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"Coach Dave is currently unconscious because he tried to out-drink the Ski Bar last night," Nate says, shuffling slowly across the ice. "The bartender said he toasted 'retirement' fourteen separate times."

"He also toasted his knees in the sixties," Aidan adds unhelpfully.

They disappear down the tunnel, still arguing, and the rink goes quiet.

I look up and Big Mike has disappeared. He's probably making his way down to fire me right now.

Fuck.

I stayed and ran practice because somebody had to. That's it.

You see a gap, you fill it. You see a coach passed out on the side lines, you grab the whistle and do it yourself.

It's not a big deal. I've been picking up slack since I was fourteen, when Dad broke his wrist during harvest season and Will discovered that "helping" meant supervising from a lawn chair.

I've had eldest-brother syndrome since the day I was born.

Totally normal. Nothing to examine there.

The ice sits carved up under the floodlights, skate marks crossing everywhere like bad handwriting. Snow has just started falling down over the Christmas market as evening settles in, and beside the boards, in a suit worth more than my truck, stands Big Mike.

"Nice practice," he says. "You ran it well."

"Yeah, well." I scratch at the back of my head. "Somebody had to stop them shooting pucks at Coach Dave's ass. He fell asleep and Baxter treated it like target practice."

"Did he hit it?"

"Four times. Dave slept through all of them."

Big Mike chuckles and watches the last player vanish down the tunnel, leaving us alone. "This tournament matters to me, Stratton. It's not the top billing I wanted—the league gave the prime time TV Christmas dates to an outdoor classic in Minnesota, which I've chosen to take personally—but it still matters." He turns. "You ever think about coaching?"

Coaching?! What the fuck?

"I'm a player, sir."

"That's not what I asked."

"Well, I've never really thought about it, no. I'm a player. Always have been," I say again. "Even if the league treats me like an emergency replacement who happens to own skates."

He nods slowly, hands folded behind his back. "Walk me through it. The career."

So I do, because this conversation isn't going in the direction I thought it was.

Of course, he's the man signing my checks.

So I tell him I've spent eleven years across six different hockey organizations. I've had call-ups, send-downs, two-way contracts, one glorious March where I played for three different teams in nine days.

Every coach said the same things at the exit meetings. Great leader. Great locker-room guy. We'd take you back in a heartbeat.

And then they never did.

"So nothing serious ever came up," I finish, shrugging. "And I just always ended up coming home."

Big Mike's attention sharpens as a stiff wind blows across the ice.

"Nothing came up," he repeats. "Or nobody bothered to offer you the right thing?"

The honest answer is I don't know… I've spent a decade taking whatever kept me playing and kept the farm's lights on, and somewhere in there I stopped asking whether anyone should have offered more.