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“Your grip is optimistic.”

He shoves my shoulder on the way past. The wrong one, and he knows it.

“Mack. Puck.”

Mack has one on his blade before I finish asking.

Ryan stops. So do five guys who were already halfway to the gate.

“We’re done.”

“You shoved the shoulder. Come take a draw.”

He comes back and sets up with his bottom hand low on the shaft, because he’s decided this is a strength contest. He’s never won one that way. I’ve told him twice.

Mack drops it.

I don’t try to win it. I put my blade under his and lift his stick off the ice before the puck lands, and then I step through him, and the puck sits where it fell.

He has to put a hand down.

“Grip,” I tell him.

I leave the puck where it is and go.

Nobody says anything until I’m through the gate. Then everybody says plenty, and none of it is to me.

Mack’s phone starts vibrating against the wood between our stalls while he’s telling Brick why his pass died at the blue line. He glances down, his mouth tightens, and he keeps going.

“You were too flat,” he tells Brick, still looking at the screen. “You give him the wall there, you’ve got nowhere to go when he closes. And you’re entering with your stick too far outside your body.”

The phone stops.

Brick leans back against his stall. “So fix it.”

“I just did.”

“You talked.”

“That’s usually how coaching works.”

The phone starts again.

This time Mack looks at me. Just once. Then back at the screen.

He finishes what he’s saying to Brick before he picks it up. “Yeah.”

He stands and moves two stalls down, where the room is exactly as private as it is here. Roman is trying to get Kowalski to admit he missed the net from six feet. Somebody has turned the music up. Sully is still in the hallway talking to Turner.

I pull tape from my left sock.

Mack says, “I can come up.”

The tape stops halfway around my fingers.

He listens. “Yeah. Five minutes.”

He hangs up and comes back for his shirt. He gets one arm through the sleeve before I ask.