Whatever dreams I had of Brock and I sharing a lot of time together during the pyoffs in our little hotel oasis went out the window in Seattle.

  I realized that we both knew we had to focus, conceptually, but when push came to shove actually bunkering down and getting ourselves in the right mindset would sometimes be harder than I expected. Case in point, waking up stiff before the biggest game of my professional life.

  Cuddling with my boyfriend in our queen sized hotel bed was nice, but my knee decided it was going to py hard to get after whatever position we ended up in annoyed it. Unlike the rest of the team, I had to pass a light conditioning test a few hours before warm ups were due to start so that I could prove to the training staff and Coach Mac that I was healthy enough to py. Given that I thought professional sports would be a lot more loose access to painkillers and people giving me the benefit of the doubt that I could quote un quote py, I probably was not thinking fully straight when I went to bed. So, when Cra woke me up with a text message outlining the thorough conditioning test process my mind kicked into overdrive.

  I left sleeping beauty in the room and was down in the hotel gym by 6:30 am, once again to begin loosening up in a proper manner and internalizing the exercises I had to do both on and off the ice to prove to our coaching staff that my knee was trustworthy enough for a single elimination pyoff game.

  Cra warned me that I should get to the arena by around 1pm for tonight’s game and that I needed to be sharp or the coaching staff would go with the backup. I pleaded that I was ready to py, and she said that she heard New York wanted me to be fully healthy. For the first time in my career a professional team was looking at me with a longterm view and all I wanted to do was scream at whatever prospect coordinator was going to deny this group the best chance at advancing into the division semifinals. Yes, it was absolutely their right to look after potential longterm investments, and yes it is absolutely fucking fttering that I am probably going to be considered a bonafide prospect going into training camp next year. But for the love of god, winning a championship does not come often at any level. I’m going to be in that crease tonight even if I have to bckout from pain while pying.

  Fifteen slow miles on the bike ter, and I’m back to stretching hoping that my knee stays loose for the quick trip to the arena. If we were less than three miles away I’d run there just to stay loose, but unfortunately I’ll have to settle for a quick car ride. I practice some side to side shuffles and my knee seems to be cooperating enough to get through this conditioning test. Everyone in the locker room knows deep down that if we get to Olympia we’re setting ourselves up for momentum for a run. We just py them better. I know its the pyoffs and teams py tighter, but of all the teams we pyed this year they were the ones we had the least amount of trouble against. Plus, their head coach used to be on Coach Mac’s staff st year. I doubt he’s managed to come up with coaching tricks in nine months that our grizzled bench vet hasn’t seen before. Win this game and the next series will be ours. I have never been so sure of something in my career. I would make an honest to god bet with Riley that if we lost against Olympia in a five game series that I would publicly come out.

  Coach would probably tell me to “man up,” at this moment or something, which is a little ironic given my current situation. But, its the pyoffs. That means there is always going to be someone who steps up, if you have to go down. And I’m not going down unless my leg literally cannot stand. After sitting there stretching, wracking my brain for some sort of way out of this predicament that would just allow me to py unobstructed, I texted Cra saying I was ready to go and called a ride share.

  Step up, step down, move left, pivot right. Simple. Its a drill any hockey pyer knows, you just have to follow the taped on lines on the floor moving left and right showing that you have teral mobility. It was the first step in this conditioning test, which I am sure is designed for me to be put in as much pain as possible to show I can grit through it and be healthy enough to backstop our game in the most important game of the season, so far.

  Three steps in I felt a twinge. Not, like any normal twinge you can grit through, but the sharp kind of pain that you know is not just your body aching telling you to stop for a little bit. Its the bad kind of pain. The searing pain that makes you wince and call a trainer over. But the trainer was already over, and her assistant was my friend. So I had to focus, and just hope for the best.

  Once the first twinge dissipated, I was able to move on to the rest of the exercises and get through them. My knee was in pain, but it dulled. I was so relieved that it dulled. Dull pain meant it could be pyed through. I can handle dull pain. Sharp pain is where your instincts get messed with. You can think through dull pain. Its always there. Decades of dysphoria primed me to py through injuries, if you think about it. You just have to ignore the obvious discomfort which rules your life. Its a terrible thing to do, really, but in this one instance it can useful.

  “Alright, you’re suiting up.”

  “Thanks coach.”

  I plopped over to the bench near our makeshift conditioning corner. I looked at the clock, and it was just after 2pm. I had plenty of time to stay limber and hydrate before warm ups. It was a 7pm start. I could park myself here and just get in the zone. Tonight was mine. Nothing was going to bring me out of this zone.

  Until Cra sat down next to me.

  “You’re lucky I’m just the assistant trainer.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re lucky.”

  “No, I know what you said.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m asking what does that mean?”

  “I wouldn’t have cleared you.”

  “What do you mean I got through the exercises. My knee is fine.”

  “I’m not the head trainer but I’ve done this for long enough to know when you’re bullshitting me Rhea.”

  “Not here.”

  “There’s no one around.”

  “Fine. Just. Quietly.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re using your deadname in your head when you’re here.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Shut up. My knee is fine.”

  “No its not.”

  “Well I’m pying.”

  “I know. I’m not going to stop you.”

  “Great. Why are you here then?”

  “Because I think you’re an idiot and I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t tell you.”

  That’s exactly what I wanted to hear just before a pyoff game. Perfect hype up speech Cra, no notes you’re killing it.

  “I saw that slip up in the first drill.”

  “Yeah but after that its been fine.”

  “Has it hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Bull. Shit.”

  “Fine, its a dull pain.”

  She sat there thinking for a second.

  “Okay. That’s not as bad as I thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you told me you felt a sharp pain throughout or whenever you moved a certain way, I’d take you to get the MRI right now myself. But dull pain means there’s probably just some residual swelling for now.”

  “See, I told you its fine.”

  “Its not fine, but its manageable. For now.”

  “That’s all I need.”

  “Fucking hockey pyers.”

  “What?” I asked smiling looking her right in the eye.

  “You’re all pain addicted morons. Ice on and off for 15 minute intervals for now. You’re coming to the trainers room by five o’clock no questions. We’ll get you limber and then on the ice. Get this fucking win and we’ll reassess.”

  “You got it coach,” I even gave her a salute.

  “Fucking brats.” She chuckled as she got up giving me the space to go get an ice pack. I was obviously going to listen to her advice. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have some of the faith of the training staff. Sure, a little injury was going to complicate things, but I had this. Well, I had this as best as I could. She didn’t need to know that there were some smaller twinges ter in the drills, no one did. That wasn’t an issue until it became an issue. It was just a tweak, and some swelling. It was manageable.

  I could handle this. It was time to step up.

  The rest of the afternoon was a blur. Pain management becomes kind of routine the longer you’re an athlete. The body creaks when you push it as hard as we do. At some point regur soreness and tiredness just becomes your expectation. Injuries are regur parts of life. And if they happen to fall in the calendar period of, say, the UHL pyoffs you just ride through them. I didn’t have that much lingering ache from my conditioning test and I managed to make it through stretches and warm up without needing to resort to low grade pain killers.

  I stood in my crease silently as the national anthem pyed. It was time to drop the puck, and it was time to push myself harder than I had before. It was the pyoffs. I needed to learn what it meant to step up.

  Twenty minutes.

  That’s all I had left. Twenty minutes. I could survive less than half an hour of hockey py. Our team had done a great job of limiting shots against us. Coach obviously let people know that my injury was worse than a stubbed toe. If we pyed like this we would easily see this out and head to Olympia.

  Coach then came into the locker room with a few minutes left in the intermission. Everyone and everything became quiet. Eerily so.

  “There’s one period left. Do you want to go home, or do you want a shot at this? Decide for yourselves.”

  That’s all he said. That’s all he needed to say. No one said anything in response. We all just finished putting our gear on, and walked out to the ice. We were locked in.

  I only let myself breathe when Brock managed a clear and the puck slid all the way down the ice into an empty net with 45 seconds to go. We had a three goal lead. The series was ours. We were moving on to Olympia.

  When the final whistle blew Brock sprinted towards me and wrapped me in the biggest hug imaginable. It did not look out of pce as almost immediately the entire team encircled us and joined us in a group hug. The catharsis was real. One series down; four left to go.

  An impromptu celebration happened in the locker room, dutifully captured by our social media folks. It was a quick celebration, we did our postgame routine and then we were packing our bags to the hotel in Olympia. I don’t think anyone had time to think before we had arrived at the hotel.

  Brock and I made our way to our room, plopped our bags down and both promptly fell asleep in each other’s arms. These were not our bedsheets we were not responsible for washing out the sweat stains ourselves, and no these were not from extracurricur activities. We were that drained. If we did not have that one goal lead going into the third period, I don’t think we would have had enough gas to keep going. A quick goal five minutes in was a backbreaker for the other wild card team, and frankly immediately stopped any momentum that was inevitably building due to the score effects. I may have only let in one goal, but I did not face that many shots and truth be told my confidence was a little shaky. I just needed this knee to behave.

  So of course I woke up the next morning with an absolutely swollen knee and tears in my eyes.

  “Shit, that looks…” Brock said as I stirred to hobble to the shower.

  “Not great.”

  “Yeah, not great.”

  “A warm shower and some stretching followed by some icing and a wrap will help the swelling. It’s just going to be like this.”

  “Are you sure you can py game one tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay…”

  “Brock.”

  “What?”

  “Its my body. And it’s the pyoffs. Everyone is dealing with something.”

  “Right, but something doesn’t look like the size of a melon on my knee.”

  “Can it.”

  “Okay. I just, worry.”

  “I know. We all do. But we’re here. We’re against a team that we match up well with and we can seize this series early.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Maintenance days were going to be like this the whole pyoffs weren’t that? I called Cra after our shower and we met up in the hotel gym. She gave me advice for injury management and was on top of me for not stretching and icing before bed. It wasn’t going to happen no matter how many people scolded me. I was just that drained. But I realized that’s not going to cut it going forward. Just because we made it to the division semifinals, does not mean that we can take our feet off the gas.

  We did light stretching and some exercises to keep me limber before the team meeting that afternoon. Coach stressed what our gamepy would be and how we could shut down the division winner retively easy. This was going to be a short series. I was ready to stand tall for us and keep this going.

  Waking up on gameday was a different story. I quickly extricated myself from Brock’s arms and went to take a shower to start limbering up for a new series and new challenges. The second I put my foot down on the floor, my knee seared with pain.

  Shit.

  Whatever sadistic fuck decided that we needed two pyoff games on back to back days needs to be sent to The Hague to face trial.

  Game one was one of those back and forth pyoff affairs that everyone thinks is going to set the tone for the series, but you get absolutely no clues out of. We lost 5-4 in double overtime. Olympia built a 2-0 lead with five minutes to go in the first, and we scored about a minute before intermission to cut it to 2-1. Then, in the second period, we tied the game 2-2 about seven minutes in. Then a few minutes ter Olympia scored. A few minutes after that we scored again. It was 3-3 going into the second intermission. We got the first goal in the third period to go up 4-3, our first lead of the game, but then we got sloppy. We had three penalties called on us in the final 10 minutes of the frame, and that much penalty killing in the pyoffs is going to gas any team. They scored with about four minutes left on the power py to tie it.

  Overtime number one was a tense affair. Neither team got more than seven shots on goal in the 20 minute frame. Thankfully for me, I was starting to tire. The soreness that started the day was creeping in. Each save was taking more and more effort and I could feel my concentration slip. One more save, Rhea is what I told myself over and over and over just to get through the period. I pride myself on the mental aspect of the game. I out prepare anyone on our team, I am a walking encyclopedia of our opponents. I feel I need to be, because I was never the goalie with the fastest reflexes growing up. I needed to use my brains to be ahead of everyone around me so that I had an edge that they couldn’t work hard to beat. Sure, you can train harder than me, but there is no one on earth that is thinking harder than I am at times. That’s an edge that is dangerous.

  After a nearly silent first intermission between overtimes, we went back out on the ice. Guys were starting to tire and we knew this was when mistakes were going to be deadly for either team. That proved to be true quicker than anyone expected, with Olympia getting a three-on-one about 90 seconds into the frame. Poor Brock was the only one able to track back, but their top line toyed with him and put one behind me on a beautiful cross ice pass that I had no chance of sliding across the crease to stop, let alone on a bad knee. Their arena erupted at that one as the pyers streamed on the ice in our zone to hug the winning goal scorer. It was a scene I never wished to ever be a part of. I kneeled there for a good minute, afraid to even test my knee getting up, but I knew no one was paying attention. Slinking back to the locker room we all knew this one was a bad loss, and put us on a bad back foot to start a best of five series.

  So, that’s where I found myself the next day midway through period two down 1-0. We started the game fast, and I think everyone on the team knew it was pure adrenaline kicking in and would not st. We outshot them 10-1 in the first 12 minutes of the frame, but their goalie was a brick wall. Every shot they got I became less confident in my knee, and I think coach could tell that my teral movement was slowing down. Thankfully early in the second period when they scored, it was when I was heavily screened on a power py, so there was no need for coach to pull the ripcord and get me out of there. But we were slow. We were off. This was a game that we needed a lucky bounce to go our way in the hopes that we could get back into it. The second it became a two goal deficit it was done. No one wanted to say it, but we all knew it.

  And then, Olympia got a redirection goal with three minutes left in the period that I never saw. Coach challenged the py saying they were offsides when they came into our zone setting up the py, but he lost it. That meant that Olympia was given a two minute power py right after they scored. They followed it up with another power py goal and all of a sudden we were down 3-0 going into the second intermission.

  We could not muster the same energy we did to start the game and it was apparent that it would take us more than a few minutes to potentially get our first goal of the game in this frame. Our defensemen started pinching on offense and we wanted to put the squeeze on them. This led to bad mistakes and odd man rushes coming towards me throughout the period. I did my best to stop some, but nearly halfway through the period it was 5-0 and we were out of this game. Their fans had the energy we cked, and coach pulled me with nine minutes left to give me a breather.

  Filing out of the arena we all knew one thing, we were fucked. Down 2-0 in a five game series meant that we had to win the next three to stay alive. Luckily the next two games were at home, and our fans were just itching to get behind us. We also had two days off to prepare, meaning there was going to be plenty of tape sessions to break down what the fuck went wrong in Olympia. We went 4-0-1 against them in the regur season, and got our ass handed to us in two straight games to start the pyoffs. There was a reason they were division champs, I guess.

  The bus going home from Olympia was silent. It had been over a week since we had been back in Olympic City, and all of us desperately craved our own beds. Or anything besides a hotel room, just to get the stink off the start of this series off of us. Brock and I did not talk on the way back, nor did we make pns to be together the first of the two off days. I don’t think either of us just wanted to be right now. We could lick our wounds in peace alone then fight together when it was time to get back on the ice. Coming back from down 2-0 wasn’t impossible, it just was not going to be easy.

  I was the st one off the bus back home, even if I was sitting towards the front. As I stepped off, Coach Mac was waiting for me. He started walking with me as we went to the parking lot, this couldn’t be good.

  “Jamie.”

  “Yeah, coach?”

  “Marek’s got game three. If we win he’s got four. After that, I want to see your knee again. Don’t fucking py less than 85 percent ever again.”

  He then walked away without another word.