I tick them off one at a time.
“Liam in October. Danny in December. Carter last week.”
I let that sit for a second.
“And Carter doesn’t talk to anybody.”
Silence fills the locker room.
“I haven’t done anything with it,” I say finally. “Because for months I’ve been trying to figure out whether reporting it would do more damage than just absorbing it.”
I look him dead in the eye.
“That’s been the calculation every morning I drive into this building.”
My voice stays even.
“Today, the calculation changed.”
His jaw shifts once.
“Yesterday, my girlfriend slapped you because she got tired of waiting for me to do something. She did the thing I should’ve been ready to do months ago.”
I shake my head once.
“And I’m not taking it back. I’m not apologizing for it either.”
I lean forward, forearms braced on my knees.
“But she’s not going to need to do it again.”
He finally looks at me directly.
“Because the next time you take a cheap shot at me, I’m going to the league office. Not Coach. Not the GM. The league.”
My stare doesn’t move.
“With everything.”
The room goes quiet enough that I can hear someone laughing faintly down the hall.
“And you can guess what happens to a captain in his thirteenth year when the league gets handed eight months of footage.”
He still doesn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to like me,” I say. “You don’t have to pass to me. You can ice me out for the rest of the season. Fine. That’s hockey. That’s locker room politics.”
I shrug once.
“I don’t need you to be my friend.”
My voice hardens on the next sentence.
“I need you to keep your hands and your stick to yourself. And I need you to understand that the only thing standing between you and a real disciplinary investigation right now is my willingness not to file.”
I stand slowly.
“That willingness is conditional.”