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Ryan Hawthorne came through the door a minute later. He was the team’s starting goalie, twenty-eight, with the kind of calm that came from standing in front of rubber discs traveling ninety miles an hour for a living. He shook my hand, looked around the house, and said, "You need furniture."

"I need a lot of things."

"Well, you certainly need a couch. Everything else is optional." He set a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and began emptying it. "Figured you wouldn't have food yet, so I brought you some things."

"Thanks, man."

"No problem."

We started with the boxes. Jeremy and Ryan helped me haul the mattress upstairs, a process that involved three wrong turns, a banged elbow, and Jeremy telling a story about the time he'd helped Aiden Callaway move and dropped a dresser on his own foot which sent us laughing.

Once the mattress was on the bed frame, we unpacked the kitchen stuff my mother had packed for me. She'd insisted that her son wouldn't eat off paper plates for the upcoming year, so she purchased plates at Target for me. She'd also given me a set of pots, and then she'd surprised me with a brand-new coffee maker. At some point she'd slipped a handwritten note inside the box, telling me how proud she was of me.

Matthew Ashford showed up an hour later with an apology and a bottle of whiskey. He was our left winger, twenty-five, with dark hair and a quiet confidence that made you pay attention when he talked, which wasn't often. He set the whiskey on the counter, looked at the three of us sweating from hauling boxes, and said, "Looks like I timed this perfectly."

"You're an asshole," Jeremy said, laughing.

"I prefer 'efficient.'"

"We'd have been a lot more efficient had you of been here." Hawthorne yelled from the other room.

We got most of the boxes unpacked by seven. My legs ached, and a tightness settled in my lower back that always showed up when I spent too long doing anything that wasn't skating or lifting. My body usually liked to remind me about how I spent my time, and hauling furniture wasn't on the approved list. My left hip flexor was pulling too, the one I'd strained during my junior season.

I ordered pizza from a place Jeremy recommended: "best in the neighborhood, don't let anyone tell you different, and if Ashford tries to make you order from that vegan place on Third, ignore him." Ryan put in a DoorDash order for more beer. It blew my mind that you could get beer delivered to your door. Back home, the closest liquor store was a twenty-minute drive, and it closed at seven on weeknights, and five on weekends.

We all sat on my living room floor, eating pizza off paper plates and drinking beer, and for the first time since the draft, the knot in my chest loosened.

"So, what's the deal with Coach Briggs?" I asked, pulling a slice of pepperoni from the box. "He seemed intense on the call the other day."

Jeremy snorted. "Intense is generous. Briggs is a fucking psycho in the best possible way. He'll ride you harder than anyone you've ever played for, but if you produce, he'll go to war for you every time. He once went to the GM's office and argued for forty-five minutes to keep a fourth-liner who was about to get waived because the guy was 'good for the room.' The guy stayed. Briggs won."

"Don't be fooled," Ryan added, peeling the label off his beer bottle. "He benched Garrison for two games last year because Garrison was late to practice four times. Garrison's been here nine years. Didn't matter. Briggs doesn't play favorites."

"So don't be late," I muttered more to myself than to the guys.

"Don't be late," Jeremy confirmed. "Don't be sloppy, and whatever you do, do not give him a reason to think you're not taking this opportunity seriously. Show up early, work hard, keep your mouth shut until you've earned the right to open it. Other than that, he's great."

"That sounds encouraging," I said.

"He's only tough because he cares," Ashford said, pouring himself a whiskey. "The coaches who don't ride you are the ones who've given up on you. Briggs rides everyone because he thinks everyone can be better, which is a good thing."

Matthew poured a second glass of whiskey and slid it across the floor toward me. I picked it up and took a sip. It was smoother than the bottom-shelf stuff I'd been drinking in college, and the warmth of it spread through my chest.

"You'll be fine," Matthew said, leaning back against the wall. "You wouldn't be here if you couldn't handle it."

I appreciated that. More than I probably showed, but I didn't know if I could handle this or not. College hockey was one thing, but this was different. These guys had been playing at this level for years. Training staff with million-dollar budgets and recovery protocols had tuned their bodies for it. Their instincts were sharper and their timing was tighter. I was walking into a room where everyone else had already passed the test I was about to take. There was no use in pretending I wasn't nervous.

"Preseason schedule's brutal," Jeremy said, pulling up his phone. "Two practices per day the first couple of weeks. Briggs likes to see who breaks."

"Nobody breaks," Ryan said.

"Maybe not, but Martinez threw up on the ice last year," Matthew said. "Remember?"

"I remember, and that's not breaking, that's just puking." Jeremy waved it off. "Everyone pukes at some point. It's basically a team-building exercise."

"The second week gets easier," Ryan said, and something in his tone told me he was saying it for my benefit. "Your legs will hate you for days, maybe weeks. It's the transition from off-season to game speed that your body must get used to. Every one of us goes through the same thing. You aren't alone."

I thought about what Ryan said. In two weeks I'd be lacing up my skates with guys who had been in the playoffs, who had taken hits that would have flattened me three years ago. They knew the systems and the plays. My only edge was speed. I was fast. The scouts had flagged me for that, and my college coach had called me the quickest player he'd ever coached. They clocked me at twenty-three miles per hour in a straight sprint. At this level, though, every one of us was fast, and everyone had an edge; your edge needed to be sharper than the others.