Breakaway

By Avon Gale

A Scoring Chances Novel

Drafted to play for the Jacksonville Sea Storm, an NHL affiliate, twenty-year-old Lane Courtnall’s future looks bright, apart from the awkwardness he feels as a gay man playing on a minor league hockey team. He’s put his foot in his mouth a few times and alienated his teammates. Then, during a rivalry game, Lane throws off his gloves against Jared Shore, enforcer for the Savannah Renegades. It’s a strange way to begin a relationship.

Jared’s been playing minor league hockey for most of his career. He’s bisexual and doesn’t care if anyone knows. But he’s determined to avoid another love affair after the last one left him devastated. Out of nowhere a one-nighter with rookie Lane Courtnall gives him second thoughts. Lane reminds Jared why he loves the game and why love might be worth the risk. In turn Jared hopes to show Lane how to be comfortable with himself on and off the ice. But they’re at different points in their careers, and both men will have to decide what they value most.

For my dad, who taught me the joy and heartache of overinvesting in sports—and why it was perfectly okay to shout at the television. And for Jen, who taught me to love hockey—despite being horrified at my taste in teams—and who patiently explained Canadian junior hockey to me on the best of all possible road trips. And, as always, for Eric, for the constant support and for taking me to my first-ever hockey game—and not laughing too hard when I asked about the swimming pool.

I would like to thank Liz Fitzgerald, for being such an awesome editor, and Aaron Anderson for the lovely cover art.

The structure of minor-league professional hockey in the States is a bit confusing and is constantly changing as teams open, fold, and relocate. I thought it might be a good idea to provide a quick-and-dirty rundown, at least as it pertains to the
Scoring Chances
series and the characters you’ll meet along the way.

The National Hockey League (NHL) has thirty teams, and each team has an affiliate American Hockey League (AHL) team. The primary purpose of the AHL is to serve as a development league for the NHL, allowing promising players and recent acquisitions/draft picks to improve their hockey skills and physical conditioning. Teams can also “call up” players from their AHL affiliate when necessary, to replace injured players or to give valuable playing experience to potential prospects.

Players on the NHL team can also be sent down to the AHL, if it is deemed a good idea for the player’s individual development.

The ECHL, which is the league in which the
Scoring Chances
series takes place, is a double-minor league, or the league directly below the AHL. There are currently twenty-eight teams in the ECHL, and most are affiliated with an AHL team—with an eventual goal of adding two more teams so it is even in number with the NHL/AHL. There have been cases when one ECHL team is a shared affiliate between two NHL teams.

Confusing? All you really need to know is that the ECHL is a feeder league for the AHL, which is a feeder league for the NHL. In the
Scoring Chances
series, all the NHL/AHL affiliates are correct as of time of publication, but it should be noted that these can change quite often in between seasons. All ECHL teams, their locations and their affiliates in the
Scoring Chances
series are fictional (with the exception of the Cincinnati Cyclones).

Like the AHL, players can be “called up” and “sent down” as necessary.

It’s important to note two main differences between the ECHL and the other two leagues. The ECHL is not dependent on a draft, so coaches are free to choose their own roster. Anyone can try out for a spot. The other difference is money. And this is a big one—ECHL players generally make about $12,000 per year (plus housing expenses), compared to about $40,000 a year for your average player in the AHL. Of course, the amount is much higher for an NHL player—but not quite, say, the level of your average NFL player.

In the first book in this series,
Breakaway,
Jared refers to the ECHL as
Easy Come, Hard to Leave,
which is a moniker I learned from reading Sean Pronger’s excellent book,
Journeyman: The Many Triumphs (and Even More Defeats) Of A Guy Who’s Seen Just About Everything In the Game of Hockey
. I cannot recommend this book enough, and reading the hilarious and informative anecdotes of Sean Pronger’s career—played primarily in the ECHL—is what made me want to write about minor-league hockey players in the first place. The book also provided a lot of insight and ideas for the character that would become Jared Shore. Like Sean Pronger, Shore is a veteran “journeyman” who’s spent his long career playing for a multitude of teams and wearing a lot of terrible jerseys along the way.

If you’re interested in how minor professional hockey came to be a thing in the southern United States, I also highly recommend
Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South
, by Jon C. Stott. This book proved to be an excellent resource and made me appreciate the tenacity of those determined to sell ice hockey to Southerners obsessed with college football (or, in my family’s case, college basketball).

I have tried to keep true to the rules of hockey, both in game play and administrative operations within the ECHL—without being a stickler. Any glaring errors (or convenient road-trip stopovers) I blame on artistic license.

IT TOOK
Lane Courtnall until the third period of the Jacksonville Sea Storm’s game against their archrivals, the Savannah Renegades, to come up with a plan to make his teammates stop hating him.

Maybe plan wasn’t the right word exactly. That implied a lot more forethought. Lane’s was more in the
impulsive decision
category, which suggested pretty much the opposite. Especially when said impulsive decision involved the Renegades’ enforcer, Jared Shore, who was rumored to eat small children for breakfast.

Despite the fact his team was going out of their way to not have anything to do with him—not passing the puck or acknowledging his existence—Lane was excited for the game against the Renegades. He’d always loved a good rivalry game—how it could make an early season match-up feel like the middle of the playoffs. And this was his first in the pro leagues, so maybe he could score some kind of amazing goal and his teammates would
have
to like him.

The Renegades were a good team, though they played a much different game than the Sea Storm. Lane’s team relied a lot on their speed and puck handling, where the Renegades played aggressively and took a lot of penalties because of it.

Considering how many penalties there already were in the league, that was saying something.

They were also intimidating and usually dominated their opponents—all except the Sea Storm, who had a phenomenal record against them because penalties lead to power plays, which lead to scoring opportunities for the Storm. Their games, according to what Lane was able to piece together from conversations he wasn’t a part of, usually involved a fair amount of back-and-forth insults, heavy hits, flashy goals, and a fight or two on the ice and in the crowd. Lane was looking forward to it—as a break in the monotony, if nothing else.

When it came to his professional hockey debut,
Lane had the same fantasy as every other kid in Canada. There’d be a capacity crowd, the lights would be glimmering atop ice that was as smooth as glass, and Lane would be skating out to start the game in an Original Six team jersey, serenaded by the roar of the crowd and the
Hockey Night in Canada
theme song. (As long as it wasn’t the Nickelback version.)

Instead of a capacity crowd in Toronto, he had a half-full civic arena in Jacksonville, Florida. Instead of the
Hockey Night in Canada
theme song, he had loud, jarring rock music—possibly by Nickelback, but the stereo system was terrible—and the ice looked less like glass and more like the pavement on Main Street back home in Chatham, Ontario, after it was hit by an ice storm and run over by a few dozen cars. And the jersey he was sporting wasn’t the Original Six of his imagination, or even the Tampa Bay Lightning (also known as the Bolts), the NHL team who’d drafted Lane. It wasn’t even Tampa’s minor league team, the Syracuse Crunch, for whom Lane expected to play a few seasons on his way up to the big club.

The reality was a little different. Lane was currently sitting on the bench waiting for his shift, attired in a blue green jersey that featured an angry-looking waterspout improbably holding a hockey stick while a puck rode in on a wave. The Sea Storm was a member of the ECHL, the minor league’s minor league, located in a weird city where it rained in the afternoon and then was sunny again twenty minutes later, with bridges of dizzying height spanning the St. John’s River, and where people drank iced tea with the sugar
already in it
. Meaning Lane was living in an Econo Lodge next to the Interstate and eating a lot of prepackaged donuts.

It would have been just fine—even with the cheesy name, the absurd jersey, the low attendance, and the fact they sometimes forgot to turn the arena music off when they were actually playing hockey—if Lane had kept his mouth shut the first few days of practice. Instead, Lane had made a lot of really dumb comments about being drafted and how he didn’t think he’d be in the minors that long, which sounded a lot worse in hindsight than they did when he’d said them in the first place. He hadn’t meant to imply that he was better than everyone. He was just terrible with people and trying his best to strike up a conversation. But his teammates were now sitting as far away from him on the bench as they could, and it was rare that they bothered to acknowledge Lane’s existence, on or off the ice, and it felt like he was playing hockey by himself.

Lane knew he had to think of something to do before too long or he was going to disappoint everyone he knew and possibly die of malnutrition as a result of only eating snack food. And since no one was bothering to talk to him, he had a lot of time to think about what the hell he could do to make amends for his incredible lack of social skills.

By the time the second period came around, though, there still hadn’t been any fights. Or flashy goals, at least on the part of the Storm. They couldn’t find the back of the net with a spotlight. The Renegades had only scored once, and every time one of the Storm players got close to the net, one of the Renegades knocked them into next week and took off with the puck.

Including Lane. He’d been slammed around more than a pinball already, because his teammates didn’t like him, and they were letting him know it—this time, by actually passing him the puck. Lane figured out pretty quickly it was akin to putting a giant target on his back, but if he didn’t catch the passes and try and shoot, he’d be in the stands for the next few games. Sparks, as the Storm’s resident fighter, should have gone after one of the Renegades in retribution. That unspoken rule seemed not to exist when it came to Lane.

Lane sat on the bench, fuming, as Shore knocked into Sea Storm captain Max “Reeder” Reid hard enough to send him sprawling on the ice. The fans roared in outrage, and there was a smattering of cheers from the Renegades’ fans as the whistle blew and the linesman sent Shore to the penalty box.

It was the fourth time he’d been there. Sparky yelled “fuckhead, just wait” at Shore as he skated by. Shore just grinned at him, and Lane found himself watching Shore in the box. He was older than most of the guys on the Storm, but hockey players age in dog years, so it was possible he wasn’t even thirty. He had pale blue eyes like a husky and short, reddish-blond hair

He caught Lane watching him and winked. Embarrassed, Lane looked down, jiggled his knee nervously, and clutched his stick. He was getting ready for his next shift with the power play unit, and he was hopeful their one-man advantage would still be there when he was on the ice. Maybe he could score a goal and even the game up, earn himself some goodwill. Or at the very least, an invitation to Cruisers, after the game. He was getting tired of eating meals from the vending machine, and he still didn’t understand American money. Except the coins. He was getting pretty good at understanding those.

There was barely any time left on the power play when Lane jumped the boards and hit the ice. He was determined, zeroed in on the goal, and barely noticed anything else. He wasn’t the biggest guy on the ice, despite being nearly six-foot-three, but he was fast and, team pariah or not, he was definitely getting conditioned to the style and level of play.

He caught the puck on a pass from Abney in a rare moment of linemate solidarity, and he could just
feel
the goal he knew he was going to score as he danced around one of the Renegade players. He drew his stick back to make the shot, focused, breathing even and ready—