Baden (Pittsburgh Titans 1)

When I look at Sophie, I see nothing matronly. She is a vibrant, beautiful woman who’s a little damaged, a bit lost, but so intriguing I’m not sure friendship is going to be sufficient in the long run.

But as I said… it was a great start to the morning, and that was all Sophie.

The team meeting room has been nicknamed “The Bowl” because it’s shaped like one. While our equivalent in Phoenix was a classic squared shaped room with stadium style rows of chairs, the Bowl is circular.

There’s an area in the center about twenty feet in diameter and outward from there circular rings of seats rise upward for five rows with three staircases that divide them from top to bottom like wheel spokes. The walls behind the last row have eighty-inch flat-screens spaced roughly ten feet apart around the circumference of the room, so no matter where you’re sitting, you can view whatever is on.

The center floor of The Bowl is polished dark wood. The seats are large and wide to accommodate hockey players, covered in supple, charcoal-gray leather. Each seat has a slide-out table in the armrest that lifts up and flips over the lap to use for note taking.

The Bowl has two entrances. The top entrance behind the last row of chairs leads in from the arena’s main floor. The other is at basement level, the same level as the circular floor where the coaches stand to address the team.

I’m currently in one of the chairs in the first row. To my left and right are the other coaches.

The rest of The Bowl is filled with the players who’ve been placed under contract with the Titans: a menagerie of minor leaguers, recently retired, and not-so-recently retired, and the three rostered guys who were not on the plane due to injury or illness.

I don’t bother to look around at the players. I don’t need a visual to know that everyone is hunched in on themselves, lost in thought or awkwardly waiting for something to happen. It’s very quiet in here, completely at odds with what should be boisterous banter in any team room when waiting for a meeting to start. It’s indicative not only that these players don’t know each other and have miles to go before they gel, but there’s no precedent in the history of this league on how to handle a situation like this.

A brand-new team made up mostly of players who weren’t quite good enough to be in the big leagues. It’s a modern-day version of A League of Their Own, but Matt Keller isn’t a grumpy drunk as far as I can tell. I’m not sure what he is, since he’s not been overly consistent in his actions as compared to his words, but maybe he just has jitters the way I do.

From the basement-level doorway, Brienne Norcross walks through with Callum Derringer. She’s dressed in a skirt and suit jacket in a purple that matches the Titans’ logo, her hair once again pulled back into a tight knot at her nape. Callum Derringer is dressed in a stylish suit of dark navy with a silver tie.

The coaches are casual in athletic gear in team colors and logos. A box was delivered to my office yesterday afternoon with tons of team logo clothing from our major athletic gear sponsor. It’s now all safely tucked in my private locker. The coaches have the luxury of their own dressing room with showers, so I wear my own clothes to and from the arena and change into my “coach’s uniform” here. Tomorrow, I plan on restarting my personal workout program using the training facilities here, now that we have the team’s schedule somewhat settled.

Brienne moves to the center of the circular floor while Callum takes a seat in the front row next to the coaches.

This brings me back to the first team meeting with the Arizona Vengeance over eighteen months ago. We were in our meeting room, and Dominik came in to welcome us all aboard. In some respects, it was the same atmosphere, rife with nerves and doubts and insecurities, given that we were an expansion team. We were a hodgepodge of players from other teams who had to create a new one.

That’s the same thing here, except the skill level of players coming to the Titans is of a lower caliber.

In Arizona, however, a level of excitement rippled through the room that first day. Players chatted easily with one another, many of whom had played on a prior team together.

Right now, there’s utter silence. No doubt these circumstances are unparalleled. There has to be suspicion—of Brienne, Callum, the coaches—and most likely an inherent distrust in the possibility we can actually put something decent on the ice.

I feel bad for Brienne. She’s getting ready to set the tone for the entire season, and the poor woman has been running this team for all of a week. I’m afraid she’s going to flub it and not say the right thing to motivate. I have her back, though, and I’m determined to give her resounding applause when she’s done, no matter if she stinks it up.