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20.

Comfort Zone

Tyler

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Jones' first game with us couldn't have gone any better. He's everything I hoped and imagined he would be for us, and whatever post-trade weirdness he was going through seems to be gone now.

All night long, Jones is a thorn in the opponent's side. He's throwing his body around, crashing into guys, smashing them into the boards with every chance he gets. He's like a wrecking ball on the opponent's defense – every time they retrieve the puck, there's Jones, banging into them.

His hits add up over the course of a game. You see guys start to look over their shoulder. They see him coming, and they think, oh no, not again, and they shovel the puck away to someone else.

That's good. That's exactly what we want. Because when guys panic and make hasty decision to get rid of the puck, they end up making a mistake somewhere down the road.

We get rewarded in the second period. Jones rushes the Canucks' d-man, who throws an errant pass up the middle. It goes right to me. I pick the pass off and dish it to Nelson, who slaps the puck into the open net for our first goal of the game.

Five minutes later, I spring Jones on a breakaway with a pass up the middle. He makes a pretty move to make the goalie go down, then roofs the puck top shelf.

His grin after scoring his first goal as a Hawk? Priceless.

I'm the first guy there to celebrate it with him. His back is up against the glass, and I rush up and jump into him with a big hug. The other boys skate up after me and join us.

At the end of the game – we win 5-1 – and Jones is named as the game's #1 star. The hometown fans give him a huge ovation, and he looks like he's on top of the world.

I'm really happy for him.

And over the weeks that come? I'm even happier.

Because Jones is proving to be the team's missing ingredient all along. Whereas before guys were maybe getting too comfortable – Jonesy pushes us out of our comfort zones. Hell, his physical play demands it from us.

Here's how that works. Jones goes out on the ice. He throws his weight around, smashes a few guys, chirps them with a few choice insults. Then the other team gets pissed off – suddenly they wanna hurt not just Jones, but all of us.

Okay, I know that makes it sound like it'd be a bad thing – but actually, it's a good thing. Because, before, we were all content with sleepwalking through games. We'd go through the motions, waiting for some event – a big hit, a big save, a big goal – to finally rouse us from our slumber.

And then, only then, would we start to play determined and focused, like we all knew we could. Sometimes, by the time we woke up, it'd already be too late in the game. It was a worrying pattern.

I include myself in that group, too. I was definitely too content. Ever since the Cup loss, it's happened. 'Real life' just started to catch up with me. It got harder and harder to care only about hockey. When you play that many hockey games in a year, you just start to ... lose focus, a bit.

But with Jones on the squad? We don't have that problem anymore. We're usually engaged from the moment the puck drops. He just keeps going. Chirping guys, hitting guys, scoring goals. He fights when he has to – like when an opponent hits a player and we don't like it.

Some guys, like rookies, you just don't hit the same way you would a guy who has been around the league for a few years. Reason being, it's too easy to catch a rookie in a bad spot – like in open ice with his head down – and seriously hurt him.

Sure, legally, you can demolish him. But there's something ... humane about not crushing him. Sure, give him a bump. Let him know what you could have done to him in that situation. Believe me, he'll look like he's just seen a ghost – eyes as big as dinner plates, face totally pale – and he'll mutter an embarrassed thank you. And you can growl at him and say next time I won't let you off so easy.

But give him that chance. Let him learn from his mistakes.

So it's great to have a guy like Jones on the roster. For as hard as Jones hits, he hits guys clean – and never to injure. And if someone tries to hurt one of our guys, there's Jones, immediately racing in and grabbing the offender and pummeling him.

It sends a message to the other team: we won't stand for the cheap stuff. And when another team knows that, understands that, feels that? It calms the game down. It lets us play our game without fear.

Slowly, as the weeks pass and we cross the games off our schedule, a funny thing starts to happen. We win a few games. We'll win 3, then lose 1. Then we'll win 4 before we lose another. Then we're on a 7-game winning streak. And before you know it, we're not just back in the playoff race, we're leading our division.

Only Donovan doesn't seem thrilled with the growing influence Jones has had over this team. But he's kept his mouth shut, like he promised me back when we traded for Jones. There was one time, though, when he pulled me aside to have a private talk about him.

“Listen,” he'd said, “I'll be a good soldier. But I'm just letting you know that I don't like this, man. There's something off about him. There's something he's hiding from us and it's gonna bite us in the ass. I can just feel it.”

“Like what?” I laughed, uncomfortably. The prediction was chilling.

“I have no idea. But whatever it is, I know we haven't seen the last of it.”

The media, for what it's worth, has stopped asking why Jones was traded, why he disappeared that first game, why the Jets seem to keep hinting at some kind of rift with him in the dressing room.

Frankly, the Jets, and their captain Dimitri Burkhardt, come off like a bunch of scorned ex-lovers. He still keeps hinting about the reasons for the Jones trade, but at this point, the hockey world is pretty sick of hearing about it. Either spill the details or shutup – after a certain point, endlessly hinting about 'what he did' comes across as really petty and immature.

I've never asked Jones why he got traded, if you're wondering. I feel like that's his business. If he wanted me to know, he'd tell me. Maybe in time, he'll tell me – when he's comfortable enough.

***

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THERE'S ANOTHER FUNNY thing that happens as the weeks pass by and we grind our way deeper into the season.

Me and Jonesy get closer and closer.

That's inevitable. You get real close with the guy you room with on the road. And he's made friends with the other guys – the other younger dudes like McNabb and Tanner, which is good to see. But when we're together, it's usually just the two of us.

But Jonesy is hilarious. Or, as I've started to call him when it's just the two of us, Cal. He's a real prankster off the ice, just like he is on it – you can always count on him setting you up for some kind of gag. Whether he's pouring water in your hockey gloves, dulling your skate blades before you hit the ice, or slightly unscrewing the cap to the salt shaker ... you gotta keep your eye out for that guy.

Naturally, I try to get him back with some pranks of my own.

But even when we're not traveling on the road – it still feels like we're rooming together, since our hotel rooms are so close together. That's probably helped us get to know each other.

The guys have always known me as a 'mysterious' and 'secretive' player. That I don't tell people a whole lot about myself. I guess that's true, since so many people say it and believe it ... but I never felt that way, deep down. I want to be close to people, it's just not always easy.

With Jonesy, though, it is easy. When we're on the road, sitting in a hotel room in our separate twin beds, all we do is talk. It's fun to find out about each other.

One night, we're in Dallas on a road trip. We just got back from the game – another victory – around 11 PM. Almost everyone else on the team is going to go out to the strip club in downtown Dallas. But Jonesy gives me a look that said he wasn't feeling up for it. So the two of us, after getting loudly booed by our teammates, head back to the hotel instead.

We order a pizza. Some terrible zombie movie plays on TV while we wait, but we talk over it.

“I'm glad you didn't wanna go, either,” Jonesy says. “After Montreal and Vancouver, I've about had my fill of strip clubs for the month.”

“Truth be told, I never wanna go. But as captain, I feel like I gotta go sometimes. If you skip out on all the team social events, you start to become an outsider.”

“Tell me about it,” he chuckles.

“Usually young guys like you love to go, though,” I laugh. “Especially when they're single. When are you gonna settle down and find someone?”

He shifts around. “No idea, Ty. Maybe not until I'm done playing hockey.”

With all the time we spend on the road, I understand his point of view. But it's still not something you see in the sport, where most guys are happily marrying beautiful girls who take care of the house and raise their children while they get to play the role of jet-set professional athletes.

“Really? Why?” I ask.

He pauses. “I can't do ... both. I just can't. For me, it's gotta be one or the other. It's either hockey career or love life.”

“Yeah. That's about what I thought.”

“What about you?” he asks. “You're still single, after all.”

“Yeah. I guess I'm the same. I've just always had this crazy idea of how things should work. You know, what order your life accomplishments should kinda go in. And uh ... ha ... things didn't really go as planned.”

Jonesy sits up in bed, his muscled thighs hanging over the edge of the bed. By this point, we're comfortable lounging around each other in our boxers. “What do you mean?”

I let out a half-groan. “I was gonna propose to my girlfriend when we won the Stanley Cup. I had this image of bringing home the Cup, and telling her to take a drink out of it. And then the ring would be inside it. Stupid, I know.”

“Oh. Oh.” His eyes widen as he realizes the implication: that I'd come one goal away from being a happily married man. “Well, err, what happened after ... Game 7?”

“I couldn't believe it, Cal. I kept wondering how I could miss that shot. I had the ring ready to go and everything.”

“Shit.”

“And I had this whole idea in my head, and maybe it was crazy, but I really had this image of how it looked. With me handing the Cup over, and the ring inside of it.”

“That's uh, that's a real hockey player's fantasy I guess,” Jonesy jokes, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Heh. Yeah, guesso. Even crazier part is, uh, I took that loss as a sign that we weren't meant to be and broke up with her instead.”

“Damn.” Jonesy gulps. “And no prospects since then, huh?”

“Ha. Not really, no. Can't say I've looked, though.”

“Damn.”

“Sorry. Am I bringing you down?”

“No, captain. Don't worry. Just a little sad.”

“Aw. It's not sad. I don't think so anyway. It just wasn't meant to be, that's all.” I look over and grin at him. “Don't worry. We'll find someone, me and you. Hell, maybe we shoulda went to that strip club after all!”

“Ha ... yeah right!”

What I didn't tell Jonesy is, he's the first person I've ever told that to.

I can't believe how close we've gotten over the past few weeks. And I can't believe how much better our team has gotten over that same period of time. I'm pretty sure it's all thanks to Jones, too.

I pop off my bed and land on the floor between our beds. It's time for my nightly push-ups. The first and last thing I do every day.

“That time again, huh?” Jonesy asks while I huff each rep out loud.

“eight, nine, ten – Yup! – eleven, twelve, thirteen ...”

“Alright, Ty. I'm gonna hit the shower. See you in a bit.”

“Sure thing.”

He heads into the bathroom and shuts the door. And I get a sneaky idea for a prank while he's in there.

See, Jonesy always takes long, steamy showers. Like real long showers. Wouldn't it be funny if his bath towel and all his clothes disappeared while he was in there? If I took all his clothes out of the hotel room, and he had to go buck-ass naked through the hotel for me and his clothes?

I finish up my hundred push-ups. Then I give him some time to really relax in his shower ... before I sneak in.