AHL.
There were some confident guys in the room too. The guys who knew they were going to make the team. At the AHL level, there were guys on two-way NHL contracts who were getting developed. The NHL team paid their salaries, so they were on the Vice for sure. These same guys would get called up during the year. And I wanted to be one of them more than anything. But first, I had to make the team.
The morning was pretty standard. Paperwork, fitness testing, and then lunch. Again the contrasts were striking. Whereas Tony’s fitness testing was exhaustive and input directly to a computer, here everything was clipboards and old-school measurements. We did Wingates again, but this time I managed not to barf. I was feeling really good and really strong after my hard training. And I could tell by the reactions of the assistant coach that my scores were very good.
Lunch was a bunch of carbohydrate crap that Tony would have kicked into the garbage. I managed to cobble together something half-healthy from the cafeteria options. I ended up sitting beside this young guy with wide eyes and a mess of brown hair.
“Hi, I’m Marcus Fox. My teammates call me Foxy.”
“Hey. Eric Fairburn.”
“You’re in great shape,” he told me. “You were killing those fitness evaluations.”
“Thanks.” Foxy was on the skinny side, but that could be deceiving. A lot of the leaner guys were speed demons on the ice. But size helped when you got hit or wanted to deliver hits.
Foxy told me he had played in the ECHL last year, but he was hoping to make the A this season. He was a couple of years younger than me, and this was his first tryout.
“You’ve done this before, right?”
I nodded. But it wasn’t exactly the same. Before I was under contract to an NHL team. I was one of the confident, can’t-miss guys. This time, I had a lot to prove. “I played a season and a half in the A before.”
“So, you got any advice for me?”
I shook my head. This guy was so naïve that he was asking me straight up for help. I lowered my voice. “Well, first off—it’s not like a regular team. Don’t forget, you’re in competition with everyone here. So you probably shouldn’t be asking me for advice. What if I steered you wrong—just to get rid of you?”
His eyes widened. “Shoot. I never thought of that. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
I laughed. “No, I wouldn’t. My advice would be—no hot-dogging.”
“What do you mean? We have to show how good we can be, don’t we?”
I nodded. But if you were a big show-off, nobody wanted to play on a line with you. Everyone else wanted to look good too. So it was better to play well, but in a subtle way. The coaches would notice things like your work rate, how you made your line better, your defensive play, and your assists—so scoring pretty goals wasn’t as big a deal. Of course, I had a rep as an offensive player, so I’d have to score the goals too. It was going to be a difficult balance, but I was looking forward to it. It was satisfying to play games that counted after all this training.
“You want to look good, but make the players around you look good too. That way they’ll pay you back,” I explained. Nobody would sabotage you in what was essentially a team game. But good players could do subtle things to make you look bad.
He looked worried now. I gave him a little shove.
“Forget it, Foxy. Just relax and you’ll be fine.”
Having someone around who was more nervous than me was calming. After lunch, we got dressed and went out on the ice. In the morning, we’d been divided into groups, but now I could see that there were about 40 guys here. Shit. That meant that almost half of us were getting cut. I hoped like hell that my invitation to camp hadn’t been some big favour for my agent or my coach in Switzerland. But I wouldn’t be able to tell until we began our drills and scrimmages.
The head coach had been around during the fitness testing, but he was
There were some confident guys in the room too. The guys who knew they were going to make the team. At the AHL level, there were guys on two-way NHL contracts who were getting developed. The NHL team paid their salaries, so they were on the Vice for sure. These same guys would get called up during the year. And I wanted to be one of them more than anything. But first, I had to make the team.
The morning was pretty standard. Paperwork, fitness testing, and then lunch. Again the contrasts were striking. Whereas Tony’s fitness testing was exhaustive and input directly to a computer, here everything was clipboards and old-school measurements. We did Wingates again, but this time I managed not to barf. I was feeling really good and really strong after my hard training. And I could tell by the reactions of the assistant coach that my scores were very good.
Lunch was a bunch of carbohydrate crap that Tony would have kicked into the garbage. I managed to cobble together something half-healthy from the cafeteria options. I ended up sitting beside this young guy with wide eyes and a mess of brown hair.
“Hi, I’m Marcus Fox. My teammates call me Foxy.”
“Hey. Eric Fairburn.”
“You’re in great shape,” he told me. “You were killing those fitness evaluations.”
“Thanks.” Foxy was on the skinny side, but that could be deceiving. A lot of the leaner guys were speed demons on the ice. But size helped when you got hit or wanted to deliver hits.
Foxy told me he had played in the ECHL last year, but he was hoping to make the A this season. He was a couple of years younger than me, and this was his first tryout.
“You’ve done this before, right?”
I nodded. But it wasn’t exactly the same. Before I was under contract to an NHL team. I was one of the confident, can’t-miss guys. This time, I had a lot to prove. “I played a season and a half in the A before.”
“So, you got any advice for me?”
I shook my head. This guy was so naïve that he was asking me straight up for help. I lowered my voice. “Well, first off—it’s not like a regular team. Don’t forget, you’re in competition with everyone here. So you probably shouldn’t be asking me for advice. What if I steered you wrong—just to get rid of you?”
His eyes widened. “Shoot. I never thought of that. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?”
I laughed. “No, I wouldn’t. My advice would be—no hot-dogging.”
“What do you mean? We have to show how good we can be, don’t we?”
I nodded. But if you were a big show-off, nobody wanted to play on a line with you. Everyone else wanted to look good too. So it was better to play well, but in a subtle way. The coaches would notice things like your work rate, how you made your line better, your defensive play, and your assists—so scoring pretty goals wasn’t as big a deal. Of course, I had a rep as an offensive player, so I’d have to score the goals too. It was going to be a difficult balance, but I was looking forward to it. It was satisfying to play games that counted after all this training.
“You want to look good, but make the players around you look good too. That way they’ll pay you back,” I explained. Nobody would sabotage you in what was essentially a team game. But good players could do subtle things to make you look bad.
He looked worried now. I gave him a little shove.
“Forget it, Foxy. Just relax and you’ll be fine.”
Having someone around who was more nervous than me was calming. After lunch, we got dressed and went out on the ice. In the morning, we’d been divided into groups, but now I could see that there were about 40 guys here. Shit. That meant that almost half of us were getting cut. I hoped like hell that my invitation to camp hadn’t been some big favour for my agent or my coach in Switzerland. But I wouldn’t be able to tell until we began our drills and scrimmages.
The head coach had been around during the fitness testing, but he was
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