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The puck sits on his dresser, mocking him. He doesn’t know where it came from. Despite hockey being his job, he doesn’t generally have pucks just … lying around.
But there it is. Collecting dust next to a few gum wrappers and a bottle of cologne whose name he can’t pronounce.
It’s not the puck he scored his first NHL goal with. He knows that. That puck is hanging on the wall of his parents’ living room. Framed and actually quite nicely presented, sent to him by the Blackhawks Organization a few weeks after the game.
He remembers scoring that goal, every detail. He remembers knowing, just knowing that this was it. Before Bolly even passed to him. He saw it all at once, Bolly coming down the ice parallel to him, Raycroft’s eyes following the puck as it came closer, only to fly past him and into the back of the net. The sound of the crowd, the horn, the song. The amazing feeling of having not only those people there, at the UC, cheering him on, but the fans not there. The ones at home, watching on TV. The ones in their cars, listening on the radio. All those people who knew who he was and loved him for what he just did.
This is not that puck.
The puck on his dresser is almost torturing him. It’s a reminder of what he still can’t do. The headaches are down to “few and far between,” but they’re still there. The nausea hits him randomly. And according to the ones with the medical degrees, that means he still can’t practice, can’t work out. The season’s over. He needs, needs, to be training.
He misses the ice. Misses the game. Misses the exhaustion that comes from all of it. Without hockey, he feels useless. This is his life, and it’s stalled. It’s akin to death.
All he can do is take things day by day, rest his body and his brain, and hope that wellness will come soon.
So he leaves the puck there as a reminder. This puck that he has no sentimental attachment to. This puck that has no known origin. This puck that he can’t help but stare at every time he walks past it.
He waits, and hopes. And when the day finally comes, when he’s cleared by the doctors, he goes straight home to that puck. He brings the hunk of rubber to his lips and presses a kiss to the textured edge. He rubs a thumb over the smooth surface of the top and allows himself to finally smile.
He’s going to play hockey again.