After his interviews, one of the NHL staff herds him over to where Lourdes is waiting backstage, and David suddenly remembers the picture they always take with the top draft picks. He can barely look at Lourdes right now, needs more time to compose himself, but he knows he isn’t going to get it.
“Hey,” Lourdes says. He’s grinning. Of course he’s grinning. He just got everything he wanted, so of course he’s grinning. “Congrats.”
Anything David could say in response would come out like bile, so he doesn’t say a thing.
“Jake, can we get you in the middle?” the photographer asks, and they rearrange themselves, David on Lourdes’ left, Cory Erskine, who went third, on Lourdes’ right. Without being asked, Lourdes puts an arm around David’s shoulders, another around Erskine’s, like they’re all good friends. Lourdes’ arm is heavy, and David wants to shrug it off, but he can’t, not in front of the cameras.
“Can we get a smile from you, David?” the photographer asks, and David tries his best. He always does. But the photographer is frowning behind his camera like David still hasn’t gotten it right, and he’s pretty sure that his best, once again, isn’t good enough.
CHAPTER TWO
David starts strong, or at least, that’s what the media is saying.
He has a busy summer. He trains hard, harder than he’s ever trained before, terrified the Islanders will send him back to Québec for another year to develop more. He’s NHL ready, he knows he is, but he has to prove it. He thinks he makes progress on that at prospects camp, feels like he’s performing head and shoulders above the other prospects, possible future teammates, current competition. He thinks he’s doing well. They tell him he’s doing well.
Still, walking into training camp feels different than it ever has before, more overwhelming. There’s hurdle after hurdle he has to clear: make it past the first round of cuts, the second, make it to the preseason, clear the preseason. There are so many people there — all people who think they have a shot — and so few spots available.
The nerves vanish when it becomes obvious that as long as he shows up every day, he’s going to make the roster. He knew the Islanders weren’t a good team — good teams don’t get high draft picks — but the games he had watched in preparation, while bad enough, didn’t accurately indicate just how terrible they are.
Some of that is unfamiliarity, David’s sure. They ripped the roster to shreds over the off-season, and he’s far from the only new face, far from the only player who struggles to connect passes with players he met all of a day ago. The scrimmages are no tighter than the games of pick-up shinny David played as a child. Their captain Kurmazov is stern and thin-lipped all week, which David considers fair, since he’s one of the few players consistently performing, and he’s just locked himself in for another five years captaining this team.