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“Do you learn by watching it?” she says.

I don’t look over. “Yeah.”

“What are you learning?”

I pick up the remote. I back the game up thirty seconds.

“Watch the guy in white,” I say. “Number four. On the left.”

She watches.

The puck comes up the wall. Number four steps up toward it, a full stride, then two, way off his spot.

“He’s not supposed to be there,” I say. “He thinks he can get to the puck first. He can’t. And now there’s nobody behind him.”

The winger chips it past him. Two passes. Goal.

“That goal didn’t happen when it went in,” I say. “It happened right there when he stepped up.”

She’s quiet. I back it up and play it again.

“But he hasn’t even touched the puck yet,” she says.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“How does it not matter?”

“Because most of the game is what happens before anybody gets it,” I say. “Where everybody is. Where they’re going. Who’s cheating. By the time somebody has the puck, the good players already know what happens next.”

She looks at the screen for a long time. I can see her taking it apart, the way she took apart her eBay business, looking for the system.

“So you’re watching what everybody does without the puck,” she says.

I look over at her.

That’s it. That’s exactly it. I’ve tried to explain that to people for years, my father, my mother, girls in high school who asked what I liked about hockey, and nobody ever got it in one sentence.

“Yeah,” I say.

She nods and leans forward a little.

“Do another one.”

So I do another one. And another. I back up a power play and show her how the team in white collapsed on the wrong man. I show her a goalie cheating to his blocker side two seconds before a shot because he read the shooter’s hips. I show her a center who wins a draw backward on purpose, so his defenseman can step into it.

She gets it wrong at first. She points at the guy with the puck. I tell her to stop looking at the puck. She says that’s the whole game. I tell her the puck is the least interesting thing on the ice. She looks at me like I’m insane.

Then she starts getting it right.

“That one,” she says, on a rush in the second period I backed up for her. She’s leaning forward with her elbows on her knees now, and she points at the screen. “He’s already going.”

“Who?”

“The guy in blue. On the right. He’s already moving before the pass.”

I look.

She’s right. He’s two strides into it before the puck leaves his teammate’s stick because he knew where it was going. And she saw it on the first try without me pointing.