Hockey Booktok Novels & Stories

"Alright, Hawks! Let's move out! Time to get that cup!" Julian stood up smoothly. He picked up his heavy hockey stick with a iron grip, shoved his helmet over his head, and locked the visor down. He didn't say a single word, but the terrifying aura of the Ice King radiated from him so strongly that the players around him instinctively gave him a wide berth.

SLOANE I submitted the pitch deck at 6:00 PM. Three concepts. **Concept One:** A feature on Jax, the goalie — his visualization techniques, his pre-game rituals, the sports psychology framework he’d developed with the team’s mental performance coach. Angle: the invisible architecture of elite performance. **Concept Two:** A feature on DuPont, the former captain — his transition from Québec juniors to American college hockey, the cultural adaptation, the leadership philosophy he’d imported from a system built on different values. Angle: translation as a leadership skill.

Riven Heat surged up my neck, even though I should never feel hot here on the ice. My blood was boiling already, my fist gripped hard on the stick. “Reset! Stay sharp!” I commanded my team. The puck dropped again. This time, I won the puck with a clean strike, drove it forward. We cycled fast from left wing to right, right to center, working it like we’d drilled a hundred times. We pressed hard into their zone. One of my boys fired, and their goalie blocked, but the rebound came loose. I skated in, lined it up, and all of a sudden, Sky was there. Again. He swept in from nowhere, stole the puck, and blasted up ice.

“Fine. Let’s watch a hockey game and I’ll teach you.” I grabbed a bag of popcorn, poured it into a bowl, and then grabbed a couple of cans of soda from the kitchen. Then I pulled up a video of a hockey game on the TV. I pulled her between my legs to sit and then pressed play. “So the fundamental thing you need to know about hockey is it’s just like regular soccer, but instead of a ball, it’s a puck, and you need to get it into the opponent’s net more than they get it into yours. Two teams, six players each. There’s a goalie that guards the net and five other skaters: forwards—they score goals—and defensemen, who stop the other team from getting in and protect the goalie,” I explained.

As I walked past their room, I heard the hockey team mirror their girlfriends' laughter. Of course their friends had come to further add fuel. As I shut the room behind me, I immediately started packing up my clothes and when I was done, I finally put on my phone. Messages and calls immediately came in and I called the only person that mattered now, “Jackson, could you get me out of Cali tonight?”

Do you want to know why I think so? You see, once upon a time there was a girl that hated hockey and everything related to it, especially hockey players. She had a good reason as well. But suddenly Nathaniel Madox waltzed into her life and turned it all upside down. He made her realize that not everyone is out there to hurt her. He helped her see that as much as there were asshole hockey players, there was the same amount of kind and gold-hearted hockey players who were willing to top everything for those they loved and cared about.

What exactly was so important that he had to hide it in there? Giving up on the safe, my attention shifted to a small library in the corner of the room. Unlike the dominating rows of business and law books—which made perfect sense considering he was the heir to the Vance empire—there was one bottom shelf filled with worn-out covers. They were hockey textbooks and strategy guides from when Ryder was in high school. I pulled out a thick hardcover book on the history of ice hockey with a faint smile, imagining how the ice-cold Ryder could be so obsessed with this sport since his teenage years.

WRENLEY Squeezing past a row of knees with two sodas, Tess settled into her seat. "I still don't get why you wanted to come to this.” she hands me one of the soda in her hand. "You hate sports. I mean you yourself told me and I quote “Hockey is basically an excuse for attractive idiots to launch themselves into walls. "But isn't that right?” I replied pointing to the rink. “It's just men with sticks chasing a puck," I take the soda I didn't ask for. "You wanted company. I'm being a good friend. Don't make it weird."

“An occasional bunny here, a groupie there, maybe a fan or two in a hot tub … but never hoes.” “Bunny?” I echo. “Puck-bunnies … ” Mel snorts. “Girls who want to fuck professional hockey players. You do know that the black thingy they shoot into the goal is called a puck?” I nod. I’ve learned that from Lee. Recently. “Well, PUCK,” she swings her left hand in a feminine, gay flick so the palm shows up, “BUNNY,” then she does the same thing with her right hand.

So much worse. “ If you’d focused on your Alpha training like you’re supposed to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he’d said. “ You wouldn’t be splitting your time, and I wouldn’t be asking you to give up this childish obsession.” Childish. That’s what he called my dream. Hockey wasn’t just a sport to me— it was a part of who I was. And the upcoming game next month? It wasn’t just any game. It was the game. The one I’d been waiting years to play in.