Page 54 of The Nanny Goal

Calgary has a good program with a lot of history, but they’re in a weird holding pattern right now, waiting for their new arena to get built.

Hamilton, on the other hand, is a brand-new expansion team, and the billionaire owner has thrown money at the team in every way possible. The facilities are extra impressive, the support staff is extensive, and nothing is off the table.

The only downside of getting traded to this region is that the Ontario hockey press is unlike anywhere else. Even in Alberta, where the Calgary-Edmonton rivalry is fierce, there’s only a fraction of the coverage that the Toronto team alone has.

Add in Hamilton’s newness, just an hour around the curve of Lake Ontario from Toronto, aka the epicentre of the hockey universe, and the spotlight is bright. The start of the season was really rough. I was coming into a dressing room that had been rocked by team division—and my trade was supposed to fix that, but the wounds lingered.

As a relative newcomer in every way, I quickly realized all I could do was keep my head down, work with the goalie coaches, and wait for the lines in front of me to sort themselves out.

It was a strategy that paid off.

Hamilton has three goalies on the roster right now. The other starting goalie is a Finnish player named Tuomo Makinen, and we also have a young American named Ryan Monaghan who is waiver-exempt—so he goes back and forth between the Highlanders and their AHL affiliate team in Niagara Falls, as the roster and salary cap require. Right now, he’s travelling with the team for the games in St. Louis and Detroit, but Makinen will probably play both of them.

Makie is four years older than me, and a steady, career goalie, but he’s emotional, and when the team isn’t playing well in front of him, he gets frustrated.

The more frustrated he got as the first half of the season rolled out in rocky chaos, the cooler and calmer I got—which resulted in me getting more games under my belt.

And then the team got their shit together and started winning again.

Now we have less than a month until the playoffs, and I’m in a head-to-head battle with my teammate for who will get the starting net in the first round.

I want it so fucking much.

I spent eight years being reined in, being cautioned that I needed more time, more experience, to finish fully growing into my six-and-a-half-foot frame. On the one hand, I knew I was good and getting better with each year. On the other hand, it felt so fucking far in the future.

But now, suddenly, I’m on a team that doesn’t have a clear number one starting goalie.

And while it’s actually good for us to alternate games in the regular season—we need to rest and save our bodies for the playoffs—once we switch to best of seven series, the coaches will want to stick with a winner in net.

I have carefully constructed my entire career to peak at this moment. Being blindsided by parenthood didn’t knock me off course. Getting traded was a rollercoaster, too, but I hung on.

Now there are fifteen games left in the season. Every single start matters.

I can’t let myself be distracted by mybabysitterfor God’s sake.

So, I put Emery to the back of my mind and run through a complete workout.

“Good job,” my trainer says when we’re finally done. “Let’s take tomorrow as an active rest day, to mimic the team’s travel day to St. Louis, and then we’ll repeat the same workout day after that. You can bring your babysitter again. She’s a lot of fun to watch on the ice.”

“She played college hockey in Boston for five years,” I say. “Has two Olympic medals. The babysitter thing is a favour.”

“That makes more sense.”

“She is a very good babysitter, though.”Shut up, Alexei.

My trainer also looks surprised that I’m still talking.

I never talk about non-hockey stuff.

But apparently, Emery being thought of asjusta babysitter is a dam buster. “She didn’t even want to be my babysitter.”

“Hence it being a favour.”

“Because she’s very kind. When she is not taking shots at me, I mean.”

That makes my trainer laugh. “I know what you mean.”

“I think I should—” Luckily my random train of out loud thinking is cut off by one of our assistant general managers and our travel coordinator appearing out of the tunnel.

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