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Everyone wants to tell Zhenya he’s a veteran now, but he isn’t. He’s two seasons out from his rookie year and he’s not ready to be old, not even in hockey years. Old is the way Nicky rolls his eyes at the guys rough housing on the ice, or the way Orpik gives everyone unsolicited diet advice. Evgeni has barely been here for three years: he can’t be hockey old, no matter how many seasons he played in the KHL.
He likes the rookies, though. He doesn’t mentor them the way Sasha and Nicky and Orpik do. He’s not part of the leadership squad. He doesn’t adopt them like Tommy does, like he has ever since Burky showed up. Zhenya wonders what people outside the team think when they look at Tommy, an almost oldschool brawler who takes in rookies like they’re stray puppies.
Anyways, Zhenya likes the rookies. They’re fun, and their excitement at making the big league is refreshing. Not that everyone isn’t thrilled to be playing NHL hockey, but it’s different for the rookies. Any job wears on you occasionally after enough time, even a dream job. Rookie season seems to come with an immunity to whatever collective despondency the team may experience. Rookies are nice that way.
It’s nice to have fresh blood on the team too. Getting it from rookies is immeasurably better than getting it from trades. The less said about trades, the better, really. Marcus being sent to Jersey still cuts deeper than Zhenya wants to think about. The rookies make a good distraction.
So does being back on the ice – skating and training and joking with all the guys. That’s Zhenya’s role on the team, being the comic relief, not being a mentor. He can do his eagle cellies and carry the puck in his mouth. No one should be looking to him for guidance.
It takes a few months to figure out who’s sticking around. Or to at least have some idea of who’s here for now. No one’s ever definitively sticking around, but again, the less said there, the better. He realizes Vrana must be up for good this year when he finds himself thinking the kid needs a better nickname than V. At least it’s a step up from the reporters’ dogged attempts to mispronounce his first name every way possible. V doesn’t seem to care. Zhenya supposes the relief of staying up after bouncing around last season probably makes a lot of things seem inconsequential.
Trotz puts them on a line together in practice, then keeps playing them together when their line works. Zhenya’s not surprised, exactly, but he’s not unsurprised either. He’s gotten used to never expecting to have good chemistry with anyone. That way, it’s not a disappointment if a matchup doesn’t work, and its a pleasant surprise if it does.
V is a pleasant surprise. They play good hockey together from the outset, and the flashes of brilliance they show are enough for Zhenya to think they may play great hockey together sooner rather than later. V is fast and he’s fancy, which makes him exhilarating to play with.
He’s also young, so he hasn’t developed the hockey sense necessary to focus on more than two or three things at once.
So Zhenya tells him to play fancy, to dangle all he likes, to try out the snazzy, risky plays he wants to try out. Zhenya tells V that he’ll take care of defenders and turnovers. His backcheck is pretty solid now. That strategy works out pretty well for them.
Zhenya playing the jester works pretty well for them too. Just because rookies are fairly insulated from team despair, doesn’t mean they don’t suffer from their own low points. Their low points just tend to be tied more closely to their own performance. V is a typical rookie that way – stressed out and down on himself after every less than stellar shift. Zhenya is pretty good at lightening the mood enough between shifts to get them through the rough patches of a game.
V laughs at his jokes, even when they’re not in the middle of a game, and that’s nice. Not that Zhenya doesn’t expect his jokes to be laughed at – he does, he’s a funny guy, but gratifyingly consistent about laughing. Even when Zhenya jokes at him in Russian.
V understands a bit of Russian, but only a very little bit, certainly not enough understand Zhenya’s jokes. That doesn’t seem to matter though. V laughs delightedly and chirps back at him in Czech. Zhenya doesn’t understand much Czech. The rest of the bench ends up laughing at them as they chatter back and forth, simultaneously understanding nothing and everything. Zhenya doesn’t think too much about how he’s always the first teammate V looks to when he’s stressed or uncertain. Even when he’s happy, he spends a lot of time looking to Zhenya. Zhenya doesn’t think too much about that either.
He keeps right on not thinking about it until they end up next to each other on a plane home from a game. V is half awake and half sprawled over Zhenya. He’s sleepily practicing his Russian pronunciation – it’s getting better. Sasha turns around from the seat in front of them to say something about Zhenya’s rookie. Zhenya would roll his eyes, but V tips his face up and smiles, laughing a little, still sleepy. Zhenya smiles back at him.