game being sensory overload until her dad contacted me.”
“Hmm. Maybe we should see if there’s more.” Kuznetsov gestured over his shoulder. “The front office would let us do this again, yeah?”
I almost stumbled. “You think we should?”
“Why not?” He shrugged. “If we’ve got other fans who can’t come to games for the same reasons she can’t, we should do something for them too.”
Oh. Hell. Maybe I wasn’t overthinking this after all. The front office might not be down with going quite this all-out on a regular basis, though if we did it for more than one fan, they might. Could be worth a try; the PR guy was good at sweet-talking Coach Larson and Bill, our general manager, and to be fair, both of them were big old softies like we were, especially when it came to kids. I didn’t imagine they’d put up too much of a fight. Not if it meant hockey for kids who wanted to watch us play but couldn’t come to games. And if we could make some kind of fundraiser out of it…
“You’re right,” I said to Kuznetsov. “I’ll talk to Richard.”
“Good. If I can help, tell me.”
“I will. Thanks, man.”
I’d bring it up with Richard later, though, because we’d reached the club lounge where the McKenzies would be waiting. The lounge wasn’t huge, so we’d arranged to have a handful of players go in at a time rather than overwhelm our young fan with a crowd. That was fine by me anyway—I wasn’t prone to migraines like she was, but being crowded into a room with a lot of people, even my own teammates, made my skin crawl and my pulse race. I didn’t even like it when reporters came into our locker room, but it wasn’t something I could avoid, so I’d more or less learned to deal with it. Giving Dallas some space so we wouldn’t overwhelm her was the perfect smokescreen so I didn’t have to find an excuse to linger in the hallway until some of the other guys had cleared out. I casually waited out here with Kuznetsov and a few of our other teammates, and after some of the other guys left and there was more space in the lounge, we went in.
I immediately found Dallas. Even if she hadn’t been wearing a jersey—one of my playoff jerseys, holy shit—she wasn’t exactly difficult to spot, being the only kid in the room. I smiled to myself as she stared in starstruck awe at my teammates. I owed every last one of them a beer—not only were they signing everything I’d asked them to and posing for photos, they were taking the time to chat with her. And here I’d been worried about asking them to do any of this.
There was plenty to sign, too. I’d made sure Richard got her a jersey, some game-played pucks, a stack of photos, and a game-played stick, and the guys were going through and signing everything. Richard was dutifully taking photos of her with each player, too, so she’d have a pile of souvenirs after today.
The stick was getting a little crowded with signatures, and it was kind of funny watching Maddox and Jameson turning it every which direction in search of a blank spot to sign. Maddox apparently found a spot, and he turned the stick, smacking Jameson in the face with the blade.
“Really?” Jameson gingerly rubbed his nose.
“Sorry.” Maddox didn’t sound even a little bit sincere.
Jameson growled something. Then when it was his turn to sign the stick, he whacked Maddox in the shin with it, prompting a yelp and some cursing while Maddox hopped away. Dallas laughed hard, and Jameson just chuckled as he signed the stick.
Dallas was a cute kid. Eleven or twelve, I thought her dad had said, and she looked genuinely stunned by everything. Good. From what Devin had told me, she was a big fan, and she was crushed that she couldn’t come to games, so I’d wanted to make up for that as much as I could. There was nothing I could do that would make an actual game doable for her, so I hoped this was enough to compensate.
If her wide eyes and gigantic smile were anything to go by, she was happy with what the guys and I had put together.
I hung back to let the rest of the team go through the line, and as I did, I searched the room for her dad. It only took a second to