*

Three days before they play the Panthers, David gets another call. He reaches blindly for his phone, wondering if it’s his mother offering to come, wondering if he even wants that. It’s Jake again, though, and David picks up, one set of questions replaced with another — if asking someone out requires a phone call, breaking the date surely does as well.

Instead, when David picks up, Jake says, “How do you feel about picnics?”

“I don’t know,” David says honestly.

“How do you—” Jake starts, then pauses for a moment. “How do you feel about going on a picnic with me?”

David thinks about it.

“Fine?” he ventures.

“Okay,” Jake says.

“It’s supposed to rain on Sunday,” David tells him.

“Oh,” Jake says, so disappointed David can hear it through the line. David doesn’t like it.

“It might not,” he says.

“No, that’s fine,” Jake says. “New game plan.”

“Okay,” David says, and waits.

“I’m gonna think of a new game plan,” Jake says, after a moment, and David’s startled into a laugh. “Are you on your way to practice or anything?”

“No,” David says. “I have time.”

*

The Rangers rout the Panthers Friday night, a win they desperately needed if they want to secure one of the final playoff spots, and it bothers David. Mostly because the last thing the Islanders want is the city in playoff mode while they sit out of contention, but also because of the way Jake stood on the ice after the fifth goal went in, hair plastered to his face with sweat, posture defeated.

Once, David would have found some satisfaction in it, but he doesn’t now. He would take that as a sign of growth, has been told more times than he can count that he’s supposed to enjoy the win, but not enjoy other teams’ losses, but he knows it’s just because it was Jake. That it’s fundamentally a weakness.

There isn’t much attention paid to the Islanders-Panthers match-up now that David and Jake aren’t competing for the Calder. Both teams are so far out of contention that all the game is going to affect is their draft lottery chances, and the mostly empty arena reflects that. They’ll be covered on local TV, if that, and their coaching staff has as good as said not to try too hard, that a win and an injury is worse than a loss without one at this point, and a win might be worse for their lottery chances anyway.

David hates it, hates playing for a team where giving up is expected, and he can see the mutinous look on Kurmazov’s face as well, but everyone else seems like they’ve checked out, looking ahead to when their families are here, when the season’s over, an end to another disappointing year, the roster spreading out and then getting shaken up again, because nothing’s working, so what’s the point?

David tries anyway, because it’s his job, because he can’t not, and his line blows past the sleepy Panthers defence — they were probably given the same awful speech — sling in a goal, and then tap in another. It’s 2-0 by the end of the first, and with everyone playing the lacklustre game they are, that’s where it sits at the close of the third.