Delayed Penalty (Crossing the Line, #1)(3)

Last season, I was the number one draft pick for the Chicago Blackhawks. I always liked Chicago, so I was more than thrilled to be signed to a team I grew up watching. I was from Pittsburgh, though, so naturally I was pulling for the Penguins to pick me up, but I fit in well here in Chicago and couldn't ask for a better group of guys to play with. We had the unity and had formed a strong bond together the last two seasons, and that was what made winning hockey teams.

I started playing hockey when I got my first pair of skates at two years old. Sam, my dad, was a die-hard hockey fan. Seriously, though, someone should have him committed with how insane he could get about the game, but all that insanity and willingness to help me was what got me into the NHL at nineteen.

So while I had my skates and stick at the age of two, they finally allowed me to have the puck when I turned three. The reason for the no puck rule stemmed from something about me drilling the puck through the window a few times. I didn't remember this, but my dad had told the story to just about anyone who would listen to him for more than five minutes.

Once I had the puck and stick together, it was love. Ever since then, nothing compared to the way I felt on the ice. I grew up playing in the PAHL, Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League, through the various midget levels until I was fourteen and was eligible to play for the Ontario Hockey League Major Juniors, which was overseen by the Canadian Hockey League—their governing body for professional hockey.

You had to be fifteen to play, but since my birthday fell in February, and thanks to my very persuasive father, I was drafted. I played in Erie, Pennsylvania, for the Erie Otters. The OHL consisted of twenty teams that were broken down into two conferences, Western and Eastern, and then by four divisions with five teams in each division of East, West, Midwest, and Central.

The Erie Otters were in the Western Conference, Midwest division.

I liked playing up there. It was only a two-hour drive for us, but I ended up having to be enrolled in school there because the traveling to the games alone involved too much, and driving the extra two hours home wasn't an option. My family rented a house up there, and that was where we lived. They were willing to do anything to allow me to play, even it meant uprooting our family and their jobs.

I'd say my dad was the biggest hockey fan out of all of us, having played the game himself until he was nineteen, but my mom and younger sister were just as die-hard. They were at every game back then, cheering me on.

The goal with playing junior hockey was to learn the game, understand it, and get noticed. The Major Juniors was where hockey players got noticed and was where the NHL drafted from. In junior hockey, you lived a pro lifestyle as a teenager and experienced everything the pros experienced, aside from the money. Sure, they paid you, but not nearly as well as they did in the NHL. I used to get a hundred dollars a week, and that was pretty cool when you were fifteen, but now I saw close to a hundred thousand. And just like the pros, you ate, breathed, and slept hockey nine months out of the year. The other three months you just dreamed about it and perfected your game.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, considered the Major Junior League professional level. That meant by playing in a division of the Canadian Hockey League, I lost the eligibility to play for universities in the United States, but I could play for Canada if I wanted.

That wasn't my focus. I wanted to play in the NHL and had since my first slap-shot.

To enter the NHL draft you had to be eighteen by September 15 of that year, which meant I couldn't enter the draft until 2007. I was listed first overall in the NHL Central Scouting Bureau and International Scouting Services' respective rankings of prospects that year and went on to be selected first overall in the draft by the Chicago Blackhawks.

And now, here I was, my second season in the NHL, game thirty-six, already in the record books from our 2009 season. With an eighty-two game season, not including playoffs, the season was still underway.

For now, we had that unity, and we were looking good with twenty-four wins. We had that romance.

Waking from sleep with Leo sticking his finger up my nose, the bus skidded to a stop outside the United Center shortly after midnight. "Wake up sunshine!"

Leo Orting, our scrappy center, was my best friend. We roomed together on the road, sat together on the bus, and sat together on the team plane. Anywhere we went with the team, we were together. Hockey players liked routine. We had a routine.

Leo and I grew up playing in the OHL together. When I first met him, he slammed me into the boards so hard my mouth guard flew out of my mouth, and I was sure I'd be pissing blood. The next chance I got, I did the same. In hockey, you played dirty, and you better be ready to take it dirty, too. And Leo could.

He smiled, peeling himself from the boards and said, "Nice hit, eh."

From then on, we played each other with respect. He was a year older—entered the draft before I did—but was traded the year I signed with the Blackhawks to none other than the Blackhawks. It was fun having guys like Leo on the team—ones you could count on to keep your team alive and play well together. If Leo thought for a second the morale had been lost, he'd do something to bring it back. Usually this was to someone else's public humiliation, but that was Leo.

Making our way off the bus, we unloaded equipment bags and then transferred them to our respective vehicles. Leo spent more time tossing rocket snowballs at Shelby Wright, the rookie on the team.

Leo, Dave Keller (another defenseman), and a few others made plans to stop by the local pub before heading home to their families. I wasn't twenty-one yet, so I stopped off at Smith & Wollensky and grabbed some food with Shelby before heading back to my apartment on North Wabash Ave. Even though it was pretty late, they always served hockey players.