GOOD WORK, YOUNG HAWK, the oak tree outside his building booms once the season’s over, and Patrick smiles sleepily in its direction. He's never been sure how the trees of Chicago know about hockey—trees hear a lot, but it's not like he's ever stopped in a public park to ask one about it.

Geno can't. Sidney won't.

Sidney's drunk when he orders a Russian bride. He doesn't expect anyone to show up - and he definitely doesn't expect that person to be an awkward-looking guy who barely speaks English.

Patrick had a letter written on his wrist when he was born, small and even in black pen-print. Well, technically it started to show up a day after he was born, like a bruise that takes time to settle in. Patrick doesn’t remember, obviously, but his parents will tell him whenever he asks, how small it was and how it just... faded in, a little ‘J’.

They're in their hotel room after the Oilers game when Kaner asks, "Why does this whole meditation thing matter so much to you, anyway?" "It helps me focus and relax," Johnny says, hoping that'll satisfy him. But Kaner's eyes widen. "You mean you'd act even weirder if you didn't meditate? Shit, dude – now I kind of want to see what you'd be like without it." "You really, really don't," Johnny says.

Geno had arrived in Pittsburgh looking every minute of the nineteen hour flight from Helsinki, plus however long he’d been in transit between there and his run from the KHL. Sid had been standing next to Mario, watching the new arrival expectantly, even though he didn’t think Geno was a threat. The other wolf had spent too much time negotiating on his own behalf to be allowed into another pack’s territory, and even more to be allowed to play with the team. But all the same, new wolves made Sidney antsy.

Sidney’s wedding day doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. When he’d bothered to imagine it at all, he’d thought of a nice June wedding in Nova Scotia, outdoors with the sun streaming down. He hadn’t imagined this hurried affair on the tarmac on a rainy and unseasonably cool day in early September, a month after his twenty-fifth birthday.

After one scandal too many, Patrick Kane gets traded. Eventually it stops being the worst thing to ever happen to him.

You're supposed to know if you're a top or a sub by the time you're twelve. Fourteen at the outside. It's biological, the researchers say. It's not a choice. But sometimes Jon thinks that for him, it really was.

There's a curse mark on the back of Sidney's neck.

The one where Jonny plays for the Blues, Patrick plays for the Hawks, and they soulbond.

They're in their hotel room after the Oilers game when Kaner asks, "Why does this whole meditation thing matter so much to you, anyway?" "It helps me focus and relax," Johnny says, hoping that'll satisfy him. But Kaner's eyes widen. "You mean you'd act even weirder if you didn't meditate? Shit, dude – now I kind of want to see what you'd be like without it." "You really, really don't," Johnny says.

This is how Sidney Crosby ends up in Alex Ovechkin's living room, one wolf cub in his lap and another gnawing on his Reeboks.

Sid didn’t introduce himself in the hallway, and he certainly doesn’t assume that people know who he is. So it would only be polite to thank Malkin again, this time more personally. He could write him a letter. An email? No, a letter.

“Sidney comes highly recommended,” Zhenya hears at the edge of his consciousness.

RainyForecast)

In 2002, Sydney Crosby plays hockey at Shattuck St. Mary’s. In 2003, she signs with Dynamo Moscow and begins her professional hockey career. In 2004, there’s a NHL lockout. In 2005, the NHL grudgingly opens its League up to women. They’ll have to do better than that if they want Sydney to play for them.