When we walk out of the room, and she starts to tell me everything I need to do and say, I zone her out. Climbing the back stairs, I come to the tables where the kids are sitting and the parents hang out in the back. I nod at everyone and try to find her without making it too obvious, but I don’t see her when I look around. Dylan sits at the table with another child, and when I step up to the front, the kids get quiet. Looking around, I think back to how I got here. I mean, if you think about it, there really was no other choice for me. I was born a Stone, and anyone who knows hockey, knows the Stone name.

I started skating as soon as I could walk, and I even have a picture in my condo of me on the ice with my father holding me up. I loved it, and it was a good thing because we were always at the rink, whether it was for my father or for Matthew, my brother who was drafted first overall. We have that in common, but that is where it stops. Where he got drafted to Los Angeles, I got drafted to Edmonton, and we both handled it differently. He went out and partied while I sat in my room missing home and everything about it. Mind you, Edmonton is no LA.

It was so fucking hard, and I suffered from homesickness so bad that my parents would come out every other week. Slowly, I got into the groove, and now six years later, I’ve settled, knowing that I will probably never leave Edmonton. They have me signed for another two years, and I’m not one to toot my own horn, but the stats don’t lie. I’m at the head of the leaderboard every year, and just last year, I finally beat Evan, my brother-in-law who plays with New York and is married to Zara, one of my twin sisters. My other brother-in-law, Viktor, who is married to the other twin, Zoe, finished third, and from what he told me last week, the next season will be his last. Better to go out on top than be asked to leave, he said to me. That and Zoe wants to have another child, and he wants to be home for it all this time.