*ring ring* *ring ring* *ring ring*
“Ughhh…. Shut up,”
*ring ring* *ring ring* *ring ring*
“God damn it, who is calling this late.”
Roze checks his phone and sees the name Tomas, his current defensive partner. He clicks the answer button. “What-”
“Where are you?” Tomas asks hurriedly “What?” Roze responds.
“Where. Are. You.”
Roze’s eyes widen as he looks over at his clock, 6:40 am.
Training starts at 6:45.
“Shit.”

Roze barges through the door and throws his bag onto the ground as he quickly tries to put on his gear as fast as possible. After a little while, through his peripheral vision he sees someone enter the locker room with him.
“30 minutes late? Really.”
Roze doesn’t respond as he gets his gear on as quickly as possible. His tape isn’t in his bag.
“You know being hungover isn’t an excuse. You need to be disciplined.”
Roze finishes putting his gear on as he walks past the man and onto the ice. His teammates in the middle of a drill he meets the glaring eyes of his coach. No words are exchanged between them, his teammates look over at him. Tomas lets out a sigh as he skates over to the blue line, the whole team follows and so does Roze.
The whistle blows and the conditioning begins.

“I am never drinking again.” Roze says as he throws the final pieces of his gear into his bag. “Who thought it was a good idea.”
“If i remember you… brought the vodka.”
“Shut up Oskars.” Roze says which caused everyone to let out small laughs. Tomas walked over to Roze.
“Let’s go my Ma is grabbing us.”
Roze nodded as he picked up his stuff, after shoving it into Tomas’ mom’s car they started talking about how training was. Roze stayed silent as they talked about the conditioning they had to do because he was late. Eventually Roze was dropped off and brought his gear back into his house.
Denisova was sitting at the kitchen table. “You can’t ignore me all day.”
“You stalking me?”
“Im saving you from yourself, you have scouts coming to see your ass why are you showing up thirty fucking minutes late?”
“You’re an awful motivator.”
“We’re not doing this Leo. Do you want to play professionally or not?”
Roze glares over at him as he walks up to his room and slams the door shut. Denisova just sat there as Roze’s mom walked into the room.
“Tea?’
Denisova shakes his head as he gets up and starts to leave before his phone starts ringing.
“Hello… Mhm… Beer league? No way.” Denisova chuckles as he rushes out of the house.

For the next week Roze woke up extra early and made sure he was always the first person to the rink to make up for what he did to his team. No one else dared show up late. Roze hadn’t seen Denisova since their little fight which was odd to him because Denisova was ramping up his attention towards Roze recently. Roze also noticed a lower number of scouts coming to practices and watching him play. He hadn’t gotten a call since the day he showed up late either. He made sure he went even harder; he didn’t think that the mistake was enough to cause this drastic of a change, but it obviously did. His teammates noticed the increase in intensity and raised their level as well. Eventually the Jelgava U-18 was looking like a well-oiled machine.

2 weeks into the season Jelgava was 5-0. Roze still noticed a lack of scouts. A couple would show up but he never spoke to any so he assumed they weren’t here for him. He put his head down and kept grinding.
As the season went on, Jelgava didn’t falter. Finishing first place in the country’s junior league at 28-9-3.
As the 1 seed they would meet Ogre U-18 in the first round. After putting up 5 points in the first period, Jelgava slowed down only beating them 7-2 in the end. At the end of the game Roze skated off the ice, expecting someone, anyone to talk to him about scouting, but nothing came. He sighed in disappointment as he entered the locker room to his celebrating team.
The next round they would meet the Valka team. Once again they took an early lead and Roze looked out to the Denisova sitting with someone and talking intently.
Valka would put up a fight but end up getting knocked out.

Next up was Ventspils. Jelgava for the third time breezed through their opponents, but this time during the game Roze noticed more people he figured were scouts.

The semi-finals came up, Jelgava vs Jurmala. Roze took a deep breath before the game. He had yet to go to the finals. This was his chance. Jelgava took an early 2-0 lead before Jurmala equalized. Before the end of the first period.
Early in the second while he was reaching for a pokecheck a Jurmala player took an obvious dive. The ref’s whistle blew as Jelgava instantly protested. Roze was sent to the box for 2 minutes but only spent 24 seconds in there before Jurmala took a 3-2 lead.
They would keep this lead until the third.
10 minutes left in the third, a faceoff in the offensive zone was dropped and knocked back to Tomas, after a onetime cross ice to Roze waiting for it, he let a slapshot off that soared right past the goalie tying the game at 3. The stands went crazy as Roze was instantly surrounded by his teammates.
“LETS FUCKING GO LEO WE FUCKING GOT THIS” Oskars yelled as he jumped into the huddle.
With 4 minutes left, Jelgava put another past the goalie, they would finish the game 5-3 after an empty netter.

The finals approached.
Jelgava vs Riga.

“Good luck kid.” Roze heard a familiar voice from the stands as he looked over to see Denisova sitting with the same man he was during the Valka game. Roze got back to his warmups.

The puck dropped in the Latvian juniors final.
The game was instantly chippy as Riga tried their best to throw off an extremely hot Jelgava. At first Jelgava didn’t let it get to them, but after 6 penalties in the first period tensions were boiling.
“Alright boys, zero zero. We have 45 second on the powerplay left.”
Roze focused in as his coach went over their gameplan for the start of the period. The puck dropped again, and they instantly put that plan into motion. With 15 seconds left on the powerplay Tomas would receive the puck, play it to Roze who played it right back giving Tomas a clear shot.
*ping*
Right off the corner of the net. Riga would kill off the rest of the powerplay.
The chippiness continued but the refs started calling less, so Roze got in on it making some obvious fouls that weren’t called.
As the whistle blew for the end of the second period, the game was ready to boil over. He wanted to fight one of these Riga kids but couldn’t risk getting thrown out of the game. The third period began and both teams kept holding each other scoreless.

3 minutes, 31 seconds left. A line change was called. Jelgava dumped the puck in. Roze got off the ice. 20 seconds later Riga was pushing hard.
“COME ON BOYS” someone yelled from beside him.
The Jelgava goalie slid over and made a save but kept sliding further than he wanted. Riga got the rebound off the save and instantly capitalized throwing the pass into the slot.
Someone on Riga tipped it in.
2 minutes 44 seconds left, 1-0 Riga. Roze covered his face with his gloves. As the Riga players went crazy.
“We’re not done yet.” Tomas said as he and Roze climbed over the boards.
Jelgava would push harder than they ever did, the goalie pulled.
2 minutes left.
1:30 minutes left.
1 minute left.
30 seconds left.
15 seconds left.
10 seconds left.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.

The buzzer sounded as the Riga players instantly swarmed all over the ice. Roze stood stunned for several seconds before Tomas put his arm around his shoulder and they skated off the ice together. He doesn’t know exactly who he hugged on the way out, but it was his last game with them.
Roze got to the locker room and hugged the rest of his teammates that he missed while they were skating off, tears slowly forming in his eyes. The coaches came in.
“So damn close…”
Roze sat in silence as the coaches spoke, he didn’t touch his gear.
After what felt like hours it all came off.

As he was leaving the arena, Roze felt an arm on his shoulder.
It was Denisova. “I’m sorry man.”
Roze sniffled slightly, “it’s fine.”
“You’re worried what comes next?”
“A little.”
“I promise I’ll do my best to get you into the J kid. You deserve that after all you’ve done.”
“Scouts don’t seem to think that anymore.”
“There were some there, you just didn’t see them.”
“Sure.”
The voice of another man spoke up, “Some of the people who I spoke with were definitely watching.”
Roze looked up at the man who had accompanied Denisova to the games he went to, who was younger than he thought from his first impressions.
The man continued, “I spoke with the Quebec City scouts a lot, and I saw them at the game today, they looked very interested.”
“Who are you?”
“Juan Tymer, I'm going into the J draft as well.”
“Why are you here?”
Denisova spoke up, “I asked him to be here, I think you two can help each other a ton, work with each other. You’re both Latvian defensemen going into the draft this year, I wanted you guys to meet.”
Roze nodded. “I have to go.”
“Understood.” Tymer replied, putting his handout, Roze shook it and started walking away.
“I’ll see you soon?” Tymer said with a smile.
Roze looked back for a couple seconds before continuing walking away.

Another banger article! Can't wait for the next one!