Wild rookie camp opened the first week of September, and Cole found himself, for the first time in years, genuinely nervous in a way that had nothing to do with love or compliance reviews or anything except the specific, humbling reality of being a rookie again — the smallest, least proven player in a room full of professionals who'd spent years earning the respect he now had to build from scratch.
"Everyone in this room was good enough to get drafted," his position coach told the assembled rookies on the first morning, a grizzled former NHL defenseman named Petrelli who'd clearly delivered this exact speech to a dozen classes before them. "That means nothing now. Now you're good enough to make this roster, or you're not, and nobody in professional hockey cares how you looked in college.
