Chapter Text
KIRILL GETS ME A JOB WITH THE WILD. After that Kirill is pushing his stick into my throat and telling me, the first step to winning is you have to lose. For a while though, Kirill and I seemed like we were going to be best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Kirill Kaprizov.
The stick against the underside of my jaw, Kirill says, “We won’t really lose.”
With the bit of beard that I have I can feel the way his tape sits sticky against my skin. We taped them next to each other before warmups.
Mess up a tape job and it can be the one thing that sends a whole game slipping.
“This isn’t really losing,” Kirill says. “We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.”
I push the Bauer logo away from my voice box and say, Kirill, you’re talking crazy.
The building we’re in won’t be here in thirty minutes. Take a 98% concentration of fuming Minnesota fans and have them watch you let in two goals and score none. Do this in an already record breaking a losing streak. By the third period, they’re already clearing out to beat the traffic.
I know this because Kirill knows this.
So we’re in the hallway of the locker room in Grand Casino Arena with his stick on my neck, and we hear the jumbotron speakers blare. It’s almost time to go back. With as much ice as there is in the building, and being below ground level, it’s always cold. It’s so cold and so quiet when you’re away from the crowd, the feeling you get is you’re one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you’re trained to do.
Gear up.
Get pucks in deep.
You don’t understand any of it, and then you go home.
Twenty nine minutes until the building is gone.
I know all of this: the stick, the yelling, the rationalising, is about the captaincy.
We have a triangle thing going on here. I want Kirill. Kirill wants to win a cup with a C on his chest. The organisation wants it to be on me instead. Something about me already being trained up for it. I don’t want the captaincy, and Kirill doesn’t want me around, not anymore.
This isn’t about team as in belonging. This is about property as in ownership.
Twenty eight minutes.
“This is our game, now, our game,” Kirill says, “and those Avalanche are dead.”
Without hockey, Kirill would have nothing.
Maybe we would become a legend, maybe not.
I scrape up my windpipe to tell him, Kirill, I’ll make you a legend.
I WAKE UP at Minneapolis-St Paul. Every time the plane swivels in its descent, I remember a different time coming here.
This is how I met Kirill Kaprizov.
I wake up at O’Hare.
I wake up at Pittsburgh International.
I wake up at YVR.
The first time I met him was in Minnesota. I was still fuzzy from the altitude and the redeye flight. It would be worth it to play in the morning, but arriving at night was always tough.
Some players perform better in the early slots, others feel stronger in the evenings.
I always do better on the day shift.
I met him the night before we played. He was fresh off a game and for some reason, in the same hotel elevator that I was. He glowed in the dark.
The NHL had contracts with a lot of hotels in franchise cities. It was more than likely the team he had just played was staying a floor up or down from the Canucks.
I had been about to close my eyes for the long ride up when the doors had opened again and Kirill climbed in, looking freshly born and worn in after a good win.
Maybe it was’t our official first meeting. We didn’t say anything to each other that night. But we recognised each other. I know we did, because he turned after he got out of the elevator, looking back at me.
I wake up at SeaTac.
I didn’t find out who Kirill was visiting.
I wake up at JFK.
The Canucks beat the Wild the next two times they see them, both morning games.
I wake up at Minneapolis-St Paul, again.
I find a realtor in Minnesota and I settle down there.
When I finally spoke to Kirill, He had just been promoted.
His first night wearing the A was my first night wearing green.
ALL THE USUAL players are here, tonight. Big moves in the franchise always get a big turnout. This is Boldy. This is Filip. This is Brock.
Hi.
The introductions. Everybody, this is Quinn, and this is his first time with us.
Hi, Quinn.
It feels like wearing a name tag, with everyone looking at the empty spot on my chest. People I’ve seen on TV every Monday night for years come at me, handshake hand ready, and their eyes on my name tag.
I don’t think we’ve met.
No one will ever say, bought. They’ll say, traded.
They don’t say life raft. They’ll say, acquisition.
The last time I was here, I was on the other side of the arena and I was leaving after loosing.
Today, I’m sitting through a pep talk about how I’m the new injection to an ailing body that will have the team up and at ‘em again.
It feels good, but it feels like I got here by lying my way into a support group for something I don’t have. Like someone else’s catharsis in an IV drip to my arm.
I go to Kirill because I know he’s new to leadership and I remember that feeling from Vancouver. I remember wanting people to want my advice. I stick out my hand to him and wait for whatever he puts in it.
I can hear management behind us, they say, “A lot of young players don’t know what they really want.”
I can see in his face how badly Kirill wished it was a C.
Oh, Captain, please deliver me.
“Young players, they think they want the whole world.”
Deliver me from endless shifts.
Deliver me from smug reporters.
Kirill takes my hand and holds it, not shaking it.
“If you don’t know what you want,” the suit says, “you end up with a lot you don’t.”
Deliver me, Captain, from being perfect and complete.
I ask Kirill what he wants me to do.
Kirill says, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”