Page 210 of Wrong Pucking Player

“Are you dying?”

“You and I both know that’s a stupid question to ask,” I counter with a silly grin before pulling her forward.

“Hey! I’m the one who’s supposed to be pulling you!”

“Then walk faster.”

“I have smaller legs! One step for you is a damn marathon for me!”

“Now you’re overexaggerating.”

“Ah. Walk slower.”

“Fine. Fine.”

Her giggle catches my attention as she squeezes my hand and skips forward.

“You’d be a good captain one day, Oscar.” She genuinely means it. “When you’re ready to take the lead.”

She’s right.

When I’m ready to take charge of other’s lives… maybe then I’ll be willing to be the captain my team deserves.

EVERYONE DESERVES A TASTE OF SUCCESS

~MACKENZIIE~

“This should be a good stretching plan for Ryker. Kane said this workout regimen is already helping him perform better on the ice. I have to make sure I see Diesel later today to ensure his left calf is good for tomorrow’s game. Royce, Axel, and Silas approved of their meal plans. I have to weigh Cole and Denzel after this practice before breakfast, so I’ll know if they’ll bulk for six weeks or eight. Hmm. I think that also depends on their game schedule.”

I lower the multiple sheets on the bench below me, using various paperweights to keep them from fluttering in the wind. Grabbing the iPad Armani and Wyatt bought me last weekend, I open the Good Notes 10 App to further look at the fitness plans I made for the Pincers.

“I think it’s in the other book.”

Lowering the iPad, I grab one of my five other notebooks that are filled with notes, categorized by the Pincers Performance, Health, Base Statistics, Goals, and End Season goals. This is why I told Armani and Wyatt that buying an iPad would be useless in helping me be further organized because of the way my thought process worked. I need everything to be laid out in front of me so I can connect the dots and write down in another notebook the progress everyone was achieving.

Though, I won’t lie. I’m actually enjoying having these Apple products. So much that I’m hoping to save for an Apple watch.

A week has passed, and Pincer’s official first game is tomorrow.

This is after two delays from canceled Air Canada flights. We were tempted to fly out to another province just to get this game going, but the agreed-upon stadium didn’t have the capacity to fit the number of attending fans who’d already secured tickets.

Despite our team being less popular than Strattonville Vipers, who were blowing up on social media, we were still on the high rise in completely selling out our game tomorrow.

So far, everything was going relatively well.

Since the Pincers had signed their contracts, it had become public knowledge about the whole pay difference between us and the Vipers.

That only escalated further when fans found out Winchester was getting paid the highest versus the rest of the players.

At first, many were justifying it, stating he ‘earned’ the increased advance in comparison to his fellow Pincers. It didn’t take long for others to come right along and disagree with the idea due to a magnitude of reasons.

Team play—this team being new and should be treated equally, and some fans going out of the way to show various past footage of some of the Pincers players’ hockey performances independently to prove they were better skilled than Winchester.

That was actually my entertainment yesterday evening before I fell asleep on the couch back at the suite with Armani and Wyatt.

Aside from the few minor issues we’ve been dealing with, the suite was deemed “safe” enough to occupy with company, for now. It was the perfect spot for us to meet and figure shit out about how we’d counter the signed contracts and potentially up the team’s pay.

Since the news last week, we’ve spent our free time gathering enough statistics, performance reviews, and videos that showcased most of the Pincers in the limelight of peak performance.

---