest artistic creation on his kitchen walls. “Poetry feeds the soul just as good as meditation. Even my daughter knows this.”

“Yeah?” I grab my foam roller, attacking a particularly angry knot in my quad. “Write any poems about getting your ass kicked in practice lately? Or just about princesses and opera plots?”

He grins that cryptic Russian smile while flowing through a mobility sequence that makes my joints ache just watching. “Ris prefers Carmen to princesses. Takes after her mama.” A flash of something crosses his face—the same look he gets whenever something reminds him of Elena—but it’s gone in an instant. “At least your performance is improving. Last game? Three goals, two assists. Coach’s torture is effective.”

“Yeah, well,” I switch to my other leg, wincing. “Ifheartbreak and endless conditioning are what it takes to win the Cup, sign me up.”

My phone buzzes in my gym bag. I fish it out, expecting another passive-aggressive text from Coach about proper foam rolling technique or whatever else I’m doing wrong today. Instead, it’s Mike.

Got something. Meet me at O’Malley’s at two.

I show the text to Dmitri, whose eyebrows shoot up mid-plank.

“Your police friend?” he asks, not even breathing hard.

Show off.

“The one looking into Volkov?”

I nod, already plotting our next few hours. “Want to come with me to meet him after practice? Assuming I survive today’s torture, that is.”

“Some things are worth suffering for,” Dmitri chimes, transitioning smoothly into a series of dynamic stretches. “Justice. Love. Poetry.”

We finish our maintenance work with the comfortable rhythm of longtime teammates. Medicine ball throws, mobility work, band-assisted power moves—the kind of smart training that keeps us game-ready without burning out. The gym slowly fills with other players, all of us moving through our morning routines.

By ten, we’re on the ice, and Coach Novak is in rare form.

“Again!” he barks as I complete my fifteenth suicide drill. “My grandmother skates faster than that, O’Connor, and she’s been dead for forty years!”

Sweat drips down my back as I push through another sprint. The rest of the team’s running passing drills, but not me. No, I get special treatment. Personal attention from Coach himself.

Lucky me.

“You call that skating?” Coach’s voice echoes across the ice. “My hamster has more speed!”

I bite back a retort. Silence is golden. I don’t think any comeback from me would help my situation.

“Twenty more!” Coach bellows. “And this time, pretend like you actually want to play hockey!”

By eleven-thirty, I’ve survived practice and am dragging myself to the training room. My legs feel like they’ve been through a wood chipper, courtesy of Coach’s “special” drills.

“Twenty minutes in the cold tub,” our trainer Dave orders, not even looking up from his clipboard. “No arguments, O’Connor.”

I eye the tub of ice water like it’s personally offended me. Next to me, Dmitri’s already stripping down to his compression shorts, probably mentally composing an ode to hydrotherapy or some shit.

“I hate you and your perfect form,” I mutter as we lower ourselves into separate tubs.

“Such hostility.” He doesn’t even have the decency to shiver. “Perhaps you should channel that energy into your edge work instead of cursing my superior Russian genetics.”

“Perhaps you should channel your superior Russian genetics into shutting the fuck up.”

Dave walks by, checking his watch. “Eighteen minutes left. Stop whining.”

After the ice bath from hell, we hit the shower and grab the protein shakes waiting in our lockers. It’s almost one, giving me plenty of time to make my meeting with Mike.

“Are you coming with me?” I turn to him, and he nods. “We can grab food on our way,” I add, pulling on a sweater. “I refuse to face the Russian Bratva on an empty stomach.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re in my car, fighting middaytraffic into Manhattan while we eat supersized roast beef sandwiches. We pull up to O’Malley’s right at two, finding a spot half a block away. The old Irish pub looks exactly like it has since we were kids—Mike and me playing street hockey outside while his dad tended the bar.

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