Penalty Kill

Jake

The air in the locker room is so thick with silence, it actually feels like it's choking the life right from my very lungs. Sure I'm out of breath from the last period of play, and the humidity in the room has to be over a hundred percent with all sweat dripping from bodies that are struggling to calm their adrenaline rushes just like I am. I have no doubt that all their blank stares, carefully avoidant of any other team mate's eye lines, are flimsy facades for the thoughts swirling in their minds about the ugly loss we just suffered. On our season opener. At home.

All off-season long we drilled and trained and practiced until we were well past our physical and mental limits. Our lines finally felt solid, after what felt like endless weeks of near constant shuffling. We were confident, maybe even a little cocky coming into this first game of the season. But that high was painfully short lived after the puck dropped at center ice at the start of the first. The near deafening roar of our home crowd was silenced a mere two minutes into the period, when we gave up a break away and the puck found its way past our veteran goalie.

The silence of the crowd since that moment has followed us throughout the game—permeating the locker room between periods, and now nearly suffocating us all as we sit, shellshocked at what just occurred over three periods of hockey. I'm leaned over my breezer-clad knees, my hands laced together as I stare daggers into the rubber floor. Sweat pours from my soaked hair, trickling its way down my permanently crooked nose and onto the black mats beneath me.

Coach bursts in through the doors, and somehow the tension in the room grows thicker. There's a collective holding of everyone's breath, and no one dares to so much as move as he walks to the center of the room. We've had our share of tongue lashings before, but we all know that the one we're about to receive will cut the deepest. I squeeze my hands together in an effort to brace myself for what's about to come, my jaw clenching rhythmically as I do my best to dissociate from my own body.

He starts in, and it's to the team in general at first. How we let not only ourselves and each other down, but the entire city and every fan that attended tonight with the sole purpose of watching us play our hearts out. He's screaming, and I don't need to look up to see the spit flying from his lips. He's telling us we didn't leave it all out there. He's telling us we barely even half assed it, that if he could bench all of us he would. Then he starts going player by player, calling out our mistakes publicly, and I feel my stomach churn sharply.

My locker is in the dead middle of the room, so I get to listen to insult after insult get hurled at a handful of my teammates before he gets to me. The few short minutes it takes for him to spew his ire at a bunch of twenty-some year olds should've given me enough time to steel myself for the verbal lashing I was about to endure. Should've is the keyword in that thought, and as my name leaves his mouth, my heart leaps into my throat.

"And you, Bryers, don't even fucking get me started. All that fucking shit the press talked about you in the off season being old and washed up and a waste of a roster slot was the fucking truth. You looked like shit, you played like shit, and you proved that you are a waste of goddamn space." More words come, but they wash over me and the flimsy shield I've managed to surround myself with. I'm thankful in that moment for all the sweat that's still dripping down my hair to my face, as it masks the few tears that slip out from my wide-open eyes.

In the silence that follows his molten-hot, venom-coated words directed at me, I know he's looking for me to spar. I can't blame him, I am known for it after all. It's been one of my trademarks throughout my lengthy NHL career. I've gone toe-to-toe with coaches in the locker room, with players on the ice, with press in post-games. But that passion, that zeal for the game has escaped me the past few years.

I landed in New York a few seasons ago, and while I've meshed well with my teammates, my actual performance on the ice has eluded me. I've trained, I've battled through injury after injury to get back on the ice, but my ability to simply perform and meet the baseline expectations of my position has been a complete and utter failure.

Coach finally makes his way around the whole room after what feels like an eternity of his screaming, and the tightness drawing my shoulders together loosens slightly. It's just as he's making his closing remarks about our abysmal performance, his hand on the door to leave the room to leave us to stew in our silent misery, that he turns his focus back to the room of exhausted players.

"Bryers, get fucking showered and deal with the press. It's the least you can fucking do."

He slams his way back through the doors, and somehow the air in the room is even thicker with tension than it was before he delivered his immense level of displeasure with us. With a deep inhale through my nose, I run my hand down my face, wiping away the combination of sweat and tears that's collected there over the past minutes. I make quick work of peeling off my breezers before standing up and heading to the showers, clad in absolutely nothing with a towel thrown over my shoulder.

It's as I walk past the last locker before the doorway to the empty showers that a powerful wave of emotion washes over me, starting at the bottom of my chest and burning its way through every limb like a match to fire starter. It's the feeling that's been dead inside of me for years—the same one coach was just calling me out for in front of the whole team for having lost. It shoots through me unexpectedly, and suddenly I find myself raising my fist, cocking it for a brief second before letting it fly into the side of our poor goalie's locker.

The wood splinters under my knuckles as I let out a pent up yell, and I have no doubt in my mind that I'll see a line item for the damage coming out of my next check. I'm met with nothing but more silence as I stare at the dented, splintering wood, my chest heaving with quick, ragged breaths. I turn on my sandal-clad heel and continue my way to the showers, pissed and hurt and fucking beyond annoyed.

What a long and arduous final season this would end up being. Fuck me.