Page 57 of Face Off
*Easy E has added Liam and Redheaded Assassin to the chat*
Redheaded Assassin
I don’t want to be here.
Easy E:
You can run, but you can’t hide.
Hudson
Really, Ethan. Just stop talking.
Riley
Yeah, dude. Next thing you know, you’ll be growing a creepy mustache.
Easy E
I’d rock the shit out of a mustache.
Me
Team dinner tonight. 6 sharp at my place!
I love playing in front of thousands of fans in sold-out arenas.
I love scoring the game-winning goal on the road and silencing the haters who were booing me for sixty minutes.
I love signing kids’ jerseys and taking selfies with them.
But my favorite part of being a professional athlete is having team dinners on Tuesday nights with the people I adore.
The tradition started when Coach got to DC four years ago. He inherited a shitty team with players who had shitty attitudes.
We were in the middle of a ten-game losing streak.
No one had any pride in wearing their jerseys.
Hell, I even asked my agent to start looking at trades because I was fed up and sick of playing with guys who only wanted to collect a paycheck.
Until one day when Coach told me to invite a teammate over for a meal and gave me one rule: no hockey talk.
I started with Hudson. We were already friends, and I figured he’d be the easiest to talk to.
He brought Thai food. I popped open a couple of beers. We sat in my kitchen and talked about theFast and the Furiousfranchise for two hours. He came back the next week, and he brought Ethan with him.
Something cool happened.
Relationships formed, and they were deeper than the connection we had on the ice.
I learned that Connor has a brother on the autism spectrum. Riley’s dad lost his leg after a house fire. Grant’s mom walked out on him and his sisters when he was eight, and Liam is fluent in Spanish.
The guys weren’t just my teammates anymore—they were my brothers.
Our dinner group grew to five, then ten.
Eventually, the whole team started coming around. Tuesday nights turned into a chance for us to shut off the sports talk and just be together.
