Descent into Ruin: Day 11

Word Count: 66,416

Summary of Events:

The Wheat Kings had their first practise after their road trip, where Chalmers learned that their new goalie was very flexible, and his mother was a retired figure skater,  as well as having his first official interaction with Atkins Murynka, who criticised Chalmers for his poor play, prompting Chalmers to rather loudly accuse Coach Leslie of being the source of his problems. As the practise had been watched by scouts and media, who heard Chalmers' accusations, the matter became significant news that left Chalmers to brood as even his comments clarifying that he was only upset at Coach Leslie hadn't arrested the turn of popular opinion in the media against him . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Sure, there were some members of the media who were digging up tales from Victoria and elsewhere from disgruntled players who hadn’t liked Coach Leslie. One guy had even found a kid who’d quit playing WHL hockey because of Coach Leslie and moved to the BCHL, and was now a college standout for the University of BC. The majority, however, were inclined to believe that Chalmers was the problem.

He’d been labelled as stubborn, which wasn’t really an insult to him, if he was honest, as he’d been well aware of his own stubbornness for years, and it was something that Grandma and Grandpa both said he’d gotten from Grandpa, and all the MacKennas before him — not that Grandma’s forebears weren’t as staunchly and stubbornly Scottish as Grandpa’s.

More painfully, he’d been labelled as unreasonable, which suggested he was inattentive, which Chalmers personally didn’t believe he was. He wasn’t necessarily the most attentive person — Ricky, and even Jonas, from the time Chalmers had spent with him, were two people Chalmers would consider somewhat more attentive, at least to certain details, than he was — but he wasn’t oblivious, which he felt a person had to be in order to be unreasonable. To him, that was a better descriptor of Coach Leslie.

There were even others who accused him of being unwilling to change, and even questioned whether he would do well in the NHL if his first WHL coaching change had caused such a massive drop in is performance when it’d even happened during the offseason instead of mid-season as could happen in the NHL.

Some particularly unkind media personnel had suggested he was a player like Nail Yakupov, who had done good enough to be taken first overall, but had quickly faded into mediocrity and disappeared from the NHL with barely a whisper, or, worse yet, like Patrik Stepan, who was considered the worst first overall draft pick in NHL history.

Although he’d been drafted first overall, Stepan was best remembered for an infamous gaffe with the Dallas Stars where he’d gone in on an empty net in the dying seconds versus Edmonton and despite being on the edge of the crease, not only failed to ice the game by potting the puck into the yawning cage, but had actually fallen over. Edmonton, in turn, had swooped in on the puck, carried it up the ice, and scored the tying goal with a scant two seconds and change left on the clock.

As much as Chalmers had never really been expected to go first overall, he’d been expected to be a first-round pick, and players picked in the first round were, more often than not, virtually guaranteed a place on an NHL roster for at least a season or two, and nobody really wanted to have an infamous reputation such as Patrik Stepan had the misfortune of possessing.

Considering that Grandpa, Grandma, and Matt saw talent in Chalmers — talent that had been quite evident to everyone less than twelve months before — the fact that so many people were now calling him a flash in the pan or a dud hurt. Painfully.

Pronunciations:

Jonas: yohnahs

Nail: naheel

Yakupov: yahkoopawv