nathan mackinnon who lost the conference final, who lost the olympics, who blamed himself for that missed empty net in the olympics spending all his time thinking about that one missed shot only to get a bunch of notifs tagging him in a video of macklin celebrini saying if he could pick any two linemates it’d be nate and davo.
to see the superstar kid who now idolizes you along with the rest of team canada, whose tiny fragile hopes and dreams you hold in your violent calloused hands—and god how terrifying that must’ve been for sid, you realize now—who you’re terrified you’ve let down and you can’t imagine he still idolizes you after that only to hear him say he’d do it all over again with you.
you were never the problem in his mind and maybe you were in your own and maybe you were in an entire country’s but goddammit that wonder kid who you used to be would still choose you out of all the players in the world.
and maybe you stop and think and finally realize that all three of you have been grieving by tallying your own mistakes but never each others’. that you’re all grading yourselves on the same scale that unfairly weighs your own biggest mistake and barely considers the sum of many parts. that maybe you are greater than your worst shift and maybe your team is more than their weakest moment and maybe you didn’t play the worst game of your life, the other team just played the best game of theirs.
they tell you things sometimes just aren’t meant to be, and you hate that so much but you start to think that maybe it’s true. maybe somewhere 10 years down the line you will look at the life you’ve built and you will hold something dear and precious in your still too-big hands and think, i would not be here if not for that mistake. i could’ve missed out on something beautiful now for something beautiful then.
and that’s when it starts to make sense to you. it’s not a matter of ‘this was in the cards all along.’ it’s a matter of exchanges and balance and it’s okay to wish you’d done different and still know you wouldn’t now if given the chance.
there is an endless series of parallel universes in which you made that shot but you’re here in this one where you did not and maybe it doesn’t mean anything inherently but goddammit you can make it mean something.
the stars aligned for them and not for you and that’s okay because the earth is in constant motion and you were born under virgo and she is the biggest of all the clusters of stars to be born under because you were meant to be big and bright and beautiful and one day she’ll look down on you and smile and at just the right time her eye will twinkle and you may never see it again or you may see it tomorrow. all you need to know is that she has not forsaken you and you have not forsaken your idol and you as an idol have not forsaken that child and everything will be okay because at the end of the day it was all just a game wasn’t it?
you’re here because you found joy and solace in this sport and you will find joy in solace in it again if it kills you because you will not let that light of yours be taken so long as you live and maybe you’re being dramatic and maybe it was just a throwaway line in an interview by a media trained kid but it meant the world to you and now you can finally breathe.
you can finally rest and let your heart rate settle as you prepare to do it all again and pray that virgo’s looking down on you when you do but with no expectations this time because even stars need to sleep and while yours are resting theirs are wide awake, but yours will wake again in due time and until then you’ll just have to make your own luck.