"Can you teach me how to do a hat trick?"
"Kid, if I could teach people how to do hat tricks, I'd be charging a lot more than your parents paid for this fundraiser."
More laughter.
The kids eventually got distracted by someone's mom, who brought quality hot chocolate—not the watery arena stuff, but the real deal with marshmallows that looked like tiny snowmen. I used the break to check my phone.
Seventeen notifications. Christ.
The latest was a text message:
Juno:Year-end episode is live. You're gonna love this one. Or hate it. Probably both.
Off the Ice: The Year of Chaos & Controlsat at the top of my podcast feed, uploaded twenty-three minutes ago. It already had more downloads than some of her regular episodes got in a week.
I cringed. Two months of good press, solid hockey, and keeping my mouth shut when it mattered, and I still got that flash of panic when I saw my name in the media. My brain was permanently wired to expect the worst.
"You look like you've seen a ghost." Hog appeared beside me, balancing three cookies and a cup of coffee. "Or like Pickle roped you into a tour of TikTok again."
"Juno's year-end episode dropped."
"Ah." Hog bit into a gingerbread man. "The annual roasting of everyone who gave her good material. Are we listening to this or pretending it doesn't exist until someone forces us to confront it?"
Across the ice, Evan had finished helping the kids with the auction. He was with Pickle, who nodded enthusiastically while holding what appeared to be a candy cane shaped like a hockey stick.
"We're listening," I decided. "But not alone. Misery loves company."
"That's the spirit." Hog polished off the gingerbread man's head. "Round up the usual suspects. I'll grab more cookies. If we're going down, we're going down with proper snacks."
Five minutes later, we'd claimed a corner of the rink where the sound wouldn't carry to the kids. Evan, Hog, Pickle, Kowalczyk, and I huddled around my phone like we were planning a breakout play instead of listening to a podcast.
I hit play.
Juno's voice filled the space between us, warm and sharp and immediately familiar:
"Welcome back, you beautiful disasters. I'm Juno Park, and this is Off the Ice, coming to you live from a coffee shop in Thunder Bay, where the barista just asked me if I wanted my latte 'hockey strong' or 'regular person strong.' I went withhockey strong, obviously, because this is the year-end episode and we've got some ground to cover..."
Evan leaned closer, his shoulder warm against mine. "She sounds pleased with herself."
"She always sounds pleased with herself," Pickle whispered. "That's her brand."
"Let's start with the Thunder Bay Storm, shall we? Last season, they were the lovable disasters of the Northern League. Scrappy, sure. Entertaining, absolutely. But nobody was putting money on them making a playoff run..."
Hog snorted. "Nobody except us."
"Now? They're sitting pretty in second place, playing hockey that's equal parts smart and absolutely unhinged. Their power play is like something you'd draw up in a fever dream, but it works. Their penalty kill is surgical. And their locker room dynamic has gone from reality TV waiting to happen to something that looks suspiciously like team chemistry..."
My face started to flush. It was the weird part of media attention I'd never figured out how to handle. Bad press, I could deflect or joke away. Good press made me want to hide under something.
Evan gripped my hand. Anchor. Reminder that this was real, not performance.
The episode kept rolling, and Juno's voice shifted into that conspiratorial tone she used when she was about to drop something juicy.
"Speaking of chemistry—and I promise this is the last time I'll be cryptic about my personal life—let's just say that covering hockey has introduced me to some... interesting people. Including a certain rival journalist who shall remain nameless but who definitely doesn't work for any publication that rhymes with Bockey Beast. More on that never, because some things are beautifully off the record..."
"Holy shit," Kowalczyk muttered. "Juno's got a girlfriend."
"A rival journalist girlfriend," Pickle added. "That's like... enemy territory romance."
