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So I don't change it.

Thanksgiving, I go home.

Nico's on the couch. He's walking without the cane now. He gets up to hug me at the door and holds on longer than he usually does.

"You look better," he says.

"I'm fine."

"No, I mean you actually look better. You don't look like a raccoon." He squints at me. "You're sleeping."

"I'm sleeping."

At dinner Mom asks about the team, and I talk about the power play and the Harrow game in February. When I say Harrow, Nico puts his fork down. Just for a second. Then he picks it up again and asks Dad to pass the potatoes.

Later, on the porch, he asks, "How's Theo?"

He's never called him Theo before. Always the new guy.

"Fine," I say. "Hurt his ribs. Out a few weeks. He's back."

His head comes up. "Hurt them how?"

"Practice. Scrum."

"Who—"

"Nico. It was a scrum."

He looks at me in the porch light, with his breath coming out white. He wants to say something. I can see it sitting right behind his teeth.

He doesn't say it.

"Okay," he says. "Tell him I said—" He stops. "Never mind. Tell him to keep his head up."

I look at him. "Why would you care about his head?"

"I'm a defenceman, D," he says, too quick. "I care about everybody's head."

In the second week of January, he goes four for five.

It's a Tuesday. Twelve below. The ice is so hard and fast the puck sounds different on it, sharper.

The first one goes in, top shelf. The second one goes in, five-hole. The third one I stop, pad save, and he swears under his breath. The fourth one goes in off the post and in. The fifth one goes in.

Four.

He's never had four.

I wait for it. The loop past my crease. The spray of snow in my face mask. Say it, Josip. He's earned it. Four's earned all of it.

He skates back to the blue line and stands there.

He doesn't celebrate. He doesn't even look at me. He just stands on the line with his stick across his thighs, breathing, looking down at the ice in front of him like there's something written on it.

"Four," I say.

"Yes."