Cole's final season as a player unfolded exactly as he'd planned it — a reduced role, careful management of his body's remaining capacity, a deliberate, gradual handoff of minutes to the same young defensemen he'd spent the previous season mentoring. He'd expected the transition to feel peaceful, given how thoroughly he'd prepared for it, how many honest conversations he and Reese had already had about exactly this moment.
He hadn't expected the specific grief that arrived anyway, unbidden, during an ordinary Tuesday practice in March, watching a rookie defenseman execute a breakout exactly the way Cole had once been taught, a small, sharp pang of loss cutting through the calm certainty he'd spent two years building.
"You're allowed to grieve this," Reese told him that evening, finding h
