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“You grabbed me Friday with the whistle already gone.” He shrugs. “I know what that looks like on paper. What it looks like to a guy in a suit deciding whether to spend a pick on a kid with a temper.” He sets his coffee on the arm of the chair. “Hollis told me you’d be like this before you got here. He watched you in juniors. He said you’d be a problem by October. He’s going to be so happy he was right.”

I push off the wall and walk over to his chair, close enough that he has to tip his head back to look at me, and I keep my hands at my sides. “Say one more thing about my tape.”

Greeley doesn’t move. He looks up at me, still smiling, and it hits me that he’s been waiting for this since I walked around the corner.

“You’re standing really close to me, Kennebeck,” he says quietly. “In front of the coach’s door.”

The door opens. Berwyn is in the doorway with his phone still in his hand, and he takes in me standing over Greeley’s chair and Greeley sitting in it with his coffee, and his face doesn’t change at all.

“Kennebeck,” he says. “Back up.”

I back up.

Greeley stands with his cup and says, “Morning, Coach,” in a voice I haven’t heard him use once in two weeks.

Berwyn’s office is small and cold and smells like old coffee. Greeley takes the left chair, and I take the right. Berwyn sits behind the desk and looks at us, one and then the other, for a while before he says anything.

“I can’t coach you on the ice for another month,” he says. “You both know that.”

“Yes, Coach,” says Greeley.

I nod.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know what happens on the ice. It means I hear about it the long way around.” He leans back. “So I heard. Now I want to hear it from you. Greeley.”

Greeley sets his coffee on the edge of the desk and sits forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded, and his whole face goes open and serious.

“Honestly, Coach? It’s on me too.”

I turn my head and look at him.

“It got heated in the battle drill,” he says. “It’s the first real week, and everybody’s competing for spots. I was going hard. He was going hard. I got in his space after the whistle. I shouldn’t have been in his space. He reacted. I get it.” He glances at me, sincere, almost warm. “Nash is a great player. Everybody knows that. I want this line thing to work out, whatever it ends up being. I just want us on the same page. For the team.”

For the team. Thirty seconds ago in the hallway, it was your tape and you’re standing really close to me. He isn’t sorry, and he isn’t worried about me, the team, or the line. He planned the hallway, the chair, and being there when the door opened, and now he’s going to sit in here being the reasonable one and walk out clean. He’d watch me get cut and then go get lunch.

“Kennebeck,” Berwyn says. “Your turn.”

“He put his hand on my face.”

Greeley shakes his head slowly, like I’ve misunderstood something. “I was trying to get him off me, Coach.”

“I wasn’t on you,” I say. “The puck was gone. The whistle was gone. You put your glove on my cage and pushed my head back into the glass and told me to stay down.”

“That’s not—”

“Rookie. You said, ‘Stay down this time, rookie.’”

Berwyn holds up a hand, and we both stop. “Did he put a hand on your face?”

“Yes.”

“And then you put him into the boards.”

“Yes.”

“With the whistle gone.”

“Yes.”