Work Text:
i.
Everyone in hockey has seen the iconic picture: triumphant Bob Zimmermann with his infant son in the Cup.
A lesser known picture: Kent Parson, age two, clutching his father’s hands as he takes his first steps on the ice at the Buffalo Sabres annual Christmas Family Skate.
ii.
Kent is seven when the Buffalo Sabres buy out his dad’s contract.
Mark Parson didn’t have a great season. Hasn’t had a great season in a while. He spent the majority of it down in Rochester, in the AHL with the Americans. He’s getting old for a hockey player—30—and he’s got a lingering knee injury that gives him trouble sometimes.
Kent doesn’t remember much of 1997, but he remembers his dad not having time to go his mites games anymore, constantly commuting between Buffalo and Rochester. He remembers that this was the first year his dad didn’t build the backyard rink during the winter. He remembers his parents fighting more and more.
He scores the game winning goal in the game that clinches his team a spot in the playoffs, and neither of his parents are there to see it.
iii.
Summer 1997 is worse than the spring. His parents have stopped arguing—or at least, stopped arguing where he can see and hear them—but there’s a weird tension in the house. Kent spends a lot of nights at Grandma’s.
Kent watches the Stanley Cup Playoffs by himself.
Detroit sweeps the Flyers in the Final.
iv.
Towards the end of summer, Mark and Cathy sit him down and explain that Dad got bought out by the Sabres, and he and his agent have been looking into other teams, other leagues.
A week after Kent starts second grade, his dad leaves for Sweden.
He wears the Färjestad BK jersey his dad sends back around the house constantly until he notices how much it upsets his mom. It ends up in the back of his closet with the Sabres one and the Amerks one.
The beginnings of a collection.
v.
Cathy picks up more shifts at the hospital to make ends meet. The money Mark sends back from Sweden is barely anything, not enough to keep her and Kent in the house and in hockey.
Grandma is the one who watches Kent after school, drives him to and picks him up from practice and his games.
Kent tells his dad all about his hockey when he calls.
Cathy sells the house and they move in with Grandma.
The calls gradually decrease.
Mark tries to convince Cathy to bring Kent and move to Europe so they can all be together again.
Mark’s contract with Färjestad BK ends and isn’t renewed.
The year Kent turns ten, his dad doesn’t come home during the summer. He doesn’t come home at all.
vi.
Kent spends the 2006-2007 season in Ann Arbor, Michigan with the NTDP—the National Team Development Program.
It teaches him a lot of things, about hockey and about himself.
And about how he can’t be himself—openly—and play hockey.
Sixteen year old boys, hockey boys, living with unfamiliar billet families far away from home, aren’t models of respectability or endowed with an excess of common sense or tolerance.
vii.
Mark—he hasn’t been “dad” in Kent’s head for a few years now—starts calling again. He’s playing for HC Lasselsberger Plzeň in the Czech Extraliga now, and his divorce from Cathy was finalized a week after Kent’s thirteenth birthday.
They talk about hockey. Kent’s numbers, his ice time; Mark graciously bestowing bits of hockey wisdom on his son.
They don’t talk about how Kent’s doing in Ann Arbor personally, they don’t talk about Mark missing Kent’s past four birthdays, they don’t talk about Cathy, and they don’t talk about Anja, Kent’s new Czech stepmom that he’s never even met.
Mark says that Kent should look into the major junior route to the NHL, instead of college.
Cathy doesn’t think it’s a good idea. She wants him to go to college, even if it’s only for a year or two.
He does it anyway.
viii.
Just a few months into Kent’s season with Rimouski Océanic, he’s invited to USA Hockey’s selection camp for the 2008 IIHF World Junior Championship.
(Jack gets invited to Hockey Canada’s selection camp, of course.)
Kent’s mom doesn’t cry when he tells her that if he makes the team, he won’t be able to go home for Christmas or New Years. She gets really quiet when he tells her that the tournament is being held in the Czech Republic this year.
“Good luck; I know you can do it, sweetie. I love you,” Cathy says.
“I love you too,” Kent replies.
He makes the team.
He represents his country at World Juniors.
They lose to Russia in the bronze medal game.
Kent leans against Patches and tries to breathe through his stinging eyes as the Russians celebrate at the other end of the ice. To Kent’s left, JVR lets out a muffled sob.
“Fuck Alexei Mashkov anyway,” Patches spits. It’s very uncharacteristic and startles JVR so much that he drops his stick.
“It was a really pretty goal, though,” JVR says, glumly. He doesn’t even bother to pick up his stick. Patches reaches around Kent to clap him on the shoulder in support.
It’s the first hockey game of Kent’s that Mark has been to in years.
“USA hockey is do or die,” Kent murmurs.
ix.
Kent loves his dad. He does.
Yeah, Mark seems more like an eccentric uncle than a father—initiating contact sporadically and when it’s convenient—but he’s Kent’s dad.
And it’s hockey.
Kent gets it.
When hockey’s in your blood like this, when you love hockey like this, you go where the hockey is. Wherever it takes you, playing for whoever will take you.
Kent thinks that, if put in the same situation, he’d have done the same thing.
x.
“What’re these?”
Jack’s helping Kent pack.
They’re still a little drunk—on the Mem Cup win and on each other—and they fooled around for a bit on Kent’s bed before Jack noticed Kent’s room was half boxed up and his Good Canadian Boy sensibilities kicked in and he offered to help. His mom’s on her way with a U-Haul. She’ll be here tomorrow.
He and Jack probably won’t see each other again until the Combine.
Jack’s got his head shoved way far back into Kent’s nearly empty closet, and Kent feels his heart get stuck in his throat. He knows what Jack is looking at. What Kent carted around from Buffalo to Ann Arbor to Rimouski. Five kid-sized hockey jerseys: Buffalo Sabres, Rochester Americans, Färjestad BK, HC Lasselsberger Plzeň, and Ak Bars Kazan.
“My dad played hockey too.”