David spends Christmas in New York. It’s been snowing all week, and the airports are busy, and it wouldn’t make sense to go back to Ottawa just for two days, not if there’s a delay on the way there, maybe no flights out at all, Ottawa under even more snow than New York is. He could miss a game, and that’d be a disaster.

So he stays there, finds a nearby church that offers midnight mass. He hasn’t gone since he was a young, so young his father was still around, the last Prime Minister still in office, and they had to go because that was part of his mom’s job too.

The current Prime Minister isn’t an Anglican, and David hasn’t gone in years, didn’t even like it as a kid, the whole place solemn and stuffy, more people looking at their row as they sat with the Prime Minister than the Reverend up front. It’s less like that this time; still solemn, but in a way David appreciates, and no one’s craning their neck to look at where he’s sitting.

He falls asleep right after he gets home, sleeps in, even, waking up at ten to a missed call from his mother and a text from Jake. merry xmas!! it says, and David doesn’t know if it’s a mass text — it probably is — but he still sends Merry Christmas. before he tucks his phone away and goes to make himself breakfast.

They play on Boxing Day, thankfully, get right back into it, a few of the Canadians bemoaning playing on a holiday, which gets eyerolls from the rest of the team, other Canadians included. They win that game, and the next, and the one following that. They go into January hot, lose a game in overtime but stay undefeated in regulation through the first week, including a game on David’s twentieth birthday, and David feels like maybe this year’s going to be different.

It’s a stupid thought, and he’s reminded of that when they drop three straight as soon as the fans start perking up, the team slipping into a funk that wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gotten excited about it, about playing like a legitimate contender. Even Kurmazov, typically unflappable, looks dejected. David wishes he hadn’t had the thought in the first place.

They play the Panthers at the end of January, after losing as many games as they’ve won. They’ve just gotten in from Tampa — another loss — when David gets a text from Jake, just good luck, and he wants to send the same, but it feels like betraying something. He sends See you on the ice., though, just so Jake knows he’s seen it.

It’s about as uneventful a game as they come, the kind that bores even David a little. Both goalies are airtight, but there are no real chances either, no pretty plays, just two fatigued teams going easy against a weak opponent. It’s a blank slate into overtime, a blank slate after OT, and then finally a shootout, because someone has to win.