The Assistant

If you had told me back then that I was gonna be friends with the Toronto Maple Leafs, I would’ve laughed in your face and said, “Oh yeah sure.” But now that’s just a reality.
My uncle worked for the Maple Leafs as their trainer and he gave me a couple tickets for the game that night. He told me I could bring a few of my friends.
They were playing the Chicago Blackhawks. I loved the Hawks too, but not as much as the Leafs.
The seats we got were great, a few rows up behind their bench. We sat down, freshly showered due to the fact that we had hockey practice a few hours before the game.
It was 7:00 and both teams were out, skating around before puck drop. It wasn’t long before the announcer asked us to stand up for the national anthems. First was the American anthem, for which the crowd stayed quiet for, but by the end of our national anthem, the crowd was getting loud and rowdy.
My friends and I sat back down and watched intently as the players set themselves up for puck drop. As soon as the puck landed, me, my friends, and the people around us started cheering like crazy.
The first and second period flew by pretty quickly, with the Leafs scoring a goals from Lupul, Bozak, and Phaneuf. But the Hawks matched them and got a few goals themselves from Toews and Sharp.
Now it was the third and the score was 3-2, Leafs. Chicago wasted no time in trying to tie this game up. Five minutes into the period, Niklas Hjalmarsson scored a goal. The ACC got louder after that. Unfortunately, the next fifteen minutes were unproductive, neither team scoring a goal.
I honestly hate overtime. They give me heart attacks. There's just so much going on. It doesn't matter who the home team was, whoever scored the first goal won the game.
But this game ended in victory. Marian Hossa got a tripping call and earned two minutes in the penalty box. It wasn't long before Kessel, Bozak, and van Riemsdyk set themselves up in Chicago's zone. There were a few passes back and forth, until Bozak passed it to Kessel and he sniped it past Crawford. The goal horn sounded and the game ended. My friends jumped up and down, yelled, and high-fived each other. The whole team went out onto the ice and greeted the fans, holding their hockey sticks high and waving them.
After the players went to their locker room, my friends told me that their parents were gonna pick them up. I thanked them for coming with me to the game and how I'd see them at school tomorrow.
I made my way through the crowd of people and looked at the arrows leading to the lockers rooms and offices. As I weaved myself through, I received a text from my uncle.
"Meet me at my office, I just have to check on a few players"
I replied back and told him I will. A few minutes later I was inside his office, grabbing my hockey bag and sticks. My uncle was already walking to his office as I was walking out the door.
"Hey Jules!" he said.
"Uncle Jason! Hey!" I said and went in for a hug.
"How are you?"
"I'm great, just a bit sore from practice earlier. That was some game, huh?" I asked.
"It was, it was. Hey, do you think you can wait for about an hour then I'll take you home? I have some paperwork to finish."
"Yeah sure, I'll just be out here."
My uncle lived in the same neighbourhood as we did, just a few blocks away.
I grabbed a few pucks out of my bag and scattered them around the tunnel floor. With an extra net there, I practiced my stickhandling and shooting. I added a few tricks in there, trying to keep this makeshift solo practice fun. And what's practice without music? Boring. So I blasted the music on my phone and set it down.
I flicked the puck onto the blade of the stick and bounced it a few times. Once I got the puck up high, I swatted it into the net. Being a baseball player helped me do this. Trust me, it took me a while to achieve that. I did that a few more times, until Chelsea Dagger started playing out of my phone. I set that song as my ringtone. The screen read 'Mom'.
"Hey mom!" I answered. She laughed lightly.
"Hey Jules, just calling to check up on you. Are you still at the ACC or are you on your way home now?" she asked. I walked around with the phone in my hand. As I turned around, I came face to face with the Toronto Maple Leafs players and a few Blackhawks, like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, in suits I might add. I stared as I answered my mom.
How did I not hear them come up or at least feel like someone was watching me?
"I-I'm still at the ACC. Un-Uncle Jase said he just had to finish some paperwork." As I said that, Joffrey Lupul looked over at Dion Phanuef and mouthed something that looked like "Jason?"
"Are you okay, Julie? You seem a bit nervous." She caught on.
"I'm fine, just a bit...cold." Cold? Seriously, Julie? That's the best thing you could've come up with?
Tyler and Patrick both smirked at me. Assholes, I thought.
"Okay then, I'll see you when you get home."
"Bye mom."
I hung up the phone and stuffed it into my butt pocket. As I went to retrieve the pucks in the net, someone spoke up.
"So you're the famous Julie that Jason won't shut up about?" Tyler Bozak said.
"I-I guess. And you're the famous team Uncle Jason has to take care of." I replied back.
This was so weird.
"Great game tonight, by the way guys. Gave me a heart attack in OT."
The team thanked me for that comment, Toews and Kane rolled their eyes.
"How were you able to swat the puck in there so easliy?" Sharp asked.
"Oh! I'm a baseball player too so it was pretty easy once I got the thing in the air." I beamed.
"A hockey player and baseball player? Impressive." Kane emphasized the 'and'.
"Ha, yeah. And I'm getting into the swing of things with training and stuff since the season's like a month away." March was always crunch time.
"Training? You mean like Spring Training? Don't you have school?" Kadri asked.
"I know it may seem like a lot, which it actually is. I go to school and hockey practice on weekdays, then have training on the weekends, indoors of course, and then during March Break, the team and I go down to Florida to train in some more suitable weather for baseball. And then everything repeats again once we come back from Florida. The season starts two to three weeks later and so then at that point, I have baseball and hockey games to play in. Sometimes the games are on the same day too."
All the guys looked at me with a mix of impressed and shocked faces, probably showing those emotions at my schedule once baseball came back.
"Wow. What position do you play?" Bozak asked.
"For hockey, I'm a center. For baseball, I'm a catcher, pitcher, second baseman, and outfielder. I'm a pitcher for the most part." I smiled.
"No fixed position in the outfield?"
"Nope, Coach just puts me wherever out there. I have one heck of a cannon, that's my throwing arm for any of you who didn't know."
"Let's test this arm out, then." Toews offered. I threw him a smirk.
I immediately walked over to my bag and pulled out a baseball and my glove. I kept those in my bag so I could toss a few before hockey practice started.
As the guys moved out of the way, I pointed somewhere into the distance and immediately threw the ball into the direction I was pointing. I was actually pointing to the vehicle that resembled a golf cart that was slowly driving away about 100 feet away from us. The ball landed with a thud on the roof of the cart and I smiled proudly as I turned back to face them. Right at that moment, my phone started blaring Chelsea Dagger again and this time, Patrick Kane smirked at me for the choice of ringtone. I pressed the answer button and covered one ear so I could hear better.
"Coach Saunders? Hey, how are you?" I asked my baseball coach.
"I'm great! Oh my god what time is it there? I'm in California right now and I totally forgot about the time difference!" he replied.
"No worries, it's actually like eleven o'clock here in Toronto but it's cool, I'm just at the ACC right now, waiting for my uncle to finish up some papers. Called to talk about our week in Florida?"
"Haha, I am. When does your March break start?"
"The second week of March, so that would be from the twelfth to sixteenth."
"Okay good, I booked the tickets on the right day. The team will be flying out to Florida the Friday before the break, which is a PA day. So you'll guys will be up in the air by noon and will land later that afternoon. As usual you guys can use that weekend as free time before we have y'all training your butts off. Sound good?"
"Of course, coach. Thanks for the call."
"No problem, I gotta go. I'll see you in a few days."
I turned around and yelled, "AW YEAH FLORIDA IN TWO WEEKS MOTHAFUCKAS!" I also raised my hands up in the air and started dancing.
Everyone started laughing at me, until my uncle walked out. As soon as he saw me, he knew what was up.
"A week of training in Florida?" he asked.
"Hell yeah. Tans, beaches, hot dudes, and BLUE JAYS SPRING TRAINING GAMES!!!!!" I yelled. I was prettty much more excited about the games than I was about the hot dudes. Just a llittle bit.
The Blackhawks coach, Joel Quenneville started calling for the missing guys.
"Oh we have to go. It was great meeting you, Julie." Toews said and pulled me into a side hug.
"Just call me Jules." I said as I went in the hug.
"Okay fine, Jules," Kane replied and winked at me.
I think my heart might've stopped beating for a few moments there.
As we all watched them walk away, Tyler poked me.
"Dazed by Kaner, eh?" he teased.
What a Canadian.
"Asshole." I muttered. The team seemed to get a laugh out of that.
"Okay guys, I have to to take this one home. I'll meet you at the airport tomorrow." My uncle said to them as I cleaned up my stuff.
As I bent over to pick up my stick, Joff walked over to me.
"Hey, maybe when we come back from our little road trip, I can call you so you can hang out with us. Maybe practice with us, I'm sure Randy wouldn't mind." he said.
"Um, yeah sure, I guess." I gave him my cell number.
And that my friends, is how my brotherly friendship started with the Leafs, two years ago.

Notes

sorry if there's some grammar and/or spelling mistakes i got really lazy and didn't want to look it over :P