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The locker room is quiet.
Sat in their lockers, most of Team Canada are in their own world's, simply existing together in their sadness.
Not progressing to the gold medal game had been a hit, but to not even medal at all rocked them all, leaving them disheartened and somber.
But, while many players felt bad for themselves, that they weren't able to take a medal home, they mainly felt bad for their Olympians. Sid and Mack came into Worlds with the pressure of losing gold, this being their chance at a victorious return, and to do it with the next great Canadian star at the helm as captain.
And it had started well, the team had been on fire, winning both of their friendlies and then going into a 7 game win streak in the preliminaries. The chance for vengeance had come around much sooner than anyone thought though, the sequel to the Olympic face off occurring in the Quarter-finals, and while it was a raging success, a complete shut out to send the American's home, it was not without its losses. An ugly hit in the opening half of the first period took out Team Canada's best defensemen, and while they flew through the American's to a clear win, the loss of Bouch was clearly felt on the ice of the next two games. The American's whether they intended it or not, lost Canada their chances to medal, and with it, the Team's chance to be able to give their Olympian's consolation, a gold medal to even out their loss.
Both Olympians had been dragged out for extra media, before being able to have showers or get out of their gear, Sid had returned already and had showered and changed in rapid fashion, but Mack, as captain, was expected to stay out longer, answer more questions, to take on the blame and be the face of a team who failed to bring gold home once again for their country, their Canada.
It was only a few more minutes before Mack returned, feet shuffling, head tilted downwards, staring at his feet, but his red teary eyes still pretty visible to anyone looking. He made his way in and slumped down at his locker, getting undressed on autopilot, throwing his uniform into the baskets and letting his gear fall to the floor, leaving him in his underlayers as he continued to stare out at nothing.
A phone ringing broke the silence that had settled over the locker room, its obnoxious sound echoing from where it was stuffed in someone's cubby
Players looked around, trying to ascertain who the phone belonged to, before locating the sound as coming from their Captain's stuff. Mack looked up from where he balling up his sock tape in between his hands, reaching up to his cubby and pulling his phone out. Pulling his phone close to his face, he saw who was ringing him.
His dad.
Emblazoned on his phone, the name "Rick" across his screen.
Mack felt sick. Sicker than he already did after losing. After all the press he just went through. His already pale pallor moving from white into grey as he continued to look down at his ringing phone.
"You, ugh, you gonna get that Celly?" Someone, he wasn't paying enough attention to know who, asked, from a bit further down the lockers.
"Huh, what?" Mack looked up, breaking his staring contest with his own phone, returning to the real world and seeing multiple of his teammates looking at him with confusion, and a few, with concern.
"Do you need to get that?" It's Tavares who asks this time, looking at Mack with concern.
The phone had stopped ringing at this point, returning the room to quiet.
"Nah," Mack tries to go with non-chalant but he's unsure if it is conveyed, "it's just my dad. I'll talk to him later."
"Your dad?" It's Dickie who asks.
Shit.
Sam Dickinson is the only person in this room who has had the pleasure of meeting his dad, and hearing him and Mack talk. Dickie, alongside a growing contingent of Sharks players, has always thought his dad was too harsh on him and that his constant watching and advising was too much. That his dad needed to take a step back and let Mack be.
"Yes...?" Mack answers, a questioning tone to his answer, as if he didn't want to give Dickie a clear answer.
"Mack, you haven't even been off the ice for half an hour, you haven't even had a shower yet. His critiques can wait, he can wait. Talk to him tomorrow. Please." Dickie is almost begging by the end of it, pleading with Mack to not put himself in Rick Celebrini's line of fire so soon after the game.
Dickie knows that if Rick gets Mack on the phone, Mack will be stuck in a long, critique-filled debrief in which he will dissect every single decision Mack made on the ice tonight and how it was wrong. How he lost Canada a medal. Just as he knows he did after the Olympics.
The Mack that came back from the Olympics was not the same one who went, the one that arrived back in San Jose had been beaten down by not just his own debilitating self-esteem and hatred, but his own father's scathing analysis. Dickie could do nothing but offer support after the Olympics.
Here, he could do something more. And he would.
"What...Dickie, he's my dad, I can't just blow him off."
"Mack, come on, this isn't good for you."
"Dickie, what the fuck, he's not just anyone, he's my dad, I can't just not talk to him till tomorrow." Mack was getting riled up, Dickie was sticking his nose in places he didn't need to. Many of his Sharks teammates over the past couple of years had started looking at him worriedly when he mentioned his dad or his childhood. Mack was fine, he had a good childhood, his dad was a good dad, he made Mack the best he could, and if that meant he was a strict teacher with high standards, then that was fine.
Mack got up, frustrated with Dickie bringing this argument up again, in the middle of a locker room full of men he was captaining. Including Sidney Crosby. He couldn't look at Sid, didn't want to see whatever look was bound to be on Sid's face after hearing his and Dickie's conversation. Mack strode off towards the showers, away from Dickie, and away from his dad, leaving his phone rested on the bench.
Sam Dickinson is sat on the bench in front of his locker, watching as his captain and teammate stalks off into the showers, away from him, leaving a different quiet to envelop the room than the one straight after their loss.
Dickie and the rest of the Sharks had been watching Mack and his dad's relationship since they were drafted. Listening to Mack talk about his childhood, his training, or listening to any call between him and his dad, alarm bells rung in Sam's head, and when he approached Toff and a few of the other vets, they agreed. Since coming to that consensus, the collection of Sharks players in the know about it had been trying to get Mack to understand their point of view.
It hadn't been successful.
Sam hadn't been planning to bring their Team Canada teammates into it. He hadn't meant to have the well worn argument in front of their national teammates, and out Rick's shitty parenting to an entire locker room of hockey players, including Sidney Crosby. Mack idolised Sid, just as Sam and every Canadian player since Sid was drafted did, and Sam knew Mack would be embarrassed by the weakness his dad had convinced him was there being outed to Sid. But, when Sam heard that phone ringing, with the specific ring tone he knew Mack had set for his dad, he was furious.
They had just lost and here was Mack's dad already calling. He knew with certainty it wouldn't be Rick offering any comfort, instead he would immediately be dissecting Mack's performance and captaincy, in his usual acerbic tone when speaking to Mack about a game. Mack was already beating himself up, Sam couldn't stand to let Mack get dragged any further down than he had already put himself and so he stepped in.
It may have led to Mack being angry with him and storming off, but at least Mack wasn't on the phone with his dad.
"Dickie?"
Sam broke out from his thoughts and looked up, coming face to face with all 3 of his alternate captains stood in front of him in a semi-circle, Sid at centre, having been the one to speak.
"Huh, yeah?"
"What, uh, what was that about?"
"Oh, right." Dickie didn't know what to say. He didn't want to out Mack's childhood problems any more than he already had, but he also knew, if he and the rest of the Sharks couldn't get through to him, maybe the only person that could get Mack to see logic was Sid. And so he told them.
"Mack's dad is an asshole."
A raised eyebrow had him continuing quickly.
"He's a controlling asshole and a piece of shit. He basically turned Mack's whole childhood into hockey bootcamp. He was so strict on him that if you looked at them together, you'd think they were a coach and player, not father and son. He worked him until he broke and then pushed him further. And Mack can't see that that is a problem, because to him, it worked. He's in the NHL, playing the best hockey possible. He thinks his dad was valid in his training, not realising that he was basically robbed of the opportunity to just be a child. Mack doesn't know any different, and no matter how we try to explain it to him, he doesn't get that normal hockey parents don't raise their kids like Rick raised them. He thinks everything Rick did was a sign of his love, but I've seen hockey players show more love to their kids in healthier ways than Rick ever has."
He continued, fired up and angry about it, "And also! That right there, that phone call thing."
"Yeah, the phone thing." O'Rielly speaks, before continuing, "That was a whole lot of anger directed at a phone call from you."
"The fucking phone calls. After every game, no, after every loss, Mack's dad rings him. And he completely dissects every part of Mack's play. What he did wrong, when he did it wrong, how he messed up our chances of winning. Even when he is the only reason we weren't totally hopeless, when he's the one getting points on the board, his dad will still call, not even give him chance to de-stress from the game, and go straight into player assessment. It's fucking brutal. And Mack just takes it. Because he doesn't know he deserves better."
The three Alternates stood in front of him, as well as the players sat all around the room, listen as he breaks down his many problems with their Captain's father, and find themselves angry on Mack's behalf.
"And the worst thing is, Mack can't get away from him. Players get drafted and are able to get away from their parents and their expectations, but not Mack. Mack lives in the same city as his dad, his dad can show up whenever he wants. And even if he can't be their physically, he knows he's trained Mack so well that he'll always respond to his calls. Even when he doesn't want to, and when he really shouldn't."
"Mack's dad treats him like a player he's consulting on, one he's trying to get the very best out of, no matter what it takes. He doesn't treat him like he's his son, he's just a sports project. And in return, Mack thinks everything he is, everything he has achieved, is because of his dad, not in spite of him."
Sidney Crosby has been a hockey player for over 30 years, in the show that is the NHL for over 20, and he's seen the full span when it comes to player's parents in that time. From the wonderfully kind to the explosively angry, from completely disinterested to incredibly over-invested. He's seen parents comfort children and then right across the ice, another screaming as they berate theirs. He knows, those children grow up to be NHL players, and those parents become NHL parents.
Finding out about Mack's dad from Dickie is not a massive surprise, but it doesn't mean he's not angry about it. Sid has seen his fair share of shitty parents in his current colleagues, Mitch's dad was fairly infamous and Mitch had confided in him one night, that he had been part of the reason he left Toronto, amongst the many others. But Sid also knows that players he came up with are still feeling the after effects of shitty parenting. He shared a dorm and hotel room for the draft with Jack, and knows how bad his relationship with his parents ended up, and how it messed his career and life up.
Sid knows exactly why so many players end up looking for parental figures outside of their own, and why most of them end up looking to him as a father figure.
All this is to say that he is not surprised Mack has a complicated relationship with his dad, it is almost a right of passage for most hockey players. He also now knows that many of the behaviours he had clocked as worrying in Mack, his self-flagellation, incredibly low self-esteem and need for extreme perfectionism to name just a few, likely originated with Rick Celebrini.
It made him furious.
Mack was a good kid, a great kid. He was a great hockey player, his numbers showed it, but he was also an incredible person. A bit awkward and rough around the edges, Mack was still new to the show, but he brought such a strong love and light to any locker room he was in. Sid was happy to be able to call him a teammate and friend. Seeing the Sharks come alive after the years of drifting along in mediocrity after their glory years, Sid knows, as many others do, that their rise in ability and scoring, as well as the improvement in attitude, was down almost solely to one kid.
The feeling in the locker room after Dickie's rant is of a slow burning anger, one that is growing and jumping from player to player, building up as everyone digests what Sam had said and compares it to what they know of Macklin. Mack had been the perfect captain this competition and everyone in the room agreed on that, every single person trusted him to lead them implicitly, and even after the loss, that belief remained. While Mack may doubt himself in the wake of the losses they faced, and their failure to medal, no one put any of that blame of Mack. The only person who would blame Mack was himself. And if Sam was to be believed, Rick.
Sid had seen hints of Mack's self-hating tendencies at last year's Worlds and at the Olympics, but now he had the origin of this behaviour from a certified source. If the Sharks had been working on this, and had come to an agreed conclusion, then it meant that they were certain of its origin. That certainty meant that Sid was pretty happy to let the hatred he felt for Rick Celebrini take full hold.
All around the room, the faces of his Canadian teammates took on looks of anger and fury. They loved having Mack as their captain, finding him a breath of fresh air and a positive figure in the locker room. Being able to play alongside the next great thing coming out of Canada was a pleasure none of them took lightly and so to hear that someone, his own father at that, spent so much of his time emotionally tormenting Mack with his supposed failures, it made them sick and furious enough that they were ready to come to his defence. Even if it meant having to fight a middle aged man.
Teammates spoke to one another in furious tones, talking about the worrying things they had noticed in Mack since they started watching him, and then the new things they had learnt while playing. Mack was beloved in the Team Canada locker room, just as they were sure he was beloved in the Sharks locker room. No one was prepared to let someone get away with insulting their captain and dragging him any further into despair than he already was. They had chosen him to be captain, but they knew he was young, and that having to captain a team that fails to secure a medal, would be a devastating loss for someone still so young. The idea of his dad calling and ripping through his decisions on the ice, making Mack feel even worse, wasn't something anyone wanted to see, but no one was completely sure how to go about fixing it.
If the Sharks had been trying for years to get Mack to see through Rick's fog of advanced improvement plans, then what chance did they have?
But, they weren't prepared to go down without a fight, and so, as the captain showered, the three alternates prepped and coordinated.
It was into that anger-fuelled quiet, that a phone rang out into the room. The ringtone was the same as before, and when the three of them looked down at where Mack had sat, they saw kay there.
Mack's phone. With Rick ringing him.
As soon as the ringtone and name registered, angry voices began to fill the room, before being quietened as Sid moved towards the bench.
Sid picked the phone up, looked to his two fellow alternates and getting agreeing nods from both of them.
He answered the phone.