Page 3 of Gravity
I read the words a dozen times, until they are alone in my mind.Be yours to hold it high.Decades ago, during this team's dynasty, one year without winning the Stanley Cup was enough to call for the coach and the players to be put to pasture. It's been over twenty years since the Étoiles have brought the Cup home. Twenty years, andnow, now is the year, and I’m—
I flee the dressing room with the words still echoing inside me.
ChapterTwo
Hunter
Bryce Michel has been my personal Superman for years. A poster of him in his breakout rookie year hung on my teenage bedroom wall every day, until I moved out of my parent's home after signing my own NHL contract.
From sixteen years old until—well, embarrassingly, now—I have been falling asleep to mental replays of Bryce’s best and brightest games. Remembering all his goals, assists, and passes, and all the times he moved like a phantom. His stride is pure power. Legs and arms pumping, stick down, the ice disappearing beneath him as he outraces the game clock. His toe-drag, his spin, his wind-up—Score.
He makes everything look so damn easy. How he goes over the boards and hurls himself into the play. How he reads the dynamics on ice, somehow knowing that the puck will bounce this way and then that. It’s like he’s psychic, like he can see the games before they unfold.
When I was a junior player, I asked to wear Bryce’s number, the hallowed number 11. Putting on that sweater for the first time felt like a shot of destiny.
Maybe there was something to that lucky number of Bryce's, because my years as a junior were good enough often enough that I ended up as a first-round draft pick for the NHL. Not the first in the draft, or even the top ten—or top twenty—but I was grabbed in the first round, and like most players snatched early, I went to a rebuilding team: the Carolina Kitty Hawks.
Still, it was all I'd ever dreamed of. I was in theNHL. The same league as Bryce Michel.
The day after the draft, I flew from my home in Central Texas to North Carolina and nearly failed training camp. I was too wired from being awake for two days straight, and trembling so badly I couldn’t grip my stick. I was to-my-bones excited for the unfolding of my future, and it showed. Oh, it showed.
I made it through, and Carolina put me on the first line for their defense. Out with the guys who couldn’t block shots and couldn’t hustle back to their end of the ice. In with the new guy, Hunter Lacey.
Like most first year players new to the league, what I didn’t know far eclipsed what I did. I fluoresced all the way up to the nosebleed section, in over my head in all the worst ways. I blocked shots, though, and the crowd loved it when I took a puck to the center of my abs. After, I’d press my face to the ice and suck on empty lungs, and at the end of the season, I was black and blue from my hips to my heart.
Nineteen years old is a hard age to have an entire NHL franchise leaning on you. There were twenty grown men—and a hundred thousand fans—with their dreams hitching a ride on my subconscious every time I skated. I wasn’t great, but I wasn’t awful on my own. I gave it my all my first year. It wasn't enough to keep us out of the bottom five, but I played my heart out, and I was proud of that.
Two and a half years later, I am still the guy who fights for the puck, who never stops chasing, who battles on the boards and in front of the crease. I am the fighter who hustles seconds out of the game clock to buy time for my teammates—somebody, anybody, please—to break free for a pass. I fight to keep our games alive, even when it seems obvious we should give up and throw in the towel.
If Lacey had teammates who could support him,I hear on SportsCenter,Carolina would be a team.
This year, someone thought I played well enough to deserve an invite to the All-Star Weekend.
For the top-tier players who are invited, the All-Star Weekend is supposed to be days of poolside lounging, daiquiris and margaritas, tanning, and no-stress exhibition games. For the rest of us, it's a mini-vacation at home with our bruises and our aspirin.In the past, I watched the All-Star Weekend broadcast in my apartment, downing protein shakes while I had a half-dozen ice packs wound around my hips, knees, elbows, and shoulders.
Me being invited supposedly means I'm equal to those top-tier league greats. Yeah, right. Okay. But what's really wild? What's really blowing out the corners of my mind?
Bryce Michel and I are in the same division, which means we will be sharing the ice this weekend as teammates.
That thought ricochets like a pinball in my mind. It hasn’t settled yet, and every time I imagine it—me and Bryce on the ice, Bryce in the zone, Bryce open for a pass,mypass—I have to think of something else before I wake up from this dream. Because this has to be a dream. I’m on my couch, holding an ice pack to my chin, and I must have fallen asleep to SportsCenter.
When my plane lands in Las Vegas, I drop my bags at the hotel and take an Uber straight to the arena. I'm a couple hours early—okay, I'm way damn early—but I'm vibrating. I can't wait.
Holy shit. I'm here, at the All-Star Weekend.
I am going to soak this in, every drop of this weekend, because this dream I’ve chased, my dream of playing in the NHL? There's a truth I'm not facing, one that I've known ever since I huddled in front of the TV at sixteen years old and couldn't breathe as I watched Bryce Michel turn to vapor and gold on the ice… And ever since I tentatively whispered to myself in my bathroom mirror that I wanted to bejust like him… And ever since I put on his number 11 sweater—
This dream is not going to last.
How can it? I’m buckling under the weight of carrying my team, and the rumbles of dissatisfied fans over our losing record are growing louder. Soon, I’ll be the has-been defender that's let go from Carolina, and there may not be a team that scoops me up after that.
The truth is, no matter how hard I play, I cannot be a whole team, nor can I be Bryce Michel. No matter if I wear his number or not. I'm just not good enough. I'll never be like him.
So for now, I’m going to hold on to this dream and this weekend. I’m in Vegas. Bryce Michel is in Vegas. We're going to be on the ice together in a few hours.
This is already the best night of my life, and I haven't even laced up my skates yet.
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