Defenceman: Parallel Ice (Non-Canonical Saga)
Copyright© 2025 by Cold Creek Tribute Writer
35. The Abrasive Correction
Coming of Age Story: 35. The Abrasive Correction - Defenceman: Parallel Ice (A Non-Canonical Saga) builds on Cold Creek’s Defenceman series while offering a new interpretation. Michael Stewart’s journey extends beyond the rink into intrigue, modeling, and the launch of his AI: Aegis. From Ann Arbor to London, Japan, and Spain, the story explores honor, love, betrayal, and resilience. Rivals and allies test his limits in the arena, courts and shadows—where triumph demands sacrifice and heart both on and off the ice.
Caution: This Coming of Age Story contains strong sexual content, including Romantic Celebrity Sports Interracial White Female Oriental Female White Couple Royalty AI Generated
The Bag Skate, October 28, 2010
We’ve already spent the pre-dawn hour in the training room; Chris Jenkins poked and prodded every fresh bruise from Tuesday to ensure we were medically cleared for the penance Benson has planned.
The locker room at Yost is a tomb. It’s Thursday morning, and the silence is heavy, suffocating, broken only by the sharp zip of equipment bags and the hollow clatter of sticks against the stalls. There’s no music. No chirping. Noley sits in his stall, staring at the floor, his usual grin replaced by a grim, thousand-yard stare.
Across from him, Cason methodically tapes his stick, the rip of white cloth the only sound in his corner. Nobody makes eye contact. We’re all trapped in our own private replays of Tuesday night, the goal horn, the smug smiles behind the glass, the handshake line that felt like walking through wet cement.
We all know what Coach Benson meant by giving us Wednesday off. It wasn’t a reward. It wasn’t rest. It was time to let the shame of the 4-1 loss marinate, to sit alone in our condos and dorm rooms with nothing but the echo of that final score rattling around our skulls. I spent most of yesterday staring at my laptop screen, pretending to work on AEGIS code while the image of Charles Ford’s tight smile burned behind my eyes like a brand.
The walk from the locker room to the ice feels longer than usual. My skates click-clack against the rubber matting, and the sound bounces off the walls of the tunnel like an accusation. The air grows colder with each step, that familiar bite of arena atmosphere settling into my lungs. When I step onto the fresh sheet, the whine of my blades carving into the virgin surface is the first clean sound I’ve heard in two days.
Coach steps onto the ice without a puck bag. His whistle hangs around his neck like a noose against his track jacket. There’s no clipboard in his hand, no drill diagrams, no tactical adjustments to discuss. Just him, the ice, and twenty players who know exactly what’s coming.
“Goal line,” he barks, his voice echoing off the steel trusses high above us.
We line up, twenty players shoulder-to-shoulder on the red line. My ribs, still tender from that rub-out at Munn, throb with a dull, persistent ache as I dig my edges into the fresh sheet. The bruise has bloomed into something spectacular overnight, a purple and yellow map of failure that wraps around my left side like a reminder I can’t escape. Beside me, Zonk shifts his weight from skate to skate, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscles jumping beneath his skin.
The whistle shrieks. The sound of forty skates carving the ice fills the arena, a rhythmic, desperate scraping as we begin the “lines.” We sprint to the near blue line and back, then the red line and back, then the far blue line and back, before finishing the full length of the ice to the far goal line. The first rep isn’t bad. The second is worse. By the third, my lungs are starting to burn, that familiar sting of cold air mixing with exertion that settles deep in my chest like broken glass.
“You want to play like tourists? You can skate like tourists!” Benson yells, prowling the neutral zone like a caged animal. His voice bounces off the empty seats, the dark-timbered ceiling, the championship banners hanging limp in the still air. “Again!”
The drill is a nightmare. My legs turn to lead, the air in my lungs stinging with the ammonia-heavy scent of the rink. Every stride sends a jolt of pain through my ribs, a sharp reminder of that Spartan defenseman driving me into the glass. I push through it, burying the sensation beneath layers of muscle memory and stubborn pride. The Canadian defenseman doesn’t quit. Not in front of his teammates. Not in front of his coach.
“You think Michigan State is taking today off?” Benson’s voice cuts through the fog of exhaustion. “You think they’re sitting in their locker room feeling sorry for themselves? They’re watching film right now, boys. They’re getting better while you’re getting soft!”
I watch Noley stumble on a turn, his edges washing out on the fresh ice, but he scrambles back up before his knees even touch the surface. His face is a mask of grim determination, driven by the fear of letting the unit down. We’ve been partners all season, and I know what he’s thinking, that two-on-one goal in the third period, the one that put the game away, happened on our watch. We were the pairing on the ice when the wheels came off.
“Move your feet!” Benson screams as we hit the far blue line again. “This isn’t a Sunday skate with your beer league buddies!”
The hardening of the muscle sets in around rep seven or eight, I’ve lost count. My legs scream with acid, that unending sensation where every movement feels like pushing through thick syrup. The world narrows to the simple geometry of survival: the repetitive, soul-crushing pivot at every stripe, a never-ending cycle of starts and stops that continues until the first player pukes or Coach has mercy. My vision tunnels, the stands blurring into a spinning vortex of maize and blue seats, empty except for the ghosts of Tuesday night’s failure.
Beside me, Bobby is gasping for air, his face the color of raw hamburger. Tim has sweat pouring down his face in rivers, dripping onto the ice and freezing into tiny crystals that scatter under our blades. Even Cason, our senior captain, our rock, looks like he’s about to collapse. His usual power-skater stride has devolved into desperate, choppy steps, his lungs working like bellows.
“You embarrassed this program!” Benson’s voice cracks with raw emotion. “You embarrassed yourselves! You went into their barn and you laid down like dogs!”
The words hit harder than any body check. Because he’s right. We didn’t just lose that game, we surrendered it. We let them dictate the pace, let them push us around in our own zone, let them score a short-handed goal on our power play. The memory of that moment, watching their penalty killer break away, my legs screaming as I tried to chase him down, diving too late, inches short, plays on a loop in my head with every stride.
I bury the pain in my side behind a controlled snarl, refusing to show weakness. My ribs feel like someone’s jabbing a hot poker into my flesh with every breath, but I keep my face locked into that mask of stoic neutrality. The quiet leader carries a presence that commands silence in the room, and right now, that means suffering in silence. We’re paying the price for playing soft in East Lansing, and I’ll be damned if I’m the first one to break.
“Again!” The whistle shrieks.
We go again. And again. And again.
The ice beneath our skates is destroyed now, carved into a chaotic mess of ruts and snow. The fresh sheet that greeted us twenty minutes ago has been shredded by forty blades, transformed into a battlefield of white spray and deep grooves. Each stride a conscious act of will against the body’s desperate urge to stop.
Josh Hayes, our goalie, is bent double in his crease, his mask pushed up on his forehead, sweat dripping from his chin. Even the goalies aren’t spared. Benson made that clear from the first whistle, this is a team punishment, and everyone pays the same price.
“You think those Spartans are feeling sorry for you right now?” Coach Benson’s voice has gone hoarse, but he keeps prowling, keeps pushing. By the time Coach finally kills the drill, I’m leaning over my stick, sweat dripping from my nose onto the scarred ice, the bitter taste of exhaustion filling my mouth. My lungs feel like they’ve been scraped raw with sandpaper, each breath a ragged gasp that echoes in the empty arena. Around me, my teammates are in various states of collapse, hands on knees, backs against the boards, some lying flat on the ice staring up at the dark trusses above.
Benson skates to center ice, his whistle silent now, his face a mask of controlled disappointment. The anger has burned itself out, replaced by something worse, a quiet, heavy sadness that settles over us like a funeral shroud.
“We’re better than that,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re better than that. Now hit the showers. Film session at two. We’re going to watch every single shift from Tuesday night, and we’re going to figure out where we went wrong.”
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves for a long moment. We just stand there, twenty exhausted bodies scattered across the destroyed ice, breathing hard, trying to find the strength to skate to the bench.
I push myself upright, ignoring the scream of protest from my ribs. The quiet leader doesn’t stay down. The quiet leader gets up first.
I skate toward the tunnel, my legs feeling like they belong to someone else. Behind me, I hear the others following, the scrape of blades on ice, the heavy breathing of men who’ve been pushed to their limits and somehow found a way to keep going.
The film session is going to be brutal. The dark room, the click of the laser pointer, the rewind beep as Benson dissects every mistake in excruciating detail. But that’s hours away. Right now, I just need to make it to the locker room, peel off this sweat-soaked gear, and let the hot water of the shower wash away the physical evidence of this morning’s penance.
The shame, though, that’s going to take longer to scrub clean.
The Video Reality
The room is a dark, claustrophobic box illuminated only by the projector, and the cold air hits the sweat on my neck and turns it to ice water trickling down my spine.
Coach freezes the frame on the third Spartan goal, and the red dot of his laser pointer hovers over the fractured spacing where I was a half-step too deep, my digital ghost caught in the act of fundamental failure. I stare at the screen and see exactly what happened: I let the external noise of the crowd and the visual of the Fords in their seats affect my stick positioning, let my attention fracture when it needed to be singular and absolute.
The hiss and click of the remote echoes in the small room, underscoring the clinical nature of the breakdown, and there is no room for narrative excuses here, no space for context or explanation. Only data. Only the frozen image of me being exactly where I should not have been.
“Safe is death in the offensive zone,” Benson rumbles, his voice a low-frequency vibration that I feel in my chest more than hear with my ears. “But hesitation in the defensive zone is suicide. You hesitated, Stewart.”
I take notes in my playbook, the scratching of the pen a dry, rhythmic sound in the silence, and John Reilly sits beside me, stone-faced, his jaw set in that particular way that tells me he’s already running tomorrow’s scenarios in his head. We both know the Notre Dame series will require us to be perfect, that there is no margin left for the kind of mental drift that put me out of position tonight.
The lights come up, harsh and sudden after the darkness, and the message is clear without anyone needing to speak it aloud: the reset is complete. Now we have to perform.
The Irish Attrition
First Period - The Trap, October 29, 2010
The puck drops. The roar of Yost Arena settles into a low, hungry growl, a physical pressure I can feel in my teeth. Notre Dame plays a “trap,” a stifling 1-3-1 defensive system designed to turn the neutral zone into a swamp of sticks and bodies, a graveyard for speed. It’s ugly, frustrating, and brutally effective.
I retrieve the puck behind our net, the fresh ice crunching under my blades. Josh gives his post a quick tap with his stick, a signal. All clear. I look up-ice, but there’s no lane. It’s a wall of white and gold jerseys. Their center hangs high, their wingers form a picket fence at the blue line, and their single forechecker angles in, forcing me to one side. They aren’t trying to take the puck; they’re just waiting for a mistake. They want me to force a pass through the middle that they can pick off and turn into a quick transition chance.
Patience. Coach Benson’s voice echoes in my head. Don’t force it, Stew. Make the simple play.
I skate it out from behind the cage, my head on a swivel. The forechecker commits, trying to pin me against the boards. I give him a little head fake, shift my weight, and my edges bite into the ice, sending a spray of white snow into the air as I cut back behind the net. He overskates, taking himself out of the play. A small victory, but an important one. I see Noley presenting a target on the far side. I snap a hard pass around the curve of the boards, a perfect rim that slides right past their forward. “Wheel, Noley, wheel!” I yell, my voice hoarse inside my helmet. He gets his big body moving, a heavy skater who uses his mass to bully his way up the ice. He crosses the red line and dumps it deep into their zone. The shattering sound of the puck hitting the end-boards echoes through the arena. Dump and Chase. It’s all they’re giving us.
The game is a grind. Every inch of ice is a contested battleground. Minutes later, I’m back on. I carry the puck into their end, driving wide on their defenseman. He’s got good gap control, staying right on my hip, forcing me toward the corner. I feel his stick digging into my ribs, a little unseen slash the ref misses. I protect the puck with my body, lower my shoulder, and drive toward the net. Just as I get below the hash marks, another Irish player comes flying in to finish the check. I see him at the last second. I brace myself. The impact is a violent, resonant BOOM as my body collides with his, and we both slam into the boards. The glass rattles and clacks, bowing outward from the force. My teeth clatter together, a sharp jolt running up my spine. It’s a clean hit, but a hard one. I hear the collective oof from the crowd.
I spin off the check, my legs churning, and manage to move the puck back toward the point before he can pin me. My lungs are burning, but I get back into the play. The puck cycles around to their winger on the half-wall. He’s looking to make a pass, but I close the distance, my stick out, cutting off his lane. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, and I finish my check, rubbing him out against the boards. It’s not a huge hit, just a tactical pin, the shhh-grind of nylon on plastic. He doesn’t like it. He shoves back, his gloved hand grinding into my facemask. I push back. The whistle blows. A scrum forms instantly.
Noley is in there, grabbing the guy’s jersey. Shawn skates in, barking at their captain. It’s just a shoving match, a chaos of tangled limbs and muffled curses. The referee separates us and sends O’Connell to the box for the facemask shove, two minutes for roughing. We start the power play, but it’s short-lived. Twenty seconds later, I get called for interference in the corner. I skate to the sin bin, my chest heaving. The door slams shut behind me with a hollow thud. Four-on-four.
Suddenly, the ice opens up. The trap is gone, replaced by a vast expanse of open territory. My penalty is a bad one to take, but the open ice feels like a gift. As soon as the puck drops, the pace explodes. The game transforms from a chess match into a high-speed track meet. I watch our guys fly through the neutral zone, the puck moving tape-to-tape with crisp, clean snaps.
My two minutes feel like an eternity. I watch the clock, my leg bouncing with nervous energy. The moment the latch clicks, I’m out of the box and back on the ice, screaming for the puck. Alex hits me with a perfect pass just as I hit the offensive blue line. I have a two-on-one with Victor. The defenseman slides to take away the pass, giving me the shot. I fake the pass, pull the puck in, and use him as a screen. I let a wrist shot go, a quick, deceptive zip off the blade, aiming for the top shelf where Grandma keeps the peanut butter. The goalie gets a piece of it with his glove, just enough to deflect it high. The puck rings off the crossbar with a loud, sharp PING! that echoes through Yost. The crowd groans, a collective sigh of disappointment. So close.
Since play has stopped, I skate toward the bench and step through the open gate as Noley takes my place for the next draw. I collapse onto the bench, gasping. “Good look, Stew! Pucks on net!” Coach Benson yells over the noise, slapping me on the shoulder pads. My shift is over. I grab a water bottle, my lungs screaming for air, the familiar burn starting to build in my quads.
The four-on-four expires. We’re back to the five-on-five slog. Notre Dame immediately clogs the middle again, resetting their trap. I keep my game simple: hard, tape-to-tape passes, solid clears, and absolute physical discipline. I’m not looking for the highlight reel tonight; I’m looking for stability. I anchor the point on our next offensive zone possession, walking the line, my skates making that soft shaving sound as I move laterally, looking for a shooting lane through a screen of bodies. I see an opening and unleash a heavy clapper. The stick flexes like a bow, and the puck explodes off the blade with a gunshot crack. It gets through the first layer of traffic but cannons off the shin pad of their defenseman with a dull thud. He collapses to the ice, wincing.
The horn blares, signaling the end of the first. Zero-zero. It’s a chess match played at thirty miles an hour, and the ice is covered in a thick layer of snow, a visual testament to the battle we just fought. We skate off toward the tunnel, the blades of twenty skates clattering against the rubber mats. My legs feel heavy, my lungs raw from the stinging air. It’s going to be a long, brutal night.
Second Period - The Counter Threat
The second period begins on a fresh sheet of ice, the low rumble of the Zamboni fading into memory as the roar of the Yost faithful takes its place. The air is colder now, sharper. The game feels faster. Fatigue is the great equalizer, and it’s starting to create hairline fractures in the Irish trap. A winger overskates his position by a foot, a center gets caught watching the puck for a half-second too long, these are the gaps we’ve been waiting for. These are the seams we can exploit.
The first period’s frustration still sits cold in my gut. The sharp, ringing CLING! of the crossbar echoes in my mind, a phantom sound that won’t fade. I can still feel the puck leaving my blade, the perfect release, the split-second of certainty before the sound of failure. It was the best chance of the game for either team, and I fired it into the iron.
During a line change, I skate past their bench. Number twelve, the guy I tangled with in the first, leans over the boards. His name is O’Connell, and he has a mouth that runs as hard as his legs. “Hey Stewart!” he barks, his voice muffled by his cage. “Heard Michigan State had their way with you boys last week. Must be tough getting pushed around by your little brothers.”
A hot flash of anger lances through me. He’s not wrong. The loss to State was brutal, a grinder of a game that we let slip away. The memory of their players celebrating on our ice is a fresh wound. He sees the flicker in my eyes and grins. “Still hearing that PING in your sleep? Bet you are. Can’t buy a goal when it matters, can you, pretty boy?”
His words are designed to be sandpaper on an open nerve, and for a second, they are. They’re meant to make me think about failure, to plant a seed of doubt that will grow into a forced pass or a bad penalty. But it doesn’t work that way for me. The anger doesn’t make me reckless. It clarifies things. It burns away the noise and leaves only the objective. It becomes fuel. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. I just stare through him, my jaw set, and get ready for my shift.
The puck drops and the physicality immediately escalates. It’s a war of elbows in the corners. I go back to retrieve a dump-in, and O’Connell is the forechecker. He comes in hard, stick-first, aiming to punish. I feel the blade of his stick dig into the small of my back, an unseen slash just as I turn. I absorb the blow, protect the puck with my body, and make the simple outlet pass to Noley. As I skate away, O’Connell is right there, in my ear again. “You got nothing, Stewart. All that hype for nothing.”
He’s trying to get me to retaliate, to take another stupid penalty. I just keep moving my feet. His voice becomes part of the background hum of the arena, another obstacle to be navigated. He wants my attention. I give it to the play.
Minutes later, the ice opens up. Alex chips the puck off the boards in the neutral zone, a perfect little area pass that springs me into motion. I jump into the rush, my legs churning, feeling that explosive power in my first three steps. I accelerate across the blue line, the Irish defenseman backpedaling, trying to maintain his gap control. I can see the geometry of the attack unfolding in front of me. I have Shawn driving the far lane, pulling one defender with him. It leaves me with a shooting lane. I don’t think about the crossbar. I don’t think about O’Connell. I think about the process. I drop my weight, flex my stick, and fire a low snap shot aimed at the goalie’s far pad, forcing a rebound. The shot is hard and heavy, and the goalie can’t control it. The puck kicks out into the slot, a juicy opportunity lying right in the blue paint. The crowd surges to its feet with a collective roar, sensing a goal. We crash the net, a chaotic scramble of sticks and bodies, but the Irish goalie, sprawling on his stomach, manages to smother the puck just before we can jam it home. The whistle blows.
The momentum shifts in an instant. A turnover at the half-wall during the ensuing offensive-zone faceoff sends them coming back the other way. It’s a brutal, catastrophic mistake. Two-on-one. My heart hammers against my ribs. I’m the lone defenseman back. I pivot, my skates shredding the ice as I transition from forward to backward, my eyes locked on the puck-carrier’s chest. Don’t look at the puck. Watch his body. He’s trying to get me to commit, to lunge for a poke-check so he can dish it to his linemate for an easy tap-in. I hold my ground, my stick extended, taking away the passing lane, forcing him to make a decision. He gets to the hash marks and fakes the shot, trying to freeze me before sliding it across. I don’t bite. I drop to one knee, a controlled slide, laying my stick flat on the ice to block the passing lane completely. He makes the pass anyway. The puck deflects off the shaft of my blade and skitters harmlessly into the corner. A collective sigh of relief rolls through Yost.
The danger isn’t over. I scramble back to my feet, my muscles screaming from the exertion. The trailing Irish forward is already setting up shop in front of our net, looking for a centering pass. My job is to clear the crease. I get my body between him and Josh, giving him a hard cross-check to the ribs, moving him out of the blue paint. He shoves back. I shove harder. John Reilly arrives, tying up the other man. We neutralize the threat. The puck is cycled back out to the point, and their defenseman fires a shot that Josh swallows up easily. The whistle blows again.
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