THE CAPTAIN'S PROBLEM

[ Cade POV ]

Her stats were a problem.

I'd been staring at them for four hours,broken down by game, by period, by zone entry, by every metric our analytics team ran on every player in the conference,and the numbers weren't lying. Scarlett Voss was fast. Not fast for a left wing, not fast for a woman, not fast with qualifying clauses of any kind. Fast. Shot percentage in the top four percent of the position nationally. Zone exits cleaner than any forward we currently had in uniform. Assists-to-goals ratio that put her in a category of players who understood the ice architecturally,not just where the puck was, but where it was going to be in three seconds, and how to be there first.

She was twenty-two years old.

The problem was not her stats.

I closed the laptop. Pressed both palms flat against the desk and stared at the ceiling, which offered nothing useful. Then I got up, went to the window, came back to the desk. Sat down again. This was not how I handled problems. I identified them, broke them into components, addressed each component in order. I did not pace.

I was pacing.

Coach Briggs had made this call without consulting me. That was the first problem,not unusual, coaches made roster decisions, that was their function,but irritating in a way I hadn't fully metabolised yet, because I was the captain of this team and there was a reason captains were brought in before roster decisions that were going to generate a month of national sports media coverage. I'd found out the same way the rest of the team had: a group message at seven in the morning, a name I didn't recognise, a link to a campus press release.

Scarlett Voss. Left wing. Drafted to the Northgate Wolves following season-ending injuries to Petersen, Cole, and Martinez.

I'd read it four times. Then I'd called Briggs.

He'd picked up on the second ring, which told me he'd been awake and waiting for my call, which told me he knew exactly what he was doing and had done it anyway. Before I'd finished my first sentence he'd said: she's the best available player for the position, Harlow. This team needs to win. I know what this team needs, I'd said. Good. Then you know we need her.

He'd hung up. I hadn't slept since.

The thing was,and this was the part I couldn't say out loud, the part that had lived in my chest like something swallowed sideways for two years now,the thing was that I had a reason for my position that had nothing to do with what everyone was going to assume. Not the obvious reason. Not the one the campus paper would run on page three with a photo pulled from her junior season. A real reason. A specific one. One that had a name attached to it, a date, and a newspaper article I'd read until the fold lines went soft.

A reason that meant having another woman inside this particular machine,this team, this season, this specific structure I'd spent two years trying to hold together after it very nearly collapsed, was something I could not afford to get wrong. Not again. Not this close to the end.

I wasn't going to explain it. I didn't owe the team an explanation. I didn't owe the press an explanation. My job was to win the championship, protect the players under my C, and not repeat the mistakes of the year I tried not to think about directly.

I got up again. Went back to the window. The rink lights were still burning, visible from this angle if you stood at the right side of the glass, which meant someone was on the ice after hours, running themselves past the point the coaching staff knew about. Someone working when the building was empty, when there was no one to notice, when the only audience was the ice itself.

I stood at the window longer than I needed to. Told myself I was checking the weather.

Then I went back to the desk, opened the laptop, and pulled up her game film from last season. If she was going to be on my ice, I was going to understand every decision she made before she made it. That was preparation. That was the job. That was the only thing this was.

I watched film until 2am. She was better than the stats had implied, which I hadn't thought was possible. Her reads were anticipatory in a way that wasn't coachable, that was just how some players were wired. She saw the game two seconds ahead of it. Every time.

I paused on a clip from her third game of last season. A penalty kill, shorthanded, two defenders converging on her from different angles. She didn't fight the pressure. She redirected it, used their momentum, created a lane that hadn't existed a second before, and moved through it before either defender finished their cross-step. It was the most elegant piece of hockey problem-solving I'd seen at her level. I watched it four times.

I closed the laptop. Sat in the dark.

The problem was still not her stats.

***

Somewhere in the house I hadn't known I'd be sharing, I heard movement. Footsteps, quiet and deliberate, someone finding their way around an unfamiliar kitchen. I sat at my desk and listened. I did not go down. I went to bed instead, and lay in the dark, and did not sleep for a long time.