Coming in First Place by Taylor Fitzpatrick

Author:Taylor Fitzpatrick [Fitzpatrick, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor Fitzpatrick
Published: 2020-04-18T10:52:57+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

David expects his time in New York to drag until training camp, but it doesn’t. The trainer Dave found David is perfect for him, pushes him as hard as he wants to be pushed, as hard as he’d push himself. David spends long hours at the gym, putting on the weight that will melt off his body once the season starts. He mixes things up at the rink, his building’s pool, and it’s enough to leave him exhausted every night in an apartment that is only nominally more his than the hotel in Toronto was. He spends more time in it at least, goes home every night and stays there and doesn’t let himself think of anything else, remember that there was anything but this.

Training camp’s less of an adjustment than it was last season. David’s already comfortable playing on a line with Kurmazov and Eisler. He knows the goalies’ strengths and weaknesses — though it’s mostly weaknesses — knows the names of some of his teammates’ wives, children, dogs, whatever they talk incessantly about.

There are some new call-ups and rookies, and they hang around the edges, awkward. David would try to pull them in, make them feel welcome, but he doesn’t really know how to. Kurmazov does, in his typically gruff way, and David learns their names, where they’re from. He’ll probably forget it all when most of them inevitably get cut, sent right back to where they came from.

Once training camp is over, the Islanders’ roster doesn’t look much different from last season’s. Some players were traded away, or traded to the Islanders, signed here in free-agency or went somewhere else, and some prospects managed to crack the ranks, at least for the preseason, but David knows most of the players in the room, has already spent a year with them. He wishes it made a difference.

The Panthers’ captain tears his MCL in the preseason and decides he’s going to retire instead of fight through rehab at the tail-end of his career. He wants to be honest with the fans, and they deserve better than him sitting on the LTIR all year then promptly retiring. At least that’s what David gathers from the article summarising his press conference, a press conference in which the new Panthers captain is named as well. David can’t say he’s surprised to see Jake’s name. He’s young for a captain, but not the only young one, not the youngest ever to be made captain, and the media’s pretty much in agreement about him being the shot in the arm the Panthers need.

A year ago David would have thought that was the worst idea in the world, someone with no drive being made captain. Now he knows Jake has the drive, and he just thinks it’s a terrible idea, a nineteen year old captain with a penchant for stupid penalties and streaky play. The media loves it. Of course they do. They love everything Jake does. David doesn’t know what he does to secure their unwavering affection, can’t even begin to guess.

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