Page 4 of Call the Shots
Just thinking the words made me swear under my breath. I shouldered my bag, moving next to him. “Where’d Olesky go?”
“Ran when he saw this,” Denali said, pleased for some reason. “I have the captain badge now.”
“You really didn’t want to say, ‘I’m the captain now,’ huh?”
“Yep. No Tom Hanks movie here.” He glanced my way. “I heard the rumors.”
“Congratulations.”
“You messed with your team. Burned a lot of bridges.”
“So?”
“If you didn’t send your teammates to the hospital, you’d?—”
“Don’t pretend you’re here for a good reason,” I scoffed, never taking my eyes off of the rink. “Half of Michigan’s team are hockey royalty babies. You were pissing in their shadows. Michigan would’ve rather shot you in the back of the head than make you captain.”
Silence fell while we measured each other up.
He held out his fist. “Bear.”
“What are we, eight fucking years old?” I muttered, bumping his.
We both transferred from the USAC, the top conference for college hockey, and wound up in a state that didn’t even have outdoor rinks. Texas, USA. I used to ignore calls from the Texas Ice Hockey Collegiate Conference and dodge their scouts at games. The conference didn’t stretch beyond their singular state. I never had any interest in taking a professional nosedive for my career.
Now, I didn’t have a choice.
As far as I knew, I was the only player drafted to a pro team, but after the bullshit in North Dakota, that didn't mean anything. The Boston Bulldogs general manager used a two-minute phone call to upend my future, instructing me to playone more year in college. The subtle message was clear.Clean up your act, or you’ll never play for our team.
I couldn’t sign with anyone else because the Bulldogs owned my player rights, and when I reached out to the Boston colleges, they said me being drafted wasn’t a ‘guarantee for ice time,’ no doubt the first time they’d ever spoken those words before.
To them, I was a liability. A black mark on college hockey.
I wasn’t the only one on this team. There were plenty of high-ranking fuckups. Fantastic players who did something stupid, said something wrong, or slept with someone’s daughter and got their ass shipped here. I saw the roster. This was going to be one hell of a season.
Denali was the weird exception. Everybody around Michigan knew he was getting shafted. He easily outmaneuvered his teammates and was punished for it, I’d seen it firsthand. I guess he got tired of playing with the dipshits who paraded around the fact that they were related to NHL legends. The same legends who skipped child support payments and never came to their kids’ games.
Basically, we were both stuck at Marrs with nowhere to go.
I stepped closer to the boards. “Give me the details.”
“Do you want the bad news or the worse news?”
“The Colo is a shit hole?”
“Yep. All their money goes to football. We get the scraps.” Denali crossed his arms over his chest. “More than eighty percent of the team are new transfers, some of the best skates in college hockey, and the rest are the Marrs players who’ve been…struggling.”
“Fantastic.”
“We have Laki Holbrook and Buttons Elway. Sullivan Falkenberg and Charlie Burton. Pickles Starker and Nick Kurosawa?—”
“Are theycollectingdogfights? Those guys hate each other.”
“The only worthwhile Marrs player is Elijah Contractor?—”
“The dirtiest player in college hockey.”
“Don’t talk shit about Elijah,” he warned, suddenly serious.
