Breakaway

Chapter 4 - Breakaway

ERIC

Even after seven years in the league, standing in a locker room in clothes drenched with my own sweat while a dozen or so cameras and microphones and voice recorders were shoved in my face felt weird. There wasn't really a better word to describe it. Who the hell cared what I had to say? And why should they? I was just a guy. Nothing special. But when you play sports for a living, for some reason people give a crap whether there's anything worth saying or not.

Since I was the team captain, there was even more importance placed on the words that came out of my mouth. Was that justified? Not really. It was just the way things were.

I tried to wipe some of the sweat off my face with the towel that hung around my neck, but it wasn't really going to help much. Nothing but a shower could at this point.

"After Wednesday's loss to Calgary, how are you hoping to bounce back against San Jose tomorrow?" Mike Polanski asked. Mike was the beat reporter for the Portland Tribune. Good guy. Tired questions. He always asked inane things because he knew he'd get the same old cliché-filled answers we liked to give.

There wasn't really anything they'd likely glean from today's media session anyway. It was a practice day only. I'd never understood why we were required to have media availability on practice days. Beat reporters and bloggers have columns to fill, though, whether there was a game that day or not. Still, hockey teams like putting out answers of the innocuous variety. We're all about routines. If you had a few phrases you didn't even have to think about, you didn't have to worry about saying something stupid. The second you gave the media something interesting, they pounced on it and beat the hell out of it.

As usual, answering Mike's question didn't take a lot of thought. "San Jose's got size, skill, and speed. They are always on the attack. They're great in transition. Their D makes clean, quick passes to get the puck to their forwards. We've got to be clean in our own end and strong on the forecheck. We have to be better in the neutral zone. We've gotta take away their open ice and take the body, make it tough on them. We can't give them anything for free. They're coming into our building. We need to come away with two points and make sure they leave with none."

"Make it tough on them," a guy to my left said.

I squinted over at him through the lights shining in my eyes. Short guy. Beady eyed. I recognized him vaguely as one of the beat reporters who followed San Jose. He had a snarky look to him, especially with the way he was lifting his eyebrow. I nodded at him to go on anyway.

"I hear that a lot coming out of Portland this year. Actually, for the last several years. But the Storm haven't really been a tough team to beat. What exactly is the style of play you envision your team playing, Zee?"

That question made my blood roil. Not because he was wrong, but because he was right. I turned to face him, forcing all of the other reporters to shift around in order to make sure they got their sound bites.

"We want to be a physical team, and we want to be tough to play against. That's our style. That's what Scotty wants us to do, and that's what we do."

"Want to be. Yeah. Pesky Storm, right? That's what they're using on Twitter, your fans. They even made it a hashtag, like it's something special."

That phrase, Pesky Storm, irked me to no end. Just as much as saying we "play a physical brand of hockey" or "we want to be tough to play against" did. Those were crutch phrases used by teams who didn't really have a defined identity, didn't have a brand of play that was the core of what they were.

I should have taken a breath, taken a moment to calm myself down before I spoke. I was the team captain. It was my job to spread the message the team wanted spread.