The Hockey Life - A Patrick Kane Fanfic

Part Fifteen - The Final Competition

PART FIFTEEN: THE FINAL COMPETITION

The next day, Dylan was lucky. The Hawks were away for a game, so he didn’t have any reasons to get jealous. We greeted each other when we got to the UC just like any other day, so I figured we could just forget about the day before. I was grateful for that. We actually needed to focus, because it was the thirteenth day of the internship, and the program only gave us fourteen days. The last day was the final competition which would help decide who would get to continue to work with the Hawks organization and who was done. We needed to prepare.

“As you know, tomorrow is the last day of this internship for you…well, for most of you. All of the days you’ve already survived and all the information you’ve already learned was just leading up to tomorrow, which is the final competition for you all. You will split up into pairs for the competition. Essentially, you will all go through a course. It will start out in the ticket booths. Your teams will sell tickets to five customers (per member of the team) as quickly and efficiently as possible. On the way to the ice, you will then each help out one customer by directing them to their seats and anything else they might need to find. You will go to three different cameras and prep them for a game. When the players head out on the ice, you will film fifteen seconds of footage on one of those three cameras. Next, you will prepare the ice for a game. Once it’s ready, you will make sure all players are hydrated. You will fix a glass panel when it comes undone, then return to the bench. You will replace a stick or two for players who break them, then you will do an ankle wrap for a player. You’ll refresh the ice once more and then you’ll be finished. The competition will be timed, but getting the best time won’t necessarily guarantee a win for your team. You will also be evaluated, so if the quality of the work of a team is significantly better than the work of the team with the best time, then they could get the win.” Brad’s words were a lot to take in, put every one of us interns listened to them carefully. “Today, you have nothing new to learn. Obviously the players aren’t here for you to help now, and neither are the people that we have chosen to be the “customers”, but you have the freedom to work on whatever you want.”

We all did just that. Dylan and I attempted to figure out good strategies for the next day, but we came up with nothing, unfortunately. We had done well throughout the weeks, so we would just have to wing it and hope for the best. We worked on the same things we had already learned for a while until it was time to leave.

Tess and I had hockey practice, but other than that, we didn’t do much else with our day. The day went by pretty slowly, probably because we spent it anticipating our tomorrow. For Dylan and I it consisted of the last day of the internship and the competition. For the two of us and Tess, it also consisted of the New Years Eve party at Jonathan Toews’ place. I spent the whole night just thinking, and I didn’t get as much sleep as I needed for the next day, but there was nothing I could do about it. In the morning I woke up at the same time I always did and I just made sure to have plenty of coffee before I headed to the UC.

When I got there, a million different thoughts and feelings rushed through me all at once. I realized that it was the last day of the internship, and that made me a little sad. Although it technically was like school or work, to me it was really enjoyable. I didn’t really want it to end. On top of that, I was also really nervous. I was confident that Dylan and I had what it would take to do well, but the other interns were talented too. All it would take to lose would be one little mistake.

Dylan and I soon found out that we were going last. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I guessed it was both. We would get to learn from the other teams’ mistakes and we would know what we had to beat, but we also would have to wait around and get even more nervous. I was afraid it would make me over think things too much.