Pavel and the Flyers

Walk up to somebody right now, and ask them who the most influential person in the world is. They’ll probably tell you it’s Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, or maybe Donald Trump. Now ask them who the most influential person in the U.S. is. They’ll answer with any name from Biden to LeBron James, depending on how they look at things. In the state? Maybe Gavin Newsom, or James again. The city? Now, the smaller you make the region, the less likely people in the world are to know the name stated. That’s because influence is relative. Sure, Ron DeSantis is a pretty known political figure in the U.S., but people in England could probably give a shit about him. Newsom? Ask a guy in New York who that is and, unless he’s pretty read up politically, he likely doesn’t know. That person, if he wanted to, could learn something about Californian politics by probing further, asking who Newsom is. But what are we learning? We know most of the major players in the state, even in the city. Let’s narrow our sphere of influence even more, to a 2-foot radius around the person. 

“Who’s the most influential person in your life?”

I didn’t come here to write an autobiography, to tell you I was born on a sunny afternoon in 2005 at the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, and who my parents are, and what school I went to, and what my dog was like, and all that bullshit. I came to tell you about myself, just a bit, hopefully through a final product that has some entertainment value. I came to tell you about the people and situations that are at the forefront of my memory at this very moment, the people who I’m able to tell the best stories about because I remember them the clearest because they so deeply contributed to who I am today. I’m here to tell you about who I am as a person, a leader, and a hockey player. Mainly, though, I’m here to tell you about the most influential person in my recent memory. I’m here to tell you about Coach Pavel and the Santa Clarita Flyers.

Chapter 1

I first met Coach Pavel at a skate in Van Nuys, at a tiny little rink called Iceland. I was feeling disheartened about my sport, a bit sick of the whole thing, and I was on the brink of quitting. This desire was intensified when I realized I hadn't put my sticks in the car. I'm going out to this shithole rink in Van Nuys to skate at the highest level I've ever played, to make a good first impression on a new coach who I’ve heard is a bit of a hardass, and I didn't even have the common sense to put my fucking sticks in the back? I'm quitting. God wants me to. Or maybe I do. Either way, I'm going home.

My mom encouraged me to walk in anyway. "Show some respect, Holden. Go in, tell him you don't have a stick, and go back out. It'll be painless."

I trudged into the rink. This is it. The famous Slovakian guy is gonna be disappointed, and then I can quit this sport. I don't know why I started playing again in the first place. I wish the pandemic was still going. 

In a dim corner of the rink, there was a small room fashioned to look like a tiki shack. In its heyday, the rink catered to Hollywood stars and Olympic skaters alike, and it clung to some of that glamorous kitsch, the last shred of its identity. The rink was a washed-up actor in and of itself, calling out “Hey, kid, didja know I useta be famous,” not even trying to cover up its current disrepair, floors littered with gum wrappers and maybe even a condom or two in the bathroom if it got lucky. “Kid, Sonja Henie stood right there in that room…heh… those were the days. They’re coming again soon, you know. We’ve got Pavel here to bring them back.”

Sure enough, there he stood, in that strange, unbelonging little room. I knew who he was as I approached: he cut a distinct figure, even when I was 30 feet away from him, even in that dim, woebegone little room. Even at 5’11”, he gave the impression that he was wider than he was tall. This wasn’t even due to his muscles- he was wearing some kind of baggy coach’s jacket, I only found out about those later- but because of his smile, which grew as he saw me approach and seemed to stretch him out sideways.

“Hello! It’s Holden, right?”

“Yeah, coach. For sure. Listen, I-”

“Man, you have theeeeeerty minute until practice! You’d better start getting ready!”

“Yeah, coach, that’s what I’m here about. See, I don’t know how it happened, but I forgot my sticks. I’m still getting back used to hockey, and I guess that-”

He grinned wider. The guy was younger than I’d expected him to be, maybe in his mid-20s, and he projected energy in every movement. His eyes, gazing dark blue and fixed in their sockets, somehow still showed constant motion and, under that baggy jacket, he appeared tense and wired. One funny thing about Pavel, which I thought was momentary at the time but which persisted as long as I knew him, was that he always seemed prepared to either punch you in the face or pat you on the back within a split second.

“You are lefty or righty?”

“Lefty, coach. But I wouldn’t want to put any of these guys to any trouble.”

He scrunched up his square face into a confused oval and regarded me quizzically, like I’d just told him I needed to get to cat-wrangling practice. 

“Guys? Whaaaaat? Come on, maaaaan! These kids, their sticks are not good enough for you! But guess what? I have something you can use!”

He was grinning like a bastard now. He raised his own stick, a True A6.0, and held it out. It was a nice stick, it was my height, and it was usable. He was making it very hard to get out of this.

“Oh, well, coach, that’s super nice of you, but then what can you use? I really don’t want to inconvenience you at all.”

His face had just barely resumed its squareness, but it was now an oval once again.

“Now you are super confused, man, and you are confuse me too. I am not player, I am coach. I do not need that stick. Anything I need that stick for, demonstrate a drill, whatever, you can hand it back to me for a minute. Now, you are running out of time to dress and all that.”

There was no getting out of this one. I suited up.

It ended up being a really great practice. Pavel introduced me to the team by punctuating every drill he drew up by explaining that I had his stick. The players were really welcoming and really good, and I fit in pretty well. At the end, we scrimmaged for about 20 minutes, and every shift I took, Pavel came by.

“How’s the stick? Pretty good? I know. It’s a great stick.”

I walked out fairly sure I didn’t want to quit. Sure, the team was pretty cool. Sure, the practices were pretty fun. Most of all, though, I just liked Pavel. He seemed like a fun guy, and playing with him for a few months couldn’t hurt. He came by to talk to my mom after the practice ended, stood a respectable distance from her car.

“Meg! Hello!”

“Hi, Pavel!”

“Holden did a great job out there! See you in a week, Holden?”

“For sure, coach.”

My mom seemed fairly surprised. When I didn’t come out of the rink after going in to tell coach I couldn’t play, she probably assumed I’d been stabbed by a squatter in one of Iceland’s abundant dark corners. Now, once she got over what was hopefully relief, she started asking about the practice.

“You seem happy! How was it?”

“Great!” I described the drills for her.

“Was Pavel cool?”

“He was great!” I described Pavel’s coaching style for her.

“So, I guess you got someone to give you a stick. Which player was nice enough to do that?”

“Actually, mom, Pavel let me use his stick.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I used Pavel’s stick. He was pretty chill about it.”

Mom laughed. “Well, now you have to play for the guy, huh?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

Chapter 2

I was welcomed to the Flyers by the 100-hour plan, during which I was expected to log 100 hours of exercise over the summer. If each of my teammates and I did not complete this task, we would lose significant playing time. This would be a disaster. The greatest pain of any good hockey player is sitting on the bench, and it wouldn’t be a great way to start the season.

Coach Pavel, of course, sent the email out late, meaning that I was expected to accomplish the task in about a month. I didn’t know it then, but it was vintage Pavel.

I spent the first week or so of the 100-hour plan playing soccer in my driveway. Donning a beat-up pair of Adidas, I pelted a ball into my house’s stucco walls for hours at a time, retreating into my house to play FIFA only when my legs died and jogging back out soon after in order to complete my 4-hour-per-day goal. I eventually became comically good, at least for someone who’d never played a second of formal soccer. I could do 20 juggles. I could do the “Ronaldinho 7” on a good day. I became the driveway Drogba, the alley Alli. In my head, I was comparable to Neymar and, since, like I said, I haven’t played any formal soccer in my life, I haven’t been proven wrong yet.

Week 2 was easier, because I was at camp the whole time. I’ve been attending my beloved UCLA Bruin Woods Family Camp for 11 years now, and some of my best friends are there. This year, like all others, we sprinted around camp all day, taking breaks only to swim, eat, and bike. My only challenge was working around the significant allotment I’d made in my schedule to flirt with girls at camp. I knocked out about 50 hours of quality exercise that week.

At this point, I only had about 22 hours left in my 100 hours. Easy, right? Not so much. My legs and hips, already overworked, were left feeling like molasses after camp. This, coupled with the dietary freedom I was given at my grandma’s house in South Dakota left me nearly unable to stand up. When, at 92 hours, I became too knackered even for my daily bike rides, I started to take drastic measures. I tallied every second I spent walking to the fridge and back for ice cream: Part of a daily walk. To the pantry and back for popcorn? Part of the walk. Bed to the couch? Couch to the table? Table to the couch, couch back to bed? A splendid walk; I’m a serious athlete. My herculean effort in the last week, a Jordanian athletic performance in the face of great physical odds, got me to 100 hours.

I’d kept Coach Pavel up to date on my weekly progress by way of emails, to which he never responded. When I hit my 100 hours, he didn’t make a peep. During the season, I asked my teammates if they’d had the same experience and, sure enough, they had. I checked in with each of them, and many told me the same thing: “100 hours? I didn’t even hit 10!” Funnily enough, there was never a consequence on their playing time. The 100 hours, or lack thereof, ended up being a microcosm of my time with the Flyers.

Chapter 3

Despite the grueling workout regimen, I was excited to get back with the team in person. While most of my friends were spending the last week of summer tanning in Mexico, clubbing in Greece, or seeking out local debauchery, I was tasked with the next stepping stone of the Flyers: Training Camp.

Now, I hear the word “camp” and experience immediate neuron activation. You’ve seen the look in a dog’s eyes when it sees a bone, a little animal, food, a shoelace, or anything else it can chew on. Now, imagine that dog hasn’t eaten for 3 days. That’s just about how I look when someone mentions camp. The most fun things in my life happen at camp. The best mentors, the best friends, the best food, the best experiences, the best flings? It’s all at camp. I learned how to throw a baseball at camp. I learned how to waterski at camp. I learned how to play ping-pong at camp. I learned how to do a backflip at camp. I learned how to do some other stuff at camp too. Anyway, I assumed that Flyers Training Camp would be more of the same. Sure, we’d play some hockey, but we’d do team building stuff too. We’d go to the soccer center down the street, play some football in the back parking lot, and watch some film. Pavel, after all, was a fun guy. If I’d learned one thing from my time playing on his team during the pandemic, it was that. My best example of this is the time a kid walked into a practice 15 minutes late, while coach was drawing up the next drill.

“Sorry I’m late, coach.”

“Late? Late based on what? The time I tell you to come? Nah, no, no. That, leesten, that is not real.”

“Coach…uhh…what?”

Coach started gesturing broadly. “You heeeeerd what I say. I tell you that it is not real. Time! Time is construct. What is time? I tell you to be here 15 minute ago, what is that? What is minute? Minute is how long sun taking to orbit? Naaaaaaah. Minute is what people tell you minute is.”

The kid was getting confident now. “Yes, coach! I understand.”

Coach wasn’t finished. “Because, when you think about it, who started this time thing? Truth is, someone just say there are 24 HOURS, whatever that is, in day. You know how probably they did it 5 thousand year ago? Sun comes up- wow! Now we are up! Sun going down? Now we sleep.”

“Yes, coach.”

Coach regarded us in mock dismay. “Weeeeeeeeeell. At least one person understand. Okaaaaay! Get on goal line.”

“What?”

“Cooooome on, man, you heard! You are doing wind skates for ten minute.”

“Wind skates?

“Yeah, man! You were late for practice!”

Pavel was a good guy, a fun guy. As long as you didn’t piss him off, that was what you’d be doing: Having fun. As such, I expected camp to be sensationally fun. With my head held high, I told my Mexico, Greece, and party-bound friends that I’d be going to hockey camp. 

“Mykonos? That sounds pretty cool. How’s the ice there?”

“What?”

“Yeah, you heard me right. I’m headed straight to Santa Clarita next week. The Cube Ice Arena. Hockey camp.”

“You know on the beaches in Mykonos they just start partying? There’s a DJ and drinks and everything. Out of the blue.”

“I hear hockey camp gets pretty crazy too. Coach Pavel, man. No telling what we’ll get up to.”

“Sounds really cool, man. Good luck with that.”

I was so stoked for camp. I packed a pair of indoor soccer shoes, my best clothes, everything. I brought my mini hockey set in case anyone wanted to play after the day ended. I had to stay in a hotel because camp started at 7 AM sharp and I didn’t want to drive an hour and a half every morning, and I sent pictures of the room to all of my friends. It wasn’t much, a standard little low-mid level hotel, but I was proud of it, and of myself, and of the week to come. Check this out, guys. Courtyard Marriott. Hockey camp with the Santa Clarita Flyers. Nothing new, just my life. You already know how commonplace this shit is for me. I hope you enjoy whatever it is you’re doing this week, because my week is gonna make it look like quiet reading time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s about to kick off.

Chapter 4

Waking up early sucks. Even when you’re 15 minutes away from where you need to go. It comes in stages. The first stage consists of waking up and falling immediately into nihilism. You turn into Pavel immediately. What even is this? A training camp? I don’t have to do this. I can be late. I can show up at noon. What even is noon? Time is a construct. I can tell the guy who runs this camp that, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. The second stage is realizing nihilism is for losers. To some, this is a motivational feeling but, to me, it’s just an acute reminder of the life I’ll have to live if I want to achieve even a single one of my goals. It’s like that one scene from Ren and Stimpy. Go look up “Ren and Stimpy waking up scene”, I’m sure you’ll find it somewhere. The third stage consists of putting on clothes that feel like moldy cardboard on your almost-still-warm body and grabbing a bowl of instant oatmeal and thinking “Hey, I’m not a nihilist? Why?” and questioning all of your goals and thinking once again “I don’t have to do this. Sleeping in clothes isn’t all that bad” and finally putting on your shoes, your goddamn shoes, and conceding that one tiny fraction of your humanity.

I arrived at the rink at 6:50 AM. On the first day, I sought out Coach Pavel and greeted him cheerfully. As the week went on, I resigned myself to the fact that Pavel is simply too much to deal with at 6:50 AM, and chose instead to find a quiet corner to sip my espresso in silence, wait for the caffeine to kick in, and then, only then, seek out coach and my teammates.

Coach probably wouldn’t have liked it if he’d known I was fueling up on coffee before camp. Coach fervently avoided anything that messed up his body, whether it was alcohol, drugs, caffeine, steroids, or tobacco. He kept his diet super clean, went to bed at 9:00, and woke up at 5. In some ways, these hobbies worked in his favor: Coach’s biceps were bigger than my head, and he was a dynamo of energy at all hours of the day. In other ways, his habits weren’t working out so well, mainly in that he was completely and utterly insane. I think sometimes maybe the stuff he avoided would have done him some good. He wasn’t bipolar, he wasn’t schizo, he wasn’t dissociative at all, and he didn’t have Alzheimer's (considering he was like 24, that’s pretty obvious). He just had that crazy about him, like the Slovakian Joker or something.

I’d been given the schedule for camp, but it was pretty nebulous. All I knew was that it started at 7, ended at 4, that lunch was at noon, and that we had about 6 hours of daily ice time in total, divided into two three-hour segments. This left plenty of room for cool team-building activities and some workouts. It was a camp, after all.

Pavel sat us all down in the morning before our skate and promptly announced the nature of camp.

“Camp is great. You will love it. I love it. Sometimes I call it bootcamp, like you Americans do.”

Uh-oh.

“Some people like bootcamp, but I think maybe they lie to me. Most others not really like it.”

What the hell was he getting at?

“This team-building, whatever you call it, I think it is not real. You can build team, but is not through stuuuuupid acteevity or all that. Always, I built bond with teammates through hard work.”

Pavel grinned at us. He’s one of the happiest looking individuals I’ve seen in my life, and his smiles challenged his face in width. It might have been because he’d given up on us at that point, but he always smiled, even after the worst losses. His eyes just didn’t match.

“You will be working out haaaaaard this week. You will be jogging down street to Ben gym. You will skate a looooooooot. It will make you better.”

I regretted getting out of bed that morning.

“Now, we meditate.”

I thought the espresso was talking, but, sure enough, he said it again.

“We meditate! Everyone close eyes and lie down. I meditate too, but I know everything. I see anyone do some noooooonsense, you are all in big trouble.”

We listened. We meditated. We didn’t get up to any nonsense. The meditation was guided by Lebron James, of all people. He has a surprisingly reassuring voice, and I started to forget about Pavel’s speech. He was exaggerating, right? Camp wouldn’t be so bad.

Ice time was right after meditation. Thanks to the skating drills we did (Get on one foot. Jump straight across the rink. Cool, now backward. Okay, now do it sideways. Now switch sides. Great! You’re done. With that foot. Now do everything on the other foot.) most of us messed up our labrums and were left with lasting hip and knee problems. At the end of the grueling, no-breaks three-hour session, Pavel had us skate around the rink while he blasted “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang on the stereo.

Next, we did off-ice drills. This consisted of taking off only our skates and checking each other into the walls by the rink. After that, we took the rest of the pads off and jogged down to Ben’s gym. Ben’s was a solid 15 minute jog from the rink, and we didn’t really have any breaks between it and the earlier stuff. On top of that, I’d worn my soccer shoes in anticipation of some games, which obviously didn’t EVER happen. As such, the jog and the workout were excruciating. We were all left so drained that we probably wouldn’t have had the energy to make it back to the rink, had the only redeeming quality of the day not been waiting for us. We chowed down for 45 minutes, splitting lunch between 15 minutes of talking and a half hour of listening to Pavel’s latest spiel: “You will never be sexful (he invariably pronounced “successful” like that) if you do not use 100% of brain! No need to be smart, just USE it!” When I say the timing was clear-cut, I mean it was clear-cut. Coach must’ve had a timer on his phone or something, because he’d perk up right at that 15 minute mark and show us some tired inspirational video that went viral in 2014, like the one where the general talks about making your goddamn bed every goddamn morning (I was still a bit bitter about the whole 6 AM thing). Also, when he started talking, it was always best to shut up, lest you either got yelled at (best-case scenario) or turned into lunchtime’s figure of ridicule, subject to every joke and insult Pavel could possibly come up with (very bad). Even by the first lunch, we knew Pavel pretty well. By Wednesday, well, after 3 days of Pavel, we’d have to have been pretty stupid to say even the slightest little thing during his lectures.

Though the Santa Barbara kids always ate the provided lunches, they also brought little Lululemon bags with little salads and little drinks and, of course, Clif bars. Considering the provided snacks were usually mandarins (Pavel loved mandarins, he had a little box of them next to him at all times besides on the ice) the bars were a source of great envy for many players. Eli, Addy, and Owen understood that and empathetically inhaled their bars in less than two seconds, but Dennis seemed to harbor more doubts about his day by day. On Tuesday, he scrutinized his Clif bar like a cat would a dead mouse, poking, prodding, and folding it. By Wednesday, he finally had enough, and tossed his bar in the air, letting it drop dully onto the ground.

He picked it up again. “I can’t anymore, man. I don’t even like this flavor. Eli, why did your mom get brownie?”

Eli glanced at him. “What’d my mom do? Brownie’s the best flavor.”

Dennis groaned. “I feel slow when I eat this flavor. It makes me fat. I can’t go practice like that again. Anyway, how can you like brownie? It looks like shit. Literally. Color, texture, everything.” He held up the bar.

The 4 kids at our side of the table turned toward Dennis. The ‘05 birth year was sitting here, while the ‘06 kids annoyed only each other at the end of the table. Now, the ‘05s had been hit by a beautiful, collective inspiration. Addy quietly said something to Dennis that was lost in the lunch din, and the glint came back in Dennis’ eyes. He smashed the bar between his palms and rolled, making it into a tube. He told us to look, and held it up. Sure enough, it was almost true to life. However, we were students of Pavel and, as such, were perfectionists. Whispers began swirling around our end of the table.

“Pour some water on it!”

“Separate it and put it back together. It should have little joints and bumps.” 

“Make it less symmetrical.”

“Add some mush, kinda coming off of it. Make it a little muddy. That’ll give it personality.”

Finally, our future captain held up our creation. Unlike most things created in committee, it was flawless, featuring bumps, joints, mud, a slick surface, and a fairly sturdy structure. It was both inspirational and grounding. It was the pride and joy of the ‘05s. It was our shit.

However, what’s a shit without someone to inflict it upon? After about two minutes of appraising our creation, we decided it needed to serve a greater purpose. We were approaching the 14 minute mark of team lunch, so we’d barely have time to get a rise out of anyone before Pavel’s speech. Like any good artist would, we decided to take the risk. Dennis solemnly raised the shit and handed it to Addy, who cocked his arm back and tossed it toward the ‘06 end of the table, where it landed right in front of a kid named Jake. Now, this is not creative license. This isn’t fiction. This is just one of those things that happens- a supernatural event, an act of God. 

Somehow, Jake and the rest of the ‘06s didn’t notice our art installation resting in front of Jake’s plate and, at that moment, the clock hit 12:15. On cue, Pavel stood from the Coaches table and marched to the center of our table, opening his computer, connecting it to a wall-mounted TV, and queuing up a PowerPoint. In the meantime, Jake stared placidly at the TV, and panic began seeping into the ‘05s. Dennis’ eyes were as wide as dinner plates, staring at the ticking time bomb that he himself had created. We all steeled ourselves and began hoping against hope. If he didn’t notice the thing for 30 seconds, what’s another 30 minutes? It’s fine. He won’t see. He’ll look at the PowerPoint and he won’t look down and if he does, if the little fucker does, I won’t go out easy. I won’t tell coach anything. None of us will. We’ll stand, silent, and he’ll kill us all before he gets to the bottom of it. We’re good soldiers and we’ll never give up the men who create shits alongside us. I regret that I have but one life to give.

Coach got the projector up and running and turned his attention toward the table. He shushed the ‘06s, who were still happily jabbering away. Then, he turned his attention toward us. On every other day, we’d taken a little less effort to shut up than the younger kids, but we were still loud. Today was different. Today, we sat ramrod straight, chin up, encased in our team tracksuits and with our faces contorted into respectful, terrified grimaces. Coach grinned and clapped his hands, impressed. Then, he got into it.

“What is competitor?”

We all nodded and frowned and tilted our heads, staring directly at Pavel and hearing half of what he said while absorbing every single one of Jake’s movements in our peripheral vision. At that moment, the kid was looking at Pavel and scratching his head.

“Competitor is person that waaaaaaaant to wiiiiiiiiiin more than aaaaaanybody else. Like Micha Jordan or the Ronaldo. And competitor have to puuut in lot of hard work to do it.”

Jake perked up a little at the mention of the athletes, but seemed to grow bored afterward. The ‘05s all stared daggers at him as he started looking elsewhere, first in the air past Pavel’s head and then around the rink.

“Why competitor want to win so much? I don’t know. Is something in heart. Me, I want to win because I like winning. Because winning feels goooood.”

Jake began to look down, but turned his head back up. The ‘05s breathed a sigh of relief, but continued to watch him closely.

“You should also be competitor! If you are not competitor, tell me this, and I will make sure you become eeeeeven more motivate to win.” Coach looked around the table, sizing us up.

Jake cast his eyes down to avoid coach’s gaze. The ‘05s sat bolt upright. The kid’s eyes widened. We held our breaths. Jake tapped Marcus on the shoulder. Marcus’ jaw dropped, and he elbowed Ethan, who looked down and started snickering. Eventually, the whole ‘06 side of the table knew what was happening, laughing quietly. In the meantime, the ‘05s were holding in laughter and desperately praying that Jake wouldn’t crack and say anything. Pavel was starting to realize something was up. Surely, he wouldn’t do anything now. Yeah, seeing a shit on your table is an extenuating circumstance to talk during a speech, but you can tell it’s not real, right? We didn’t do such a good job on it. There are probably inconsistencies there somewhere that can influence him to stay quiet. He won’t crack he can’t crack we’ll all get killed he’d better not cra-

Jake cracked. “What the FUCK?” The entire ‘06 side of the table burst into confused laughter, somewhere between amusement at Jake’s misfortune and horror at the fact that there was a shit, a shit, on their table. On the ‘05 side, we reached the conclusion that we’d be dead soon and started laughing too. Pavel walked over to Jake, who pointed him to the shit. He lifted it up in a napkin and looked around. He’d ask us who did it soon. We’d never tell him, and he’d kill us all for it. Game over.

He regarded the shit closely and squinted at the ‘05s. Then he smiled, dropped it back on the table in front of Jake, opened his palms, and plaintively cast his eyes toward the heavens. Then, he laughed, walked back to his computer, and clicked to the next slide: 

“Competitor have to have different type of blood and brain and all this! Competitor not even huuuuman! Competitor have to be strong, and fast, and also” he smiled again, looking at us, “also creative.”

Sadly, lunch was the only variable. The rest of the day was more of the same. A few more hours on the ice, another brief off-ice meditation, and the soothing tones of Lebron James to top it all off. 

This same day, with variations only in the food provided at lunch and the events therein, happened 6 more times. Even Lebron got annoying. I went from embracing my time with him to using him as a benchmark every morning: “Okay, I have to hear this rat bastard 8 more times before I go,” and so on. Finally, after 7 atrocious mornings, 14 Lebron sessions, 7 half-decent lunches, 2 torn labrums, and countless other weird little physical tweaks and bobbles, camp was over. When it ended, I got a call from my friend.

“Dude! I just got home from Mykonos!”

I’d just gotten home. Since my neck was completely decorative at that point, I’d melted into my bed and placed my head on a stack of pillows. In a show of inhuman willpower, I rolled toward the phone, breathing heavily.

“H-How was… How was it?”

“Dude, it was just like I said! There were parties everywhere! Our hotel guy gave us the adult wristband because he was just chill like that, so we went clubbing and ordered beers and stuff! And we went to this island, right? And we met all these Greek kids, and they were super chill too! And there was this really hot Greek girl…”

My phone pinged. I received a picture of my friend standing next to a girl. She was, in fact, really hot.

“And we made out and stuff, and she wants me to come to Athens next time I’m here!”

I reached up toward my lips and pried them apart. They weren’t really moving by themselves.

“That’s so sick, man. Sounds crazy. Good luck with her and stuff.”

“Thanks! I forgot to ask, dude! How was the hockey camp?”

A new wave of spasms racked my body. I rolled over again, but the soreness wouldn’t go away. Thanks either to my contacts or my severe existential suffering, a single tear rolled down my cheek. I moved to wipe it off, but my hand didn’t want to. I looked down at it and let it slide into my pillow and disappear before rolling back toward the phone.

“Like I said, man. Pretty crazy.”

Chapter 5

Coach Pavel was actually at the helm of two teams: Us (the 16 and unders) and the 07s (who played in the 14 and under bracket). All year, he pushed unconventional, risky strategies, like breaking out with stretch passes across the rink and pulling the goalie for an extra attacker during the power play. In the 16 and under division, hockey starts to get a bit grittier and more physical, and strategies like these ensured that we got cooked every time we tried to play offense. Want to make a stretch pass across the rink for your breakout? You’ll be lucky if it gets picked off. If it doesn’t, well, your head’s getting taken off. Want to pull the goalie on the power play? The second you turn it over, the puck’s in the back of your net because, well, guess who wasn’t there to stop it. Pavel didn’t recognize these flaws in his system. The 07s run it well, so why don’t you? We were constantly getting compared to the 07 team, which was having one of the best seasons in Flyers history because candy-ass plays like stretch passes work in the 14 and under division. There was a lot of talent on my team, but the broken system we played in and the constant disappointment and comparison with the 07s eroded most of our players’ morale. By the time we’d been together a few months, most of the players were out for themselves and didn’t care about the team anymore, and the remaining guys couldn’t carry their weight. Pavel had given up too, by that point. Sure, he still took the time to put everyone down, to take some of his frustration out on the team, but his heart wasn’t in the results. If we won, he was surprised. If we lost, he acted angry. In general, though, he was done with us. He would coach the 07s and take them to a higher level, and he would train the 16s into the ground by proxy. He figured that us winning was out of his control, so he didn’t try to. I don’t know if it was all his fault we lost games, or if the clash of our team’s toxic players would have done us in anyway, but between the two of them, we had no chance.

One thing we had in common with the 07s was that Pavel ruled us both with an iron fist. Since the first day of training camp, he’d made it clear that no one would receive special treatment, not even his little crop of golden boys. It was the same reason why he worked us so hard, even after he’d given up on our playoff chances: He didn’t want to let us off easy. Now, we had a lot of shitheads on our team, but the 07s were on a whole different level. They were lucky that they were so good at Pavel’s system, because if they hadn’t been, he’d have murdered them. I could spend chapters and chapters recounting the exploits of the kids on that team but, for conciseness’ sake, I’ll only tell you about one event, the funniest, most brutal one: The Danila Plexiglas Incident.

Let me start from the beginning. Danila (That was his name, not Danilo, it’s not a typo) was a good kid, at least in my eyes. He was a dickhead, that much is true, and he never was one for authority, but he was pretty good at hockey and was always chill with me, probably because he and I had been going to Pavel’s clinics together since the pandemic. Though, since the kid was in a younger team, we were never what you’d call friends, I was able to develop a pretty good notion of Danila: The kid was nice to some people, a shit to others, and a total troublemaker all around. Pavel knew this too, which meant that Danila was always in his list of suspects whenever anything happened around the 07s team. Food left in the 07 locker room? Call Danila and Niner in for questioning. Complaint from a team hotel? Danila and Giuseppe are probably responsible. Other team’s coach said a Flyers player was being disrespectful? Well, we already know that was Danila. 

There were these maps of the rink placed around the Cube Ice Arena, one in every room and hall. They were simple enough, just printed paper, but each one was placed behind a sheet of plexiglas. The smallest part of this story is what actually happened: One of the sheets, one by the hall leading to the gym, was found broken on the ground. Pavel, of course, did the logical thing, and brought Danila, Giuseppe and Niner in to squeeze them a bit, see if they’d talk. Niner, on the brink of suspension from the team due to an incident where he broke the glasses of a team hotel’s guest upon slamming the guy’s door back in his face after ding-dong ditching him, promised Pavel he wasn’t responsible. Giuseppe, in Pavel’s bad books after dressing up as him for the team halloween party, swore up and down he was innocent. Danila, suspiciously clean for the last few weeks, also denied everything. Pavel then went quiet for a week. The perpetrator sat and seethed and wondered what Pavel would do next. You see, Pavel doesn’t let shit go. If he’s mad about something and it doesn’t get resolved, he’ll stick to his guns until it is. Had he broken his policy? The perpetrator hoped so, but doubted it. Sure enough, it all came to a head during a seemingly innocuous workout a few days later.

“Alright everyone, sit down please!” Pavel barked. This was pretty normal. We always stretched before practice.

“You all know about the map that got broken and whatnot.” We all nodded. He’d made us all aware, though we 16s hadn’t come under scrutiny due to the fact that we didn’t work out in the hall.

“Now. You know I have a feeeeeew people I think maybe did it. Niner, come up here.”

“Niner, did you do it?”

Niner had marched up to where coach was standing. “No, coach.”

“Okay. Giuseppe, did you do it?”

Giuseppe sauntered up to the front of the gym. “No, coach.”

“Alright. Daaaaaaanila! Did you do this?”

Danila slunk up to coach. “No, coach. I didn’t break the map.”

Coach nodded. “Ooooooooookay! Giuseppe! Can you turn off lights for me?”

Giuseppe, completely rattled to hear his name again, obliged. Once the lights were out, coach shouted out to my team’s captains.

“Dennis! Holden! Eli! You guys move some boxes over here, I have something to put this on?”

He brandished a small object. We grabbed a few box-jump boxes and positioned them next to coach. Coach grinned, set the object down on a box, frowned, picked it back up.

“You guys know what this is?”

We shook our heads. He pressed a button, frowned again, slapped the box, pressed the button again. The box started glowing. Danila’s eyes lit up.

“It’s a projector, coach!” 

“Very, very good, Danila! It’s a very little projector. Very niiiiiiifty. Technology, man. Can you believe it?”

Coach made sure the projector was properly projecting onto the blank, blue wall of our gym and plugged it into his computer. Then, he pointed. We all followed his finger, which was aimed at a small, round object protruding from the wall that faced the hallway.

“Now, what is that?”

He looked at Danila. Danila didn’t answer. He’d been overtaken by a ghostly pallor, skin pale, eyes glazed over. His waxy visage gazed at the object as if in a trance. Soon, like a man condemned, he turned his eyes downward and fixed his jaw. Pavel still looked at him, waiting for an answer.

Finally, Eli said “A camera, coach.”

“Very good, Eli! Smart kid, this guy. Now, you probably guess where I am going with this. Everyone quiet!”

“Holy shit,” Dennis whispered. Everyone in the room held their breath. A buzz had filled the room, electricity in the air above everyone’s head besides Danila, who still sat sphinx-like, statuesque in his stoicity, emanating an air of nothingness which all but nullified the room’s energy.

Coach pulled up a video on his computer, went fullscreen so we could all see it projected. The video captured the entire hallway, crystal clear. Danila, Niner, and Giuseppe were rotating through sets of footwork drills.

“All right, guys, they are working out! Nice! Good footwork, Niner.” He motioned back toward the screen. Danila had just finished his footwork. Now, the kid was looking at the map, which was a couple feet above his head. His eyes glinted. He jumped up, slapped the map as hard as he could, watched it break and fall to the ground. He looked around him, horrified. Niner and Giuseppe turned back toward Danila, who, ever the grifter, smiled, stood on the pieces and leaned back on the wall. Back in the real world, players on both teams were struggling to control their laughter.

“Danila, why do you lie, man? You’re not playing this weekend, obviously. Now, guys, just know that, like I said, I see everything.”

In retrospect he wasn’t such a bad guy, but he appeared to us then as a matinee villain, a diabolical, sneering fellow full of schadenfreude and malice. His grinning, manic form of retribution kept everyone wary of him at best and terrified at worst. Most people resented him, scoffed behind his back, and ignored him to his face. The less he cared, the meaner he got, and that lost him what remained of his base on the team. His presence alone, let alone his constant passive aggression and generally lackadaisical game-coaching approach, lost us games. The team crumbled and he acted as if he was the last pillar of integrity there, the last person who cared, the man going down with his ship as a toxic crew deserts him, but the truth was that he was the opposite. Before the first murmurs of disgruntlement were emitted from players’ mouths, before we got eliminated from playoffs, before kids stopped practicing, coach had stopped caring.

Chapter 6

After the club season ended, I made a Varsity playoff run and retired cheerfully to academic life. I thought I was free of the Flyers. I blew out of there as fast as I could. I chose Spanish school over my final exit meeting with Pavel. It was there, actually, at Spanish school, that I got the news.

Owen had been my teammate and friend for a couple of years, starting with that Van Nuys tournament team. On the Flyers, he was a fringe player, a member of a group of outcasts who, as every team clique, kept to themselves. He wasn’t the best player on the team, a thing some players were all too keen to remind him of. Many of my teammates were fairly toxic; if you made a mistake, chances are they would never let you hear the end of it. I’d played with Owen for two years and, though he’d improved a lot since our first year together (his first year playing club hockey) he still made a lot of mistakes. After Owen took his own life, I was briefly under the impression that I had clear hindsight. I convinced myself that he’d grown more withdrawn toward the end of the year as the scrutiny on him grew and because of this, I believed I should  have seen it coming. 

My period of reasoning was followed by a period of remembering. It was during this period that I came to a deeper understanding of Owen. I had thought he was sad all the time because, frankly, it was convenient to think that. By making myself believe that his thought process had been in full display, I gave myself control over the situation, felt like I could stop this kind of thing from happening in the future. If I notice a friend acting depressed, I’ll do something about it, I told myself. However, the truth was, Owen had always seemed inordinately unaffected by the criticism of our more vindictive teammates- Sure, he’d had a couple altercations with them, but he always held his own and put a good face on for our next practice. The more I remembered him, the more I realized he’d been a pretty upbeat guy. He groused good-naturedly about his girlfriend’s school play. He joked about the time he led his basketball team in points (a whopping 5) during a blowout loss. He told me after a 6AM game that he was going surfing immediately after- I laughed and said he was crazy. He told wild stories about his crazy friends back in Santa Barbara and the weird shit they did, like the time they took a midnight tour of their old elementary school and got high on cough syrup, of all things (Owen refrained). When Owen was facing adversity on the team, I made sure he was okay. There had been one significant altercation with our teammates, and things had improved after that. Owen found his own friend group. He found his place on the team. When we ended our season with an upset win over a highly ranked team, he was in the locker room spraying Martinelli’s and laughing with the rest of us. 

I don’t know why Owen did it. It might have been a breakup, bullying at school, lingering, hidden pain from the team. At the funeral, I heard the kids at his school blame it on his team, which I get. It’s always easier to direct blame somewhere else. It took me a long while to process that he’d been a pretty happy player on the team, and I’ve reached a decent level of peace about it. I know the blame comes from turmoil, and I hope his people can reach a greater level of closure. Someday, a long way down the line, I’ll ask him why exactly he did it. Until then, I have to accept the fact that he was an upbeat person with a happy life, or, at least, that’s how he appeared. His death has taught me to hold the people in my life as close as possible, because sometimes you can’t know if someone’s not okay.

Epilogue

I hated the Flyers for a while. Though I had many friends on the team, many of whom I still talk to to this day, I still got out of there as fast as I could, and it was a foregone conclusion that I wouldn’t play for the Flyers again. I blasted “Bye Bye Baby” on the way home from my last practice. After Owen’s death, I became sure that the team was cursed, a cancer that needed to be cut out of my life and forgotten. 

However, I’ve been able to gain a better understanding of my Flyers experience over the past few months. Sure, it was bad. Sure, I’d picked up more injuries in my time with the Flyers than I had in the entire rest of my hockey career. Yeah, we lost a lot, and coach gave up on us. On the other hand, the Flyers had given me a lot. Did we practice too much? Yeah, but I had more experience than ever. Did the workouts make me more injury prone? Yeah, but I got over it and ended up in my peak physical shape. However, it was bigger than fitness. Pavel once saved my hockey career, but his Flyers made me want to quit all over again. It was only because it was my last possible year of club hockey before college that I came back this year and, you know what? I’ve had a great year. The team around me is unified, and my coach cares. I’ve learned that hockey is something I absolutely love, and that it’s by far the biggest all-around part of my life. 

Coach Pavel and the Flyers showed me that my love for hockey can be tested but that, even in the worst playing situations, it’ll never go away. I learned that I can be a strong leader and a strong person under tough circumstances and that, even if the going gets tough, I can see the funny side of it and persist. Owen’s death, of course, was a lesson in and of itself, a moment that made me more protective, more caring, and a bit paranoid. Pavel, the Flyers, and all the bullshit that came with them taught me the true meaning of perseverance, strength, empathy, and dedication, and, through that, they influenced me for the better.

Side Note

Many of the lessons I learned from the Flyers, I only processed while writing this memoir. For that reason, I should also thank Pavel and his team for teaching me that a bad moment makes a good story and that a good story makes a good lesson.