Sisters on Ice: Two by Birth, One by Choice, and a Farewell to Ovi

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Yesterday I promised I’d tell you about the trip, and more specifically about the name. So pull up a chair (there’s room in the Smut Hut) and let me introduce you to Sisters on Ice.

On paper it’s simple. Three women, eight days, one very big country, three hockey games and a quantity of snow I genuinely cannot picture, because I have never seen snow. Not once. Not a flake. I’ve also never seen a live hockey game, which, for someone who writes as much hockey romance as I do, is a confession I make with my whole face going red.

We fly into Vancouver at the very end of November. From there we drive to Edmonton for the Capitals against the Oilers on the third of December, then four hours down the road to Calgary to see them take on the Flames at the Saddledome, in its very last season. Then a full day’s drive back to Vancouver for the Capitals and the Canucks on the seventh. Three games, three cities, a lot of highway and, I suspect, a lot of bad car singing.

Will any actual writing get done? Honestly, probably not much. Millie and I have been writing together since the late nineties, and we already know how this goes. We won’t make words. We’ll make stories. Long drives are where we plot out loud, argue about character names, and invent entire towns somewhere between one petrol station and the next. Some of the best books I’ve ever written started in a car with Millie, and I fully expect to come home with a notebook full of chaos and at least three new series I absolutely don’t have time for.

I’m also hoping to bring a few printed books along for the ride, so keep an eye out. If you’re going to be at any of those games, there may just be a giveaway or two.

Why Sisters?

Two of us actually are sisters. There’s me, and there’s Jo, my long-suffering sister, who has followed me into more adventures than any reasonable person should and has never once let me forget a single one of them.

The third is Millie, and Millie needs a little more explaining.

Full disclosure: Millie and I were together once. We’ve been writing partners for twenty-five years, and for a while we were more than that. In the end it wasn’t a lack of love that did us in. It was the Pacific Ocean, and two governments that had no interest whatsoever in closing the distance between Tasmania and the Pacific Northwest. Love will get you a long way, but it won’t get you a visa.

Millie is married now, and happily so. And here’s the thing: when the romance ended, the friendship didn’t. It was too good to lose, so Jo and I did the only sensible thing and adopted her. She’s family now. Not by blood, not by law, but by stubbornness, which in my experience is the strongest glue there is.

So, Sisters on Ice. Two by birth, one by choice, and all three of us about to be very, very cold.

The Uniform

Every family needs something that ties it together. Some families have a crest. Some have a recipe. We needed something we could actually wear, and since this is a hockey research journey (I am saying that with a perfectly straight face), there was only ever going to be one answer.

A jersey.

Three jerseys, three women, one little found family. When you see three women in the stands looking slightly underdressed for the weather and far too excited for people their age, that’ll be us. Come and say hello.

And Then Ovi Happened

Here’s the part I still haven’t fully recovered from. We had the whole thing planned. Flights, drives, tickets, thermals. And then, after all of that, Alex Ovechkin announced his retirement.

Seeing Ovi play in person has been on my bucket list for longer than I’d like to admit. Suddenly it wasn’t just a bucket-list item. It was the last chance. So the trip quietly picked up a second name, and now Sisters on Ice is also the Ovi Farewell Tour.

I’m fine. I’m completely fine. I’ve just booked a separate seat for my feelings.

Over To You

So that’s us: two sisters, one adopted sister, three jerseys, three games and a goodbye. I’d love to know what you want to see from the road. Snow reactions? Arena food reviews? An honest account of three women in a hire car crossing the Rockies? Tell me in the comments, and I’ll do my very best research on your behalf.

Bella x

Gone Dark (Not By Choice): Chicklets, a Naked Ducklet and Holding My Breath for Tom Wilson

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So. If you’ve been wondering where I disappeared to these last few days, the short answer is “everywhere except near a decent internet connection.” The long answer is this blog post, and I apologise in advance, because you all know by now that I have never once told a short story when a long one was available.

I flew up to Brisbane to tick off a list of Things That Must Be Done before the Canada research trip. (Yes, I’m still calling it a research trip. Yes, I’m sticking to that story. The hockey is research. The snow is research. Any poutine consumed will be strictly for the purposes of authenticity.)

Then, rather than fly home like a sensible woman, I drove. For those of you not up on your Australian geography, driving home to Tasmania means that at some point you run out of road and have to put the car on a boat. The overnight ferry is many things: an adventure, a test of the stomach, a surprisingly decent night’s sleep if the sea is feeling generous. What it is not, in any sense of the word, is online. No Wi-Fi. No signal. Just me, the dark water and a creeping awareness that my social media wasn’t so much slipping as falling down the stairs in a heap.

And then I got home, and instead of catching up on everything, I started pulling the house apart and putting it back together. The idea is that when we come home from Canada, jet-lagged, frozen and full of stories, we walk into order instead of chaos. Future Bella is going to be so grateful. Present Bella has dust in places dust should not be.

The Farm Report

First, the chicklets. (Chicken chicks, for the uninitiated. I refuse to call them anything else.) They survived four entire days without their helicopter mum hovering over them, and every single one of them made it. I’d like to say I was purely relieved. I was relieved. I was also mildly offended at how little they seemed to need me.

Then there’s the ducklet. She’s the lone survivor of a summer that included both the male ducks and the ravens, which tells you she’s made of stern stuff. She’s about six weeks old now, a big, beautiful baby, and she still doesn’t have a single proper feather. She is all fluff and confidence, like a bridesmaid who’s lost her dress somewhere around midnight but remains fully committed to the dance floor. The feathers should arrive any day now. I check every morning. She looks back at me as if to say, “Patience, woman.”

Meanwhile, In Hockey

Let’s talk about the moment my heart stopped.

Tom Wilson threw a hit and got tossed with a game misconduct, and I just about had to breathe into a paper bag. I was certain, absolutely certain, that a long suspension was coming. Because a) he’s Tom Wilson, and the league has a long memory where he’s concerned, and b) I had done the maths, and a suspension of the length I was imagining would have kept him in the press box right up to and including the last game we’re flying across the planet to see.

Picture it. Thousands of kilometres. Thermals. Snow I’ve never seen. And Tom in a suit.

But lo and behold, the hockey gods were smiling on all of us. No suspension. Not even a phone call from Player Safety. Sometimes, just sometimes, things work out.

And while we’re on the subject of hits, Chych laid out what might genuinely be the hit of the season, and that didn’t draw any supplementary attention either. Excellent news for everyone except, I suspect, the gentleman on the receiving end.

Which brings me to the most important point of all: the sisters’ trip is safe. Jo (my long-suffering sister, who has survived far worse than a Bass Strait crossing in my company) and I are still on track, Millie is still counting down from the Pacific Northwest, and the boys we’re going to see will all, fingers crossed, be in uniform rather than in suits.

One More Thing (Because Of Course There Is)

I almost forgot, and I would never have heard the end of it. The signage for my office shed arrived today. It’s official, it’s on the door, and I can now formally welcome you all to the Smut Hut.

This is where the magic happens: the writing, the podcasting, the blogging, and a fair amount of staring out the window at the mountains while pretending I’m plotting. There’s no cats allowed (their rule is the only one they’ve ever obeyed), there’s always a kettle within reach, and there is absolutely a chair with your name on it. So come in, kick your shoes off, put your feet up and stay a while. Just mind the stack of notebooks by the door. It bites.

Over To You

Now that I’m back online and the house is slowly coming back together, I want to hear from you. What should I be researching while I’m over there? What do you want to know about seeing hockey live for the very first time, from someone who has only ever watched it on a screen at ungodly hours of the Australian morning? Tell me in the comments. I’ll take notes. Probably on a napkin. Possibly in the dark.

In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be standing at the duck pen, waiting for feathers.

Bella x

What the Broadcast Doesn’t Show

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I know what the score was. I can tell you who scored, which period, how many shots on goal, and the exact moment the commentator’s voice went up an octave because something had happened on the left wing that I was, frankly, still trying to locate.

What I can’t tell you is what it smells like.

That’s the problem with watching hockey from the bottom of the world. I’ve watched an embarrassing number of games this year. Live, when the time difference allows (which means breakfast games, which means hockey with Vegemite toast, which is a sentence no Canadian should ever have to read). Replays when it doesn’t. Highlights on my phone in the queue at the post office. I’ve studied seating maps until I could find my way to Section 112 in my sleep. I’ve read about arena histories and watched fan videos and gone down a rabbit hole about Zamboni drivers that I’m not proud of and will not be discussing further.

Desk research is a wonderful thing. It gives me the bones. The rules, the rhythms, the vocabulary, the names on the backs of the jerseys. It means when I write a goalie tracking a puck through traffic, I know what traffic means. It means I don’t embarrass myself (as often).

But a broadcast is a story someone else has already chosen to tell. The camera follows the puck, because the puck is the point. And when the puck stops, the broadcast goes somewhere else entirely. To an ad. To a panel of men in very good suits. To a replay of the thing I was already watching.

And that’s exactly where my curiosity starts.

What happens in a TV timeout, when the players skate to the bench and the people at home get a car commercial? What’s going on in the building during those two minutes? Is there music? Is somebody on the big screen being dared to dance? Is there a kiss cam, and has anyone ever been caught on it with the wrong person? (Asking for a book.)

And intermission. Eighteen minutes, give or take, when the ice is being resurfaced and the TV audience is being told what they just saw. Where do twenty thousand people go? What’s the queue like for the bathroom, and is it as tragic as I suspect? What does the concourse sound like when it’s full? What are people eating? Who’s selling what? Is there a man with a cowbell, and if so, does he have a name?

These are the things I want to notice. Not the stats. The rest of it.

Because here’s the thing I’ve learned, writing a whole series about hockey players while being, technically, a woman who has never seen a hockey game: atmosphere does half the work in a scene. A first kiss in an empty arena after practice is a completely different scene from a first kiss in a packed concourse with someone’s nachos about to hit the floor. The noise changes it. The cold changes it. The smell of popcorn and ice and wet wool changes it. Readers might not consciously notice any of that, but they feel it, and they believe the scene because of it.

So that’s the plan. Notebook in my pocket. (Millie has already told me I’ll lose it by the second game. Jo has already told me she’ll be the one who finds it, under a seat, covered in something sticky. My sister knows me.)

But I also want to be honest with myself before I go, because I know my own habits. There is a difference between collecting details and forcing every single one of them into a book.

Collecting is the fun part. Collecting is standing on a concourse with your mouth open, writing down “cold air comes off the ice in a wave when the doors open” and “man in a vintage jersey crying, unclear why.” Collecting is greedy and joyful and wonderful.

Forcing is what happens when I get home and decide that because I paid for the flight, every single one of those details is going into the next manuscript, whether the scene needs it or not. Nobody wants a love scene interrupted by an informative paragraph about the arena’s concession pricing. (Okay. Maybe one person. But I don’t write for him.)

The trick, I think, is to collect everything and use only what earns its place. One right detail, the one that makes a reader go “oh, I’m there.” Not twelve. So I’ll gather a mountain, and then I’ll choose a handful.

Which brings me to you. I’d love your help before I go.

What’s one setting detail from a book you’ve read, any book, any genre, that made the whole story suddenly feel real to you? A smell, a sound, a bit of weather, the way a particular room was lit. The detail that made you stop and think, the author has actually been there.

Tell me in the comments. I’ll take your answers to Canada with me, tucked in the notebook I am definitely not going to lose.

Bella x

I’m Taking My Hockey Notebook to Canada

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Day one of the countdown, and you’re all coming with me

I’ve mentioned it a few times now, usually in passing, usually while panicking about fleecy trousers. But it’s November, the countdown has officially started, and I’ve decided it’s not really my trip anymore. It’s ours. So pull up a chair, grab a coffee, and let me tell you where we’re going.

On the twenty-ninth of November, I’m leaving Tasmania for Canada. I’m taking my hockey notebook.

* * *

For anyone just wandering in, hello. I’m Bella Bruce. I write hockey romance, mostly set in a sprawling, slightly chaotic fictional league called the PHL, full of found family, big feelings, and men who are far too large to fit comfortably through doorways. I live in rural Tasmania, at the bottom of the world, which is a very long way from any professional hockey arena.

And here’s the confession that tends to surprise people. I have never been to a live hockey game. I have never seen the inside of an ice hockey arena. I have never, in my entire life, seen snow.

I know. I write about it constantly. My characters skate on it, fall on it, and kiss in it. Everything I know about hockey, I’ve learned from a screen, at strange hours, in my pyjamas, yelling at referees who can’t hear me from half a world away. My fandom (Washington Capitals, in case the jersey in every photo hasn’t tipped you off) and my writing have been tangled together for years. This trip is where they finally meet in real life.

So yes, it’s a holiday. But it’s also research. I’ll have a notebook. I’ll be taking notes. That makes it tax-deductible in spirit, if not in law.

* * *

I’m not going alone. There are three of us, and you’ll be hearing a lot about all of them.

There’s me, obviously. The one with the notebook, the compression socks, and an unreasonable amount of excitement.

There’s Millie, my writing partner of twenty-five years. She’s forty-something, lives in the Pacific Northwest, and has been plotting impossible stories with me across oceans and time zones for a quarter of a century. We’ve written whole worlds together without ever being in the same place for long enough. This trip, we get to make stories face to face, out loud, probably far too loudly, in the back of a car.

And there’s Jo. My sister. My long-suffering sister. The woman who has heard every plot problem, every 2am “what if,” and every sentence that begins with “okay, but hear me out.” She’s agreed to come along anyway, which tells you everything you need to know about her patience, and possibly her judgment.

Three women, one hire car, and a frankly irresponsible amount of hockey.

* * *

Here’s the plan.

We fly out of Tasmania on the twenty-ninth, leave Australia from Sydney on the thirtieth, hop through Auckland, and thanks to the magic of the International Date Line, land in Vancouver on the same day we left Australia. I’ve been assured this is normal. It still feels like cheating.

From Vancouver, we head inland to Edmonton, which I’m reliably informed will be the coldest point of the trip. I’ve been watching the weather. It’s been snowing. It’s not even winter yet. On the third of December we’ll be in the stands watching the Caps take on the Oilers.

Then it’s a four-hour drive south to Calgary, to see the Caps play the Flames at the Saddledome, in what’s set to be its very last season. I’m quietly honoured to get to see the old girl before she goes.

And finally, it’s a long day’s drive back across the mountains to Vancouver, to watch the Caps play the Canucks on the seventh, before we fly home and I spend the next month trying to explain to the cats where I’ve been.

Three cities, three games, and one very special farewell. Because as you all know, this is also my Ovi farewell tour. I’ve wanted to see him play in person for as long as I’ve loved this team, and I’m so grateful I’ll get the chance before he hangs them up.

* * *

Now, here’s where you come in.

I’ve got a month, one blank notebook, and a long list of things I want to know. But I want your help. What should I be researching for you?

What do you want to know about the arenas, the fans, the food, the noise, the cold? What would you want me to notice that I might miss? What questions have you always had about hockey that a girl from Tasmania could find out for you?

Leave them in the comments. I’ll be writing every day this month, and every good question goes in the notebook.

Twenty-eight days to go.

— Bella

P.S. I can’t read this title without hearing it to the tune of “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard.” I’m sorry. Now you can’t either.

In Praise of the Outlaw (and Josie, Obviously)

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On Charlie Lindgren, backup goalies, and the rare joy of a man who doesn’t need the spotlight

Let me tell you about one of my favourite kinds of people. In hockey, in books, in life.

It’s the person who knows exactly who they are, is perfectly happy about it, and doesn’t need to be the loudest one in the room to prove it. The one who shows up, does the job, cheers the hardest when someone else gets the glory, and goes home content.

In Washington, that person wears goalie pads and answers to the Outlaw. His name is Charlie Lindgren, and I adore him.

* * *

Let’s talk about the backup goalie for a minute, because I don’t think people give that job nearly enough credit.

Being the backup is a strange, slightly lonely sort of role. You practise like a starter. You prepare like a starter. And then, most nights, you sit at the end of the bench in a ball cap, opening the door, tapping pads, being the first one out to celebrate when the other guy gets the win. And then, with almost no warning, you’re thrown in. Your starter tweaks something, or gets pulled, or just needs a night off, and suddenly it’s you, cold off the bench, with the whole season in your hands.

Charlie has done that job with the Caps for years now. And when Logan Thompson arrived and took the number one spot, there were plenty of people who expected friction. Two goalies, one net. That’s usually where the drama starts.

There wasn’t any. Instead there was Charlie saying things like this:

“We get along really well. We have a lot of respect and admiration for each other.”

And this, which I may have read out loud to the cats:

“Success for LT means success for our team.”

He calls it iron sharpening iron. LT pushes him, he pushes LT, and the team is better for it. The Caps apparently think so too. Over the summer, when his name popped up in trade rumours, the word was that they kept him because he’s too important to Logan’s success to lose. Which is a lovely thing to be. Not the star. The reason the star shines.

* * *

I love that in a player. Honestly, I love that in a person.

There’s something deeply attractive (in every sense, I’m a romance author, sue me) about a man who is secure enough in himself that he doesn’t need to be the head honcho. Who doesn’t need his name in lights to feel like he matters. Who can look at a teammate getting the starts, the headlines, the glory, and think “good, that’s good for us” and actually mean it.

That kind of ego, the healthy, quiet, self-assured kind, is rarer than it should be. Especially in professional sport, where everyone’s been told since they were eight that they need to be the best one on the ice.

And it’s not like he hasn’t earned the right to want more. Charlie took the long way round. A Minnesota kid who played college hockey, went undrafted, signed with Montreal, then St. Louis, and bounced around the minors more than any goalie would like. When he landed in Washington, he was supposed to be the backup. And then in 2023–24, when the Caps needed him, he took the net and dragged that team into the playoffs on his back. He’d have been well within his rights to decide he was a starter after that.

Instead, when the team brought in LT, he slid right back into the role the team needed, with a grin and a shrug and not a single complaint anyone ever heard.

That’s not a lack of ambition. That’s character.

* * *

I should confess something about my first impression of Charlie, though.

The first time I saw him walk in, I didn’t think “cowboy” at all. I thought “seventies.” Specifically, seventies movie star. Not the respectable kind, either. I mean the films that existed somewhere on the outskirts of respectability, all disco lighting and suggestive saxophone, the ones that were one tasteful soundtrack swell away from being a very different sort of movie entirely. Studio 54 energy. Starsky and Hutch energy. He had the hair. He had the sideburns. He had the moustache. I swear I could see the hipster flares and the open collar, even when he was wearing a suit.

He looked, and I say this with the deepest affection, like the heart-of-gold pimp from a seventies cop show. The one who knows everyone on the street, slips the detectives a tip in the back of a bar with a wink, and turns out to have been quietly looking after half the neighbourhood the whole time.

Which, now that I think about it, is not that far off a backup goalie. Quietly looking after everybody, getting very little credit, and looking fabulous while he does it.

* * *

Now. The glove.

I have to talk about the glove.

Charlie’s catching glove has a name. Her name is Josie. And yes, “her.” It all started when Charlie referred to the glove as “her” during a postgame interview. The Caps’ play-by-play announcer, Joe Beninati, picked it up and decided that if the glove was a she, she needed a proper name.

Charlie already had his nickname by then. A fan had suggested “the Outlaw,” and Beninati backed it because, with that moustache and those sideburns, Charlie looks like he’s just ridden into town to settle a score at high noon. So the cowboy theme was already in play. From there it was one small step to The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Beninati pointed out that Josie works rather nicely as a girl’s name. Charlie picked it over the other options (one of which was “Snappy,” and I think we can all agree he chose wisely).

So now, when Charlie flashes the leather and robs someone blind, that’s not just a save. That’s Josie. The Outlaw and his trusty Josie, riding out to defend the crease.

As someone who grew up on westerns, I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. Clint Eastwood in hockey pads. A man and his glove against the world. I’m only a little bit sorry that nobody’s added a harmonica to the goal horn yet.

(And I have to mention, in the spirit of full and fair reporting, that Ovi’s given him another nickname, “Ch Ch,” which is now on his mask. So the man has a cowboy name, a glove name, and an Ovi name. That’s three more names than most of us get.)

* * *

I’ll let you in on a little secret, too.

I’ve recently written a character, a certain goalie in an upcoming book, who might just have grown out of Charlie. He’s perfectly content to be the backup. He doesn’t need the crown. He’d rather do what’s best for his team than what’s best for his stats, and he’s the first one off the bench to celebrate when someone else gets the glory. I didn’t plan it that way. I just looked up from the page one day and realised who he reminded me of.

I’m not saying who. Yet. But if you read him and find yourself thinking of a certain moustache, I won’t argue.

* * *

So, a small wish to finish on.

In a month or so, I’ll be in Canada, in the stands, watching the Caps play live. I know Logan is the number one, and he should be. But I’m hoping, quietly, with my fingers crossed and my fleecy trousers on, that at least one of those nights the Outlaw gets the start.

I want to see Josie in person. I want to watch Charlie snatch a puck out of the air and shake out his glove like a gunslinger blowing smoke off a barrel. I want to be the loudest Tasmanian in the building.

Come on, Charlie. Saddle up. Just one game. Josie and I will be waiting.

— Bella

Big Pro Just Loves to Skate (And Honestly, Who can Blame him)

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In praise of the biggest kid on the ice

I need to talk about Aliaksei Protas. Big Pro. Because I’ve been asked who my favourite Caps are more than once, and every time I get to his name my face does a thing. A soft, slightly ridiculous thing. And I think it’s time I explained myself.

First, let’s address the size. Because we have to. It’s the first thing anyone notices, and it should be.

He is big. And I don’t mean hockey-player big, which is already a different category of human to the rest of us. I mean big big. Six foot six. Somewhere around two hundred and fifty pounds. I have spent years telling anyone who would listen that Tom Wilson is a weather event, and I stand by that, but I need you to understand that when Big Pro stands next to Tom, Tom looks small. Tom. Looks small. I didn’t think it was physically possible. I’ve had to recalibrate my entire understanding of scale.

He’s the sort of large where you half expect him to duck going through doorways in arenas that were very clearly built with him in mind. The sort of large where the boards don’t so much get hit as get notified. And then he skates, and he’s quick, properly quick, and your brain just doesn’t know what to do with the information. Something that big is not supposed to move like that. It’s like watching a wardrobe win a footrace.

* * *

But that’s not actually why I love him.

I love him because every time I watch him, I see a kid. A gigantic, nearly two-metre kid who simply cannot believe his luck that someone lets him do this for a living.

You know the scene in Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Sarah Jessica Parker, big eighties hair, all that energy, the moment where Janey explains how much she loves to dance. She’s twirling a strand of hair round her finger the whole time, and one foot has popped up en pointe all on its own, like her body simply can’t stop dancing long enough for her to finish the sentence. Not because of the competition or the prize or anyone watching, but because it’s the thing that makes her feel most like herself. The thing she’d be doing anyway, even if no one was watching at all.

That’s Big Pro. I am absolutely convinced that somewhere, at some point, Aliaksei Protas has given the exact same speech, just swap the dance floor for a sheet of ice. I can see it so clearly. He’s standing at the bench, all six foot six of him, trying very hard to answer a reporter’s question like a serious professional athlete, and the whole time one skate is drifting out to carve a lazy little arc on the ice, and his hands are twirling his stick round and round, because he physically cannot stand still that close to the ice. His body has already gone back out there. The rest of him is just catching up. He loves to skate. He loves being out there. You can see it in the way he plays, in the grin after a goal, in the way he throws himself back over the boards like he’s worried someone might change their mind and make him sit down. He plays like a kid who got let out early for recess and intends to make the most of every single second of it.

I find that completely irresistible. There’s a lot of cynicism in the world. There’s a lot of cynicism in sport. And then there’s this enormous young man from Vitebsk who looks like he’s having the time of his life every time his skates touch the ice. I’ll take that over cynicism any day.

* * *

And it’s not like he hasn’t worked for it.

The Caps took him in the third round back in 2019. Ninety-first overall. Not exactly a headline pick. He did his time in the WHL, did his time in Hershey (and won a Calder Cup there, because of course he did), and spent a few seasons in Washington learning, in his own words, how hard it is in this league. He even had to wear number 59 for his first few years, because he said he wanted to earn the right to pick his own. He waited until he’d earned number 21 back, the one he’d worn as a junior.

I mean. Come on. That’s a character beat. I couldn’t write that better if I tried.

And then the 2024–25 season happened, and he just went off. Thirty goals. Sixty-six points. Plus forty. His first NHL hat trick. Out of nowhere, apparently, except it wasn’t out of nowhere at all. He’d been working on his skating, and it showed. Pierre-Luc, who knows a thing or two about being underestimated, said the biggest part of Pro’s game isn’t his size, it’s his brain. “Pro’s extremely smart,” he said. He wins battles because he’s in the right place, not just because he’s the biggest thing in the building.

Though being the biggest thing in the building certainly doesn’t hurt.

And what does he say about all of it? That there’s so much work ahead of him, and he’s excited about it. Of course he is. Of course that’s his answer. He just wants to keep skating.

* * *

Now, I can’t talk about Big Pro without talking about Little Pro, because the Hockey Gods occasionally have a sense of humour and gave Washington a matching set.

Ilya, his little brother, also a Caps draft pick, has gone and grown to six foot six as well, which means “Little Pro” is now a purely administrative title. Ilya made his NHL debut last April, picked up a point in his very first game, and this season he’s up with the big club and scoring goals. Two enormous Belarusian brothers in the same jersey, and I’m told that at practice they mostly just yell at each other. Ilya has said Aliaksei yells at him more.

If that isn’t the plot of a found family hockey romance waiting to happen, I don’t know what is. (No, I’m not taking notes. Yes, I am taking notes.)

* * *

Which brings me, slightly sheepishly, to a confession.

If you’ve read any of my books, you may have noticed a pattern. My hockey players are, for the most part, enormous. Not “tall for a romance hero” enormous. Huge units. Men who should, by rights, have their own postcodes. Men who have to turn sideways to get through a door and apologise to the furniture on their way past.

And I don’t seem to have any in-betweeners. There’s no tidy, medium-sized winger quietly minding his business in the PHL. If you’re on one of my teams, odds are you’re built like a refrigerator that took up weightlifting.

I’d love to tell you this is a carefully considered artistic choice. It isn’t. It’s Big Pro’s fault. And Tom’s. And PL’s. And now Little Pro’s too, because apparently the Protas family didn’t think one was enough. I’ve spent years watching these absolute mountains of men play hockey, and somewhere along the way they quietly recalibrated my sense of what a hockey player is supposed to look like. My brain now thinks six foot four is “compact.”

What can I say? I’m a schmuck for the big boys. Specifically the ones who are a bull in a china shop on the ice, all crashing and banging and noise, and then step off it and turn out to be ridiculously, disarmingly gentle. The ones who’ll flatten someone into the boards on Tuesday and be photographed carefully holding a puppy on Wednesday like it’s made of spun sugar. That contrast gets me every single time. It got me in real life first, and it’s been getting me on the page ever since.

So if you’ve ever wondered why every second hero in the PHL needs his own postcode, now you know who to blame. Write your complaints to Washington. I’m not changing a thing.

* * *

So that’s why he’s one of my favourites.

He’s huge. He’s fast. He’s smart. He’s a third-round pick who got there through sheer hard work, and he’s the only man on the planet who can make Tom Wilson look small. But mostly, it’s the joy. Every shift, every goal, every grin, he looks like a kid who loves to skate and can’t believe he gets to do it every night in front of a building full of people who love watching him do it.

I hope he never loses that. I hope he’s still grinning like that in fifteen years.

And if he ever wants to give that speech for real, I’ll be in the front row. I’ll bring the eighties hair.

— Bella

My Hockey Players Watch the Same Games I Do (And I’m Not Sure How I Feel About That)

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A small late-night thought that got away from me

I had a thought tonight, somewhere in the second period, and now I can’t stop thinking it, so you’re all going to have to think it with me.

Every time I sit down to watch hockey, my hockey boys and girls are watching it too.

Not in a spooky way. Well. Maybe a little bit in a spooky way. It’s Halloween, I’m allowed.

But think about it. Everything my players know about hockey, they know because I know it. When I learn something new about a breakout or a forecheck or why a coach pulled the goalie with three minutes left, they learn it at exactly the same moment. Their hockey brains are my hockey brain, wearing different jerseys. If I’ve never noticed something, neither have they. If I yell at the TV about a missed call, somewhere in Portland an entire locker room is yelling with me.

Which means my players are only ever as smart as I am. And I’d like that to sound less alarming than it does.

Then it got worse. Or better. I genuinely can’t decide.

Because it isn’t just what they know. It’s who they look up to. My players grew up watching the same players I watch. The rookies in the PHL have heroes, and their heroes are my heroes. Somewhere in my universe there’s a kid who taped a poster of a big, grumpy enforcer with a soft heart to his bedroom wall, and I know exactly who he was thinking of when he did it, because I was thinking of him too. Somewhere there’s a centre who watched a misunderstood ginger find his way home and decided that’s the kind of veteran he wants to be one day.

They’re not just playing hockey. They’re trying to become the players I love. And they don’t even know they’re doing it.

I sat with that for a while, and I think I’ve landed somewhere a bit softer than scary.

Because isn’t that just what happens to every hockey kid? Every player who’s ever laced up grew up watching someone. They learned the game from the people they loved watching it with. They copied the celly, the stick tap, the way their hero leaned on the boards. My players just happen to have learned it all from someone sitting on a couch at the bottom of the world, at strange hours, in her pyjamas, with a cat judging her.

So yes, my players’ hockey knowledge is exactly as deep as mine. They’ll make the same mistakes I make, love the same underdogs, and hold the same grudges against certain referees. (They know which ones.)

But they also love the game the way I love it. And honestly? I can’t think of anything better to give them.

Of course, there’s a small complication on the horizon. In December I’m heading off on my hockey research trip (and yes, it is research, I have a notebook and everything), which means for the first time a lot of what I learn won’t come through a TV screen at strange hours. It’ll come from real arenas, real ice, real noise, and real people who know far more than I do.

Which means my players are about to get considerably more knowledgeable, very quickly. About what they can and can’t do. About what they can and can’t get away with. About exactly how close to the line a person can skate before somebody in a striped shirt notices.

I’m a little worried about what they’ll do with all that. They’re already trouble. Informed trouble is a whole new level.

In the meantime, I just need to keep watching. For their sake, you understand. Purely professional.

— Bella

Pierre-Luc Dubois Is a Romance Hero and I Will Not Be Taking Questions

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On ginger beards, bad reputations, and the big man who finally found his way home

I want to start by saying I have tried to be objective about this. I really have. I’ve sat down, cup of tea in hand, and asked myself the hard questions. Is it fair to love a hockey player this much based largely on his name, his beard, and the general impression that he could carry a sofa up three flights of stairs without complaint?

And the answer, after careful and rigorous consideration, is yes. Yes it is. Next question.

Let’s start with the name, because honestly, I have to. Pierre-Luc Dubois. Say it out loud. Go on, I’ll wait. That is not a name. That is a back-cover blurb. That is a man who owns a sugar shack in the Laurentians and is very gruff with the heroine when her car breaks down in a snowstorm outside his property, right up until chapter nine when he quietly fixes her heater and doesn’t mention it. I have named a frankly alarming number of hockey players across the PHL and I’m not sure I’ve named a single one as perfectly as his parents managed on the first go. I’m a little bit annoyed about it, if I’m honest. Professionally.

Then there’s the rest of the package. He’s a ginger with a beard. He’s huge. Not Tom Wilson huge (nobody is Tom Wilson huge, Tom Wilson is a weather event), but big enough that when things get spicy in the corners he can absolutely mix it up, and big enough that the boards make a very satisfying noise when he’s involved. He skates like someone who has made peace with the laws of physics by simply ignoring them.

So yes. The aesthetics are strong. But that’s not actually why I love him.

* * *

Here’s the bit that gets me.

When the Caps traded Darcy Kuemper to the Kings for Pierre-Luc back in the summer of 2024, the reaction wasn’t exactly a ticker-tape parade. If you spent any time in the comments sections (and I did, because I am a glutton for punishment), the word that kept getting thrown around was “cancer.” Locker room cancer. Doesn’t fit. Never fits. Look at his record.

And to be fair to the internet, which is not a sentence I write often, the record was there. Drafted third overall by Columbus in 2016. Moved on from Columbus. Moved on from Winnipeg. Signed an eight-year deal in Los Angeles, had the quietest season of his career, sixteen goals and forty points, and was moved on again after one year. Three teams, three exits, and a story that had pretty much been written for him by people who had never been in a room with him.

I write romance. I know exactly what that story is. It’s the backstory of every hero who walks into chapter one with his walls up and his jaw tight, and everyone in town has an opinion about him before he’s said a word.

And I also know how that story is supposed to go.

* * *

He got to Washington and the Caps said the thing that, apparently, nobody had said to him in a while. Pierre-Luc put it simply afterwards: they told him to be himself, and they’d give him a chance. He said the players welcomed him “like a brother” from day one.

And then he went out and had the best season of his career. Twenty goals, forty-six assists, sixty-six points, all career highs, while Spencer Carbery threw him over the boards night after night against the other team’s best line. Big, heavy, responsible, the sort of player who does the unglamorous work and makes everyone around him better. He anchored a line with Tom and Big Pro that was frankly unfair to look at, let alone play against.

At the end of that season he said it was “the most fun I’ve had playing hockey.” He said the group’s enthusiasm was contagious. He said, of Washington, “It feels like home.”

Reader, I had to put the phone down for a minute.

Because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the whole thing. The “locker room cancer” wasn’t a cancer at all. He was a man who’d never been in the right room. Some people aren’t difficult. They’re just in the wrong place, with the wrong people, being asked to be someone they’re not. Put them somewhere they’re wanted and watch what happens.

That’s not a hockey story. That’s a found family story. And you all know how I feel about those.

* * *

Of course, because this is the Caps and nothing is ever allowed to be simple, last season was cruel to him. He went down on Halloween 2025 against the Islanders, stayed down after a faceoff, and needed surgery on his abdominal and adductor muscles a week later. He didn’t play again until February. The man who’d just felt at home for the first time in his career had to spend months watching from the press box, in the gym, in the no-contact jersey. If I’d written that I’d have had readers in my inbox.

When he finally came back against Nashville, he scored. Of course he did. First game back, first period, right after Tom opened the scoring. I’d like to tell you I handled that with dignity. I did not.

He was in and out a bit after that and the season never quite let him find his feet. But this year he came into camp and Tom, Tom, called him the fittest guy on the team and said he looked “phenomenal.” He’s been banged up again to start the season (because the hockey gods are petty) but he’s back now, picking up points, setting up Big Pro for a game-winner against Philly this week like he never left.

And today is Halloween. A year to the day since the injury. I’m choosing to take that as a sign the curse is broken and we’re into the redemption arc now. You can’t stop me.

* * *

So here’s my case, laid out plainly for anyone still on the fence.

He has a name that belongs on a cover. He has a beard that belongs on a cover. He’s big, he’s heavy, he’s smart, and he does the work no one claps for. He spent years being told he was the problem, and it turned out all he needed was a team that let him be himself. And the moment he got one, he slotted straight in like he’d always been there, one of the veterans the room leans on and the fans adore.

I loved him from the first mention of him being ours. Not because I knew how it would turn out, but because I’ve been doing this long enough to recognise a hero when he walks into chapter one with everyone already sure they’ve got him figured out.

They didn’t. We did.

Welcome home, PLD. Stay forever, please. I’m sure there’s room on Tom’s line and in my heart. Mostly the second one.

— Bella

P.S. Is he going in a book? Well. I’m just going to say that if you’ve spent any time with Per and Berg Worth, and you’ve noticed how phenomenal those two are, how big and steady and quietly devoted to the people who let them in, you may have already met a little more of Pierre-Luc than I’ve ever officially admitted to. More than a little, if I’m honest. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying I’ve been watching a lot of Caps hockey, and the Worth boys have been paying attention too.

Meet My Boys: Tom Wilson, Number 43

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The first in a little series introducing the real-life hockey players who live rent-free in my head (and, let’s be honest, occasionally wander into my manuscripts).

Hello, lovelies.

You’ve heard me carry on about my hockey boys for long enough that it’s about time I properly introduced you. So I’m starting a little series, one player at a time, and there was never any question about who was going first.

Tom Wilson. Number 43. Washington Capitals. My hockey hero, and he has been since his very first season.

The kid who walked in

The Caps drafted him sixteenth overall in 2012, a big lad from Toronto standing six foot four, and he got his first taste of NHL hockey in three playoff games before he’d even played a regular-season one. Then came the rookie year: all 82 games, three goals, seven assists and 151 penalty minutes.

Those numbers tell you exactly what they wanted him to be. The goon. Fourth-line minutes, drop the gloves with anyone who looked at you sideways, hit everything that moved. And he did what he was asked, because he was so young and so eager and so desperate to belong.

But he was also a kid a long way from home, and that’s the bit that got me. He roomed with Michael Latta, and I can tell you the exact moment I fell. It was the 24/7 special they film every year in the lead-up to the Winter Classic, the year the Caps played the Blackhawks outdoors at Nationals Park on New Year’s Day 2015. In one episode the cameras followed the boys home, and there were Tom and Latta pushing a trolley round the supermarket, then showing off a fridge that was absolutely full of ketchup. Just ketchup, as far as I could tell. They were so young and so earnest, and so competitive about something as silly as the shopping, that I sat there grinning at my screen and thought, oh no. That one. He’s mine now.

Later he roomed with Andre Burakovsky, and if you were around for that era you’ll remember it fondly. The great hulking enforcer on the ice who, off it, turned out to be a big soft thing who’d happily curl up with Harry Potter. Readers, I was done for. If you’ve ever wondered where some of my Pioneers get their marshmallow centres, now you know.

Growing into the A

I won’t pretend he was a saint. There were suspensions, a few of them deserved, and for a stretch his name was a lightning rod for every hockey argument on the internet. Plenty of players never get past that reputation.

Tom did. He kept the edge, because the edge is part of who he is, but he cleaned up the hits that crossed the line and quietly turned himself into a genuine top-line forward the Caps trust in every situation. Have a look at this: as a rookie he racked up 151 penalty minutes and scored three goals. Last season he had 117 penalty minutes and scored thirty. That’s not a goon. That’s a hockey player.

He’s worn the A on his chest for years now, and Connor McDavid (yes, that one) has called him a god on the forecheck. I may have screamed.

Tom by the numbers

  • Drafted: 2012, first round, 16th overall
  • Rookie season (2013–14): 82 games, 3 goals, 7 assists, 151 PIM
  • 2018 Stanley Cup run: 21 games, 5 goals, 10 assists, 15 points
  • 2024–25: career highs of 33 goals and 65 points
  • 2025–26: 30 goals and 32 assists for 62 points in 72 games, his second straight 30-goal season
  • Career (through 2025–26): 907 games, 209 goals, 248 assists, 457 points and 1,649 penalty minutes
  • Contract: signed in Washington through 2030–31

The last of 2018

June 2018. The Caps finally, finally lifted the Cup in Las Vegas, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier about something that happened on the other side of the planet in the middle of my day.

Of the boys who won it that night, only two are still wearing the red: Tom and Ovi. When John Carlson was traded to Anaheim last March, Tom got teary talking about him in front of the cameras, and so did I, sitting on the couch with a can of coke going warm in my hand.

And now Ovi has told the team this season will be his last. Which means that next year, Tom will be the only one left. The last link to the Cup. The kid they tried to make a goon, standing in the room as the one who remembers what it took.

Everyone in Washington seems to think the C is his next. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. I am failing. Captain of the new boys, the ones who’ve never lifted it yet? I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see wear it.

Coming up

Next time I’ll introduce you to a few more of my favourites: Pierre-Luc Dubois, Logan Thompson, and Big Pro and Little Pro, the Protas brothers. Bring snacks.

Until then, go Caps.

Love, Bella x

The Ovi Farewell Tour (Or: How a Research Trip Grew a Heart)

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Let me start with a confession. When we first started planning this trip, I was very, very sensible about it.

It was a research trip. Capital R. I write hockey romance, and I’ve written a lot of it — whole teams, whole families, whole universes of men who skate fast and feel things deeply — and almost all of it has been built from my couch in Tasmania, watching games at ungodly hours with a blanket, a cup of tea and the cats judging me. I know the rules. I know the rhythms. I know what a good line change looks like. But I have never actually sat in an arena and felt one.

I wanted to know what the cold coming off the ice smells like. How loud it gets when the home team scores, and how quiet it gets when the visitors do. What the concourse sounds like between periods. Whether you can hear the skates from the stands. The little things. The things that make a reader go, oh, she’s been there.

So: research. Very professional. Tax-deductible-adjacent.

And, fine, there was one other thing on the list. A bucket list thing. His name is Tom Wilson.

Tom Wilson is my hockey hero, and I will not be taking questions. On the ice he is a big, aggressive mountain of Canadian man, the kind of player who makes opposing forwards quietly reconsider their life choices. Off the ice he’s the softie who reads Harry Potter by wand light. If I wrote him into a book, my editor would tell me he was too much. Nobody would believe it. That’s exactly why I love him, and he’s the reason I wanted to be in the building. That was the original plan. Watch Willy play. Maybe cry a little. Go home happy.

Then there’s the supporting cast, because I am a Caps girl down to my bones and I have favourites. Pierre-Luc Dubois, my other favourite forward. Logan Thompson in goal. The Outlaw. Josie. And the Pro brothers, Big Pro and Little Pro, Aliaksei and Ilya Protas, who are the only men on earth who can make Tom Wilson look small. I’ve seen it happen. It’s unsettling. It’s like watching a mountain stand next to two bigger mountains and suddenly look like a hill. A whole roster of men I’ve yelled at, cheered for and adopted from the other side of the world at three in the morning, and I was going to get to see every one of them in person.

And Ovi? Ovi was the bonus. The cherry on top. Getting to say I’d been in the same building as Alex Ovechkin, a fixture of my hockey life for so long that it felt a bit like planning to go and meet a weather system.

So we built the trip around the Capitals. Three games, three Canadian cities, one long, slightly unhinged road trip in December. Edmonton first. Then the drive down to Calgary to see them at the Saddledome, in its very last season, which felt like history all on its own. Then the big haul back west to Vancouver for the last game before we fly home. I bought thermals. I bought more thermals. I have been informed, by people who live in actual snow, that I still have not bought enough thermals.

And then Ovi announced his retirement.

I’m not going to pretend I took it with grace. There may have been a noise. Possibly a word I don’t put in my books. Because just like that, the bonus became the whole thing. I still love Willy. He’s still my guy. But the trip I’d been calling research has turned into something else entirely. It’s not the research trip anymore. It’s the Ovi Farewell Tour. Three chances to watch one of the greatest goal scorers the game has ever known, in what is now his final season, and I get to be in the building for three of them. I didn’t plan that. Nobody plans that. The timing just landed in my lap like a puck off a lucky bounce.

Here’s the thing, though. From the outside, this probably looks like a fan going on a holiday to watch some hockey. And it is that. I’m not going to dress it up. I am going to scream. I am going to buy merch I do not need. I am going to spend three entire games trying very hard not to cry every time number eight touches the puck, and I am going to fail. Probably during warm-ups. Possibly before we even find our seats.

But it’s so much more than it looks.

It’s the first time I’ll be standing in the world I’ve spent years writing. Every rink I’ve ever built on the page, every locker room, every press box and bench and tunnel — I’ve imagined all of them. Now I get to check my work. I get to find out what I got right and, more importantly, what I got wrong, and what I never even knew to wonder about. My Pioneers and my McKenzies and all their messy found families are going to be better for it. I can already feel the books shifting.

It’s also a trip I’m taking with people who matter. My writing partner and I have been making stories together since around 1998 — we’ve been doing this longer than some of my characters have been alive — and for the first time we’ll be making them in the same country, in the same car, on the same long icy highways. I don’t expect we’ll get many words written. I do expect we’ll plot out loud for hours, argue about who gets hurt, and come home with more ideas than we can possibly use. And the most important part? Jo is coming too, which means someone will be sensible about dinner and someone will remember where we parked. She’s dealt with my obsession for so long I’m pretty sure that we now share obsessions, right down to Big Willy.

And it’s about time. Not in the ‘it’s about time I did this’ sense, although yes, also that. I mean time itself. How you can follow a player for years, through every season and every playoff heartbreak and every record, and think of him as permanent. And then one day there’s an announcement, and you realise you were watching an ending the whole time, you just didn’t know which chapter you were in.

I write happily-ever-afters for a living. I believe in them, deeply. But I also know that the best endings are the ones you get to witness. You get to be there. You get to say goodbye properly, instead of reading about it the next morning over toast.

So that’s what this is now. Part research trip. Part bucket list. Part pilgrimage. Part three friends and a hire car versus the Canadian winter. And part a very grateful fan getting to stand up, three times, and say thank you to a player who gave her years of joy from the other side of the world.

I’ll report back. With notes. With photos. With, almost certainly, more feelings than is strictly professional.

Research, remember. Very serious research.

Go Caps.

— Bella x