The blood on my hands didn’t register as blood at first. I’d thrown my mask off after the shot. Reflex. Pain management. Give the jaw some air. The pain was sharp and then immediately dull, the kind that makes you think stinger before it makes you think anything else. So I knelt on the ice, head down, eyes on the white below me, and stayed there. A couple of guys skated over.

Easy save. I could smother it, kill the play. Instead I kick it out to their other forward. Not a mistake. A choice. I’m bored and my team’s up four goals and I want to make another save. So I manufacture chaos, create my own work, turn an easy night into something that feels like hockey. That’s the first thirty-six minutes. The second half, I’m making four saves in a row and watching the fifth one trickle past my pad anyway.

Well, maybe not everything. Look, being a goalie is objectively ridiculous. You strap on forty pounds of equipment designed to protect you from frozen rubber traveling at speeds that would make physicists frown. Then you stand in front of a net and dare people to shoot at you. It’s a strange job. But here’s the thing: being a goalie is basically the same job as running ops, or security, or honestly, any part of software development where you’re the one who has to keep the thing from breaking.

I remember the moment vividly—a hard shot struck the lower side of my mask. The impact was sharp, a bolt of pain radiating through my face. I dropped my head to the ice, letting the sting settle before pushing myself up onto my knees. It wasn’t until I stretched my neck, looking around, that the blood started flowing. When I glanced down, the realization hit—red pooling rapidly beneath me. Instinct took over.