Page 66 of Offside

I sat alone in the same fourth-floor conference room where the extension meeting had been postponed in October. Park had left the contract on the screen and gone to give me privacy for the call.

In August, I could have taken four years at three-point-four.

That future was gone. The new deal cost me two years of security, and two hundred thousand a season, because the body attached to it was no longer what I had in summer. It was also one-point-five million a year better than the earlier offer.

The contract kept me in the role I was already playing, as a veteran defenseman on the penalty kill, with managed minutes rather than a promise to carry unrestricted use. Nothing guaranteed my shoulder would last two seasons. Nothing promised the club would keep me if it didn't.

Marchetti thought the risk was defensible. He reminded me that I could walk toward free agency and see whether another team valued the same report differently. I called Declan.

He answered from somewhere loud. "I have Eriksson arguing that tape color affects recovery. Can I call you in five minutes?"

"Yeah," I said. "Five minutes is fine."

He heard something in my voice. "Is it your contract?"

"The club moved," I told him.

The noise moved farther away, and a door closed before he answered again.

"Tell me," he said. "Start with the term."

"Two years at three-point-two. Same role we've been using. Managed body, no claim I'm unrestricted."

"What does Marchetti think?" he asked. "Would he take it?"

"Acceptable risk. He thinks I could test free agency too."

"What do you think?" he asked. "You, not your agent."

I looked at the signature line while I worked out the honest answer.

"In August I had four years. That would've been safer," I said.

"It's not August anymore," Declan said patiently.

"The first two-year offer priced me like I was already finished. This one doesn't. It keeps me playing here if I can do the job without pretending the shoulder's fixed."

Declan waited.

"You turned down Denver before this was settled," I said.

"For the work and life I wanted," he reminded me.

"Tell me to sign," I said. "Make the choice easy."

"No. The contract belongs to you. I can listen while you decide."

His answer made me smile.

"That doesn't mean your stake in it disappears," I said.

"It doesn't. I hope you stay in Chicago, but I need you to choose something you can live with."

I rubbed my left thumb along the edge of the table. The right shoulder ached from the specialist's repeated load even though the examination had ended days earlier and the response had returned to baseline.

The money didn't make that ache smaller, and Declan staying didn't make a two-year playing future safer. Neither of those had to change for me to choose.

"I'm signing," I said. "The risk is mine."