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I have absolutely no idea what’s currently going on in the game changers fandom but I love how mad yall are about the way Shane is treated
Consider yourself lucky! 😂
Basically I'm discovering in real time that the next GC book they're adapting is like Endgame was for Bucky and Steve (irony.) IE. Shane getting treated like dogshit in a lowkey racist way while Ilya turns into a DARVO skrull, and the 10% of people criticising it feel like they're being gaslit by the other 90%.
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And the tags: #shane literally an asian man in the whitest fucking sport like. yeah shane has never been hurt by hockey shane doesnt lnow anything hes dumb
I'm sorry, but I am going to disagree with you here. Shane is portrayed in the book and the show as "not really thinking about stuff like that" and I think that is a very common reaction to being racialised when all you want to do is play your game.
I live in the Czech Republic, which, wonderful as it is in so many ways, is in the running for the whitest country on earth. My close friend is Saudi, and his name is Mohammed. He could not find a place to live for months because no one would rent a flat to him. Because he's Saudi, and his name is Mohammed and so many Czechs have a serious case of ignorant white fright. He is regularly subjected to intense racism, but every time anyone points it out to him, he says: I don't think about things like that. He denies it happens to both himself and when others tell him it's happening. And, he's a nice person, so he tries to explain it away and see the best in people. So, to recap, he is literally an Arab man in the whitest country on earth, and he regularly refuses to accept that anything untoward has happened, or to pay any attention to the darker side of this country.
I think this is a common experience of the people who are not terminally online discussing racism, and is very realistic for an autistic, high-performance athlete character who is single-mindedly focused on being the best hockey player in the world. Shane spends A LOT of time narrowing his focus down to Hockey, maximizing his performance, and Ilya. This other shit canonically does not occupy his mind that much. Now, maybe this is a trauma response, but if it were, SHANE WOULD NOT KNOW IT. That's how trauma responses work. And, Ilya would not know it either. They are, at this point, a couple of sweet 20-something hockey boys who are not enmeshed in social justice discourse, and if Rachel had written them as if they were, it would not have been better.
I'm not saying Rachel Reid is beyond criticism, but an mlm hockey romance novel is a very different genre than a tumblr social justice post. I think she does a good job of writing characters you have to think about, and whose thoughts about themselves give you, the reader, space to have your own thoughts about them. She obviously loves Shane because she writes him so sympathetically, but he's not perfect! Neither of them is. They are both so right about some things, and so wrong about others. And, she does not write Shane as dumb at all, she just writes him as living in his brain less than Ilya does. Again, very realistic for an athlete.
In the book, the homophobia that Shane is subjected to in hockey is so significant that he tries to conversion therapy himself because he cannot reconcile being a gay hockey player. Shane is very aware of how homophobic his environment is--that's why he's in the closet and not out. You think he's having sex he doesn't want with women for fun? Because he's too stupid to realize he's not enjoying it?
White people aren't more tuned in to racism than the minorities that experience it. Shane isn't a visitor to North American hockey culture. He's grown up in it. So, your personal story doesn't even apply, nor does it explain why ALL the white men are able to see the dark side of hockey but the POC is blind to it. Treating Shane like he is a some sort of hockey robot is incredibly racist and feeds into tropes of Asian people having less emotions and being socially unaware. It's not cool.
You make a lot of unfounded assumptions about who I am, and what my perspective is! But ok. Not my first rodeo.
These are comments on a work of literature, and I am saying that what Rachel Reid wrote is not indicative of her not recognising that Shane has suffered at the hands of hockey culture, or that he is blind to homophobia, but that he is characterized as wanting to ignore it. And, I think Shane meets a girl he actually likes and tries it on because he's still figuring himself out. "Conversion therapying himself" vastly overstates it, and shows no respect for the fact that some people have a journey to understanding the exact nature of their queerness. He doesn't enjoy it, so he stops. Very reasonable really. Sad, but a thing that happens!
I would never argue that white people are more tuned in to racism, but I have seen people around me respond to the specific racism that affects them in ways that are very like Shane's. And, very often when we grow up in an environment and when it is all we know, we are blinder to its flaws. As an immigrant who does cultural and DEI work for a living, I have seen that many, many times, and from many different perspectives. I am not saying it's the only possible response, nor am I saying that a person's public response is the only feeling they have, I am merely saying that it is a thing that Ilya, speaking from his perspective and without being inside Shane's brain, could believably have observed or think is true. These words are ILYA's. This is a book where we are inside the brains of two hockey boys. The book would not be made better if it were broadcasting a public service announcement about Autistic Gay Asian Hockey boys and their plights.
I also never argued that Shane has fewer feelings or is a hockey robot, and I don't at all think that! Shane Hollander is positively bursting with feelings, obviously! But, one thing I do fucking know is high-performance athletes, having actually worked with them, and I think Shane is a very good portrayal of what they are like and how focused they are, whatever their racial background, and of that, I do have actual, direct experience.
Shane is blind to some things because he is Shane. Ilya is blind to some things because he is Ilya. They both love each other and neither of them is better or worse than the other. They are both so sweet and lovable. I don't see how it is less racist to treat every character or person as a representative of their racial and other identities, and not as simply characters or people with their own particularities who are who they are.
Reid has literally said that Shane has no trauma. She has said that racism exists for black people (coach in Game Changer) but not for Asian people (it's not mentioned for Shane). The story isn't written so that the reader should understand that Shane is trying to ignore racism, Tierney had to add in those elements which do show that he is very aware of the racism but trying to navigate it by minimizing it. But the book is written as if racism to him specifically does not exist. Shane is defined by all the things he is NOT that Ilya is. That is absolutely racist.
You haven't responded to the point that ALL the white men (who are also high performance athletes) are fully dialed in to the dark side of hockey, but the POC character is written as unaware of hockey's flaws and uncomfortable with the discussion. That's not an individual character choice, that's a trend.
writing a fic about shane in therapy really has just been making myself emotional at the thought of someone being kind to him. meeting him where he's at and hearing his fears and worries and anxieties and not telling him he's stupid or he needs to get over himself or they're not real. creating a gentle and safe environment for him to feel heard. it's very telling how rare that feels imo
I haven't read the books so I dunno canon material, but I was wondering how much evidence is there in the books that Montreal is as obsessed with hockey in universe as it is in real life? We can infer that Shane is worried about getting recognized and that he faces a lot of pressure because Montreal is obsessed and the show mentions burning effigies, but we've also been told that the lock outs didn't happen, so if canon is willing to change that, shouldn't it be true that canon could change other things too? I guess I'm just curious about how much real world logic can and should be applied to a fictional setting. Obviously it's more compelling if more real world logic applies as you can draw on actual lived experiences and have more commentary on real life, but I am curious about how much the source material does this
So I actually agree that canon can absolutely change details about the world for the sake of worldbuilding, but in this case she didn’t. It is explicit in the book that Montreal is just as hockey obsessed as it is in the real world. At the very beginning of heated rivalry, she talks about how Montreal fans loved the Voyageurs to the point of absurdity. They were the loudest fan base and the most enthusiastic fan base, to the point where it was hard for visiting teams to play against them. The fans travel to Ottawa to cheer on the Voyageurs because they’re such dedicated fans and they sell out the arena for the entire season in advance. They are described as the most legendary team in the NHL—all of which is just copying pretty directly from real life. Fuck, the Voyageurs is just the name of the Canadiens’ AHL affiliate team, which is why they had to change it for the show. She just sort of copied and pasted Montreal’s entire hockey culture.
She seems to have left all of Montreal’s queer culture on the table though.
Like. Seriously, someone correct me if there’s something I forgot, but I can’t remember it being in the books at all. And I’m kind of pissed at that exclusion, specifically because it’s implied that Montreal fans are a part of forcing Shane out.
I say implied because we get to see next to nothing about what happened to Shane that was so bad that it forced him off the team he loved. Almost the entirety of the aftermath happens from Ilya’s POV and he glazes over the it because he doesn’t give a shit about what Shane’s going through. He talks about how there’s a host of opinion pieces in the news the day after the game about how Shane tripped on purpose and goes off about how they’re insulting to him, actually, because what do you mean he needs Shane to throw the game to win. We know that the team and the media have a vitriolic reaction, and there’s a host of “angry tweets in the game’s wake. Of course when Troy Barrett suffers backlash we get to see the tweets and an in depth portrayal of how they affect him. But I think we can glean that there was not an outpouring of support from Montreal’s fan community considering whatever happens is so bad that Shane feels like he’ll never be comfortable representing that team again.
Again, I think that it’s fine to borrow from the real world but change real world details for the sake of world building. I do it myself. For example, the pride tape ban in snapping birch really happened, but it happened years later. I moved the timeline back but kept the real details, because it happened after the events of snapping birch and I wanted to talk about it.
I do have a rule though. And I don’t ascribe negative traits to real people, especially if they don’t have those negative traits in real life. I think it’s in really poor taste. Like. I don’t want to be like “here’s my obvious insert of John Doe, except for the purposes of this story, he just loves kicking fucking puppies.” Like. John Doe probably felt a little hurt by that.
Granted, Montreal fans aren’t a singular person who can get their feelings hurt. But I still think that having them be part of what forces out Shane for reasons related to his identity as a queer man was in really poor taste.
Like. We might not have queer rights if it wasn’t for the Montreal LGBTQ+ community.
In the 70s, the queer community in Montreal was targeted in a series of police raids and they rioted so goddamn hard that Quebec banned discrimination based on sexual orientation across the province just to get them to stop. In fucking 1977. It was the first major jurisdiction on the entire planet to legally protect sexual orientation, and it happened because of motherfucking Montreal. That city is one of the birthplaces of queer rights.
I’m going to be honest, coming into this fandom, I straight up thought that Montreal was kind of conservative and homophobic. That’s how the fandom treated it. I didn’t know anything about the city before I came into the fandom. The biggest basis I had was “pushed Shane out after he was outed.”
There is something that really pisses me off about farming the culture of a real city for your fucking gay smut, erasing the fact that they have one of the largest and most historically significant queer populations in human history, and then making them the villains who unfairly demonized and pushed out their previously beloved and historic queer captain for reasons related to his sexuality. And even if she didn’t intend it, there’s a fuckton of people out there that I’ve seen in this fandom who act like that historically queer city is filled with raging homophobes. I think that entire narrative was done in very poor taste, frankly.
Hockey Things You Might Want To Know If You're Writing Heated Rivalry Fic and You Don't Already Know Hockey
If you do know hockey, this is not for you! You already know what you're talking about. Have fun!
This is like 5000 words long and only covers the minimum on a lot of things. Part of the goal for everyone else is to give you terms to search if you do for some godforsaken reason want more information. I hope this satisfies! If not, ask me questions!
At the time that I am posting this, only 3 episodes are out. There are some spoilers for those episodes but none for anything after that (despite the fact that I have definitely read all the books several times each).
Setup
The NHL (and the fictional MLH) is split geographically into two Conferences, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. The approximate dividing line is the end of the Eastern Time Zone; anything in the Central, Mountain, or Pacific time zones is in the Western Conference. (Before it was realigned in I think 2013, the Detroit Red Wings were in the Western Conference, which was weird if you know actual geography and normal if you think about population density.)
Each Conference is divided into two Divisions; in the East it’s the Metro and Atlantic, although Detroit is in the Atlantic Division, which…. Well, anyway, there are a lot of teams out there. If you’re familiar with baseball, you’ll be expecting two teams in the same city to be split into two different divisions, if nothing else, and that definitely does not happen. The Rangers and the Islanders, both in NY, are in the same division, as are the LA Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. (Yes, like the movie.)
The Western Conference, on the other hand, roughly makes geographic sense; the Central teams are, overall, east of the Pacific teams. As of me writing this, there are eight teams in each division, 16 in each conference, and 32 in the NHL total. In 2009, when Heated Rivalry starts, there were 30 teams, so the divisions were uneven.
Minor Leagues
The NHL/MLH is the best league of hockey in North America, and they do have what baseball would call a “farm system” —the AHL (American Hockey League) is the level right below, equivalent to baseball’s triple-A teams, and the ECHL (East Coast Hockey League, not limited to the east coast; long story) is the level below that. AHLers sometimes play NHL games when people on the NHL team are injured. You might hear them referred to as “call-ups.”
Anatomy of a Game
An NHL/MLH game is 60 minutes long, divided into 3 20-minute periods. In between each is an 18-minute intermission (first and second intermission), where on TV the analysts talk about what just happened, and at the actual game itself, the Zambonis (the big ice-flattening machines) run. At any given point in time, there are 12 players on the ice—6 for each team. One of them is the guy in the net, the goaltender/goalie/tendy/netminder. The other five are skaters, forwards and defensemen. (See below for “types of hockey players.”)
If, at the end of the 60 minutes (also called “regulation”), both teams have scored the same number of goals (gotten the puck into the net behind the goalie the same number of times), then the teams go to overtime. In the regular season, overtime is five minutes of 3-on-3 (plus the goalie), usually two forwards and a defenseman. If the score is still tied after 5 minutes of that, then they go to a shootout. One player grabs the puck at center ice and has one chance to shoot it behind the goalie. The team that gets more shootout goals (which don’t count for individual points; they’re in a separate category) wins the game.
During the playoffs, teams do not play 3-on-3 overtime; they play a full overtime period, which looks the same as the regular part of the game, and it keeps going until someone scores a goal (sudden death). It can go on for quite a while—recently we’ve had overtimes of 90 minutes (in 2020) and 79 minutes (2023)! The players played basically two and a half full games! It’s absurd and can definitely be exploited for narrative tension—but only in the post-season.
If the team wins a game, it gets 2 points. If the team loses a game in regulation, it gets 0 points. If the team loses a game in overtime, it gets 1 point, called the “loser point” or “pity point” or “courtesy point” (in the sense of a courtesy flush). However, overtime loss points do stack up! Just ask the Minnesota Wild this year. (International hockey and the PWHL use the 3-2-1 system, but unless you’re writing something about the Olympics or PWHL players, don’t worry about that.) The points, “team points,” determine the team’s rankings/standings, not straight win/loss. Individual players also get something they call points from scoring goals or assisting the player who scored the goal (shooting the puck to him), and these are used for awards (see below about the NHL Awards) and general bragging.
Penalties
If a player does something that is not allowed, such as using his stick to trip another player, that’s a penalty. Penalties are either minor or major penalties; minor penalties are 2 minutes long, and major penalties are 5 minutes long. The player who committed the penalty sits in the penalty box (also called the “sin bin”) for the length of the penalty, or, in the case of a minor penalty, shorter, if the other team scores during his two minutes. (For a major penalty, you’re stuck in there for the full time.) There are other penalties that can throw you out of a full game, but ask me or look up “game misconduct” or “match penalty” if you want more information. There are two penalty boxes, one per team.
The team whose player committed the penalty plays with only 4 players for the length of the penalty. They are on the “penalty kill.” The team with all its players has a “power play” (or is on the power play). It is generally easier to score a goal when you have one more player than the other team. The goal is a “power play goal,” but it’s treated identically to every other goal. If it’s a minor penalty, the scored goal means the guy in the box gets to jump out early. It could be as early as only a few seconds later!
If the team that’s down one player commits another penalty, then yes, you can have 2 people in the sin bin at once. I’ve seen something like 6-7 people in a single box, usually for a bench brawl (all the players on both teams get off the bench and start punching each other). You can also have both teams committing penalties, at the same time or at different times, but after some point they stop pulling guys out of the game. The lowest number of players on the ice after penalties is 4-3. They won’t go below that.
When there’s a simple fight and both players get only five-minute fighting majors (“five for fighting,” yes, like the band), the fighters both go into the respective boxes and wait out their five minutes, but the teams keep playing with the normal amount of players.
If the goalie commits a penalty, he does not go in the box. Another guy sits the penalty for him. Too bad!
Types of Hockey Players
Every team has 23 active players on their roster, and 20 suit up for a game: 2 goalies (one plays, one sits on the bench and does weird shit just in case the first guy gets injured), 12 forwards (4 lines of 3 each), and 6 defensemen (3 pairs of 2 each). (You can also do 11 forwards/7 defensemen, but the Wild did that a couple nights ago [Dec. 8, 2025] and it almost backfired on them, so, you know, don't. Unless it increases narrative tension.) The remaining 3 players sit in the press box in suits and cannot be tagged in to that game. (Actually, the 3rd goalie usually plays in the AHL.) If a guy gets injured other than the goalie, you just stick another guy on the team in his place.
The types of players are goalies and skaters (goalies do skate but not as much/well as everyone else). Skaters are broken up into forwards and defensemen. Forwards are further split into centers and wings; each line is one center and two wings, left and right. Defensemen are left and right defense. If you play left wing, for example, it doesn't mean you shoot left; the most famous left wing in hockey is a right shot. (Ovechkin.) Also, what way you shoot is the OPPOSITE of your handedness; if you're left-handed, you probably shoot right. About 70% of the league shoots left (is right-handed), and right-shot forwards and defensemen are prized and may stay on a team even if they suck. I mean, not forever, but longer than you'd think in some cases!
Goalies are weird. The stick is in their dominant hand, covered by a blocker (a padded glove with a flat back), and the catching glove is on their non-dominant hand. Except Vasilevskiy, who is left-handed and has the stick in his right hand, because he got used to it that way early on. There are like five or six right-catch goalies in the NHL, out of 90ish.
Players go out in lines or pairs. Forwards go out in lines of 3, and their shifts are usually 30 to 45 seconds long, but sometimes things happen and they go much longer—up to 2 minutes! Defensemen go out in pairs, and their shifts are longer than forwards, usually 45 seconds to 1 minute. So with 12 forwards, there are 4 lines that the coach can put out at any point in time, and with 6 defensemen, there are 3 pairs. Other than the starting lineup, the guys literally on the ice when the puck is dropped to start the beginning of the game, lines and pairs don’t always match up—there are uneven numbers, and sometimes they change at different times.
The average top-line forward (so, including Ilya and Shane) plays about 20 to 22 minutes per game. The top pair of defensemen play about 24-25 minutes per game. All goalies play 60 minutes per game, which is why goalies are the best hockey players. In this essay I will—
Wait, I don’t think I can do that joke at this point. Oops. Moving on!
The Annual Schedule
Camp—preseason team training—starts in early September. Guys who are definitely already on the team, no question, get to skip some amount of camp (a few days, a week) but some weirdos go to the extra days anyway. Guys who haven’t made the team yet—older players on professional tryout contracts, AHLers hoping to move up to the big club, or rookies—have to go to all of camp, so that the coaches can see things like does this player work with our system, does this player maybe need a little more seasoning in the AHL (if they’re 20 or older) or back to their junior team/college (this is complicated, please don’t ask; Shane played juniors and Ilya played in the KHL system/Superleague, which lets them turn pro at 16) if they’re under 20. Or maybe the player is 39 and trying to squeak one more year out, and the coaches have to tell them that no, they should retire.
Anyway, they start with something like 36-40 players and winnow it down to 23 by the end of camp and the six to eight preseason games. Some guys are sent back to the AHL or whatever; some are just released from their professional tryout contracts; some are signed for 2-way (AHL/NHL) contracts and mostly stashed in the AHL. Some are possibly even traded.
In between camp and the start of the preseason games, some places have Prospect Showcase games. In the Minnesota Wild's Prospect Showcase (the team I know best), they, the St. Louis Blues, and the Chicago Blackhawks have a mini tournament of 3 games over a weekend. They're mostly for the kids who are not going to make the teams, but, like, a few rookies who are going to make the team will occasionally show up. (A couple years ago it was Connor Bedard who was the Big Fucking Deal at the Tom Kurvers Prospect Showcase.) This year, the Prospect Showcase for the Wild et al was the weekend of Sept 12-14.
The normal preseason games are for the final determinations of who’s going to stay on the team, and the preliminary determinations of how various parts of the team fit together—who’s on which line, who’s paired with whom, that sort of thing. Veterans rarely travel to away preseason games, because they’re Special. The preseason games started around September 17 this year for the Wild and went until Oct 3. They are usually all in the same division.
The regular season (82 games, half home, half away) starts in early to mid-October (it was Oct 9th for the Wild this year). The teams do not play on Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, or Christmas Day, and they usually get a 3-4 day gap around Christmas, in case some of them actually want to go home.
The All-Star Game
In early February, the league holds an All-Star Game. One player from each team goes as an absolute minimum (NHL Hockey Operations picks the best player [or the player who isn’t injured and can go] on each team, and then fans fill out the roster or pick captains or something), and I think up to 3. How they handle the ASG changes from year to year, and where it's located always changes. They pretty much always have some sort of tournament where everyone plays; they do the most accurate shot thing with the little targets you saw in the show; they also do Hardest Shot, and it's either won by the biggest motherfucker of a defenseman you've ever seen (look up Shea Weber or Zdeno Chára) or some scrawny blond bastard who, sure, is tall, but doesn't look that strong! (Elias Pettersson the forward, #40. There's a second Elias Pettersson on the team right now, which is why I specify. There's also a third Pettersson on the same team, but his first name is Marcus.)
All teams get a bye week (no games) either right before or right after the ASG. Guys typically use this week (or both, if they're not invited to the ASG) to go somewhere sunny, like Cabo. The ones with kids might not, since it's the middle of the school year, but if you live in Edmonton, I can see why you might want to.
Playoffs
The playoffs start in April and run until mid- or late June. Half the teams in the league make the playoffs: 8 from the Eastern Conference and 8 from the Western. The top 3 teams in each division make the playoffs, plus the next two best teams (the Wild Card teams) by points in the conference, not in the division, so it could be 5 from one division and 3 from the other. The #1 team in the conference plays the #2 Wild Card team. The leader of the other division plays WC2, and then teams 2 and 3 in each division get to beat up on each other. It’s a bracket system; probably easier for you just to look than me to explain it.
There are 4 rounds. Each round is a best-of-seven series, and you have to win the first round, the conference semifinals, the conference finals, and the Stanley Cup finals to get there, meaning it takes 16 wins total (4 wins to take a round) to get the Cup. Generally speaking, if you have the highest number of points in the entire NHL, the odds of you winning the Stanley Cup are about 8 in 37, over the last 37 years. This is, as you’ve definitely noticed, not great.
When the Cup is handed over, they also give the award for MVP of the Playoffs (the Conn Smythe trophy IRL), the one award that is not given at the NHL/MLH Awards. Once you win the Cup, you get to do interviews shirtless while crushing Bud Lite and no one cares (Kucherov; look up "Party Kuch"), and a couple days later, there’s usually a Cup Parade.
Everyone on the Cup-winning team gets a Day with the Cup; this didn't start until, like, the 90s or something? (Ken Dryden didn't get one until he requested it in the early 2000s. RIP, Ken.) But they get to take the cup wherever they want and have fun with it. Some guys parade it around their old city and eat hot dogs out of it while taunting their old team (Phil Kessel). Some guys just eat cereal out of it (common). Some guys take it to their mosque, since they're the first practicing Muslim to win in the modern era (Nazem Kadri). Nick Bonino let his dog eat out of it! Class act. If you have a baby, you're definitely going to get a picture of the baby in the Cup. (Check, Please! was correct.)
The NHL/MHL Awards
In early July, the NHL puts on an awards ceremony (the MLH Awards in the show). There are a bunch of awards that are given out, but the ones that matter to you are:
Rookie of the Year (the Calder Award IRL; 99% of the time it goes to the rookie with the most points; the other 1% is goalies but I need to stress it's rarely the ones you're thinking of)
League MVP (the Hart Memorial Trophy for the guy most important to his own team; often the guy who got the most points but also recently it's just been Connor McDavid regardless of if he deserved it)
Most Gentlemanly (the Lady Byng Award, named after Lord Stanley’s wife; this almost always goes to the guy with fewest penalty minutes)
Most Goals (the Rocket Richard Trophy... this is obvious)
Most Points (the Art Ross Trophy; a goal is 1 point, and so is an assist)
Guy Who Suffered The Most But Complained The Least (the Masterson Award; usually goes to the guy who had cancer or overcame substance use disorder. Yes, a surprising number of fit, athletic guys in their 20s and 30s get cancer. Fuck cancer.)
Best Goalie (the Vezina; goes to the best goalie, usually the best win percentage but at least sort of vibes)
Rookie, MVP, Gentlemanly, Suffered, and Goalie are voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers' Association, but in most cases, it's just the guy with the most/least in the category. If you want some tension, Goals and Points are rarely the same guy, at least in the last 20 years or so.
The Draft
Late July things get fun again: the Draft! At the time that Our Boys were drafted, it was held in a giant fucking ballroom, where every team gets a big table to themselves, and like 10 people sit around the table with laptops and cell phones and shit happens. All the players expected to go in the 1st round are invited, plus like half of the second round just in case, and the draft order is roughly the opposite of how bad you were last year. So Montreal and Boston? Sucked ass when they drafted Shane and Ilya. It's also not uncommon for a team to continue sucking for a while and end up with a pile of #1 draft picks; for a completely random example, the Penguins had the #1 overall in 2003 (Fleury), #2 in 2004 (Malkin), #1 in 2005 (Crosby), and #2 in 2006 (Jordan Staal). Also there are sometimes fun trades at the draft itself! Check out the Luongo trade from 2006 for inspiration.
(For the record, good players do come out of the later rounds, and draft busts are a known thing. For example, the sixth-best goalie of all time by wins and first by fashion sense, Henrik Lundqvist, was drafted in the seventh round. 205th overall! 204 people passed on him [well okay the same 30 people several times]!!! Also if you want an example of a #1 overall draft bust, try Nail Yakupov.)
The last couple years, the draft has been done with each team in their own area but all the draftees in a ballroom, with video conferencing and stuff. It’s anticlimactic, comparatively.
It’s also not entirely uncommon for the teams to get someone fancy to announce their draft pick. Recently, the draft was held in Las Vegas, and Montreal got Celine Dion (who was in residency in Vegas) to announce their draft pick. More commonly, they’ll get their last famous guy to pick someone new. If Montreal started to suck after Shane retired, they might ask him to come back to announce the pick for their new #2 overall superstar.
Summer Training and Food
Over the summer, hockey players usually take about a month off (this is not an exact number) and then start training for the next season. Often they go see a Guy (Crosby's is Andy O'Brien; McDavid and some others go to Scary Gary) and he runs them through a routine. Guys do usually train in packs, partly because they're friends and partly because they live in the same cities. This is, I think, primarily off-ice training, but they can do some stuff on the ice, too. Part of the point of this training is to bulk up as much as they can, because you lose 10-20 lbs (maybe more) over the course of the season.
Hockey is a lot of fucking work. Even the guys who are constantly going on about their macros eat a fuckton of calories a day, and they still lose weight. However much you have them eating? Probably add some. In the real world, Scott would absolutely not be drinking a smoothie without protein powder added.
Also in the real world, most hockey players don't always have visible six-packs. Shirtless pictures of hockey players are easy to come by; they love posting pictures of themselves in bathing suits, and for good reason! They are all very fit! But they're not bodybuilders; it's functional. The places they're going to be overdeveloped are their forearms, their thighs, and their butts. (The show did a pretty good job of this.) They also cannot let themselves get dehydrated enough to "pop." If you want to see some actual real live naked hockey players, the ESPN Body Issue featured a few over the years: Tyler Seguin is popular (look him up, you'll see why), but you can also find Martin St. Louis, Zdeno Chára, Brent Burns, and a few others. I wouldn't be surprised if Scott or Ilya did a spread in-universe, but I think it stopped around 2015/2016.
Uniforms
I recommend finding a good video to show you everything hockey players wear if you can, but the short answer is: UnderArmor (or similar), chest protector, shoulder pads, elbow pads, jersey on top, and compression shorts, breezers/hockey pants (they're breezers if you're from Minnesota and hockey pants everywhere else) that come with padding/protectors, cup (two if you're a goalie), shin protectors, hockey garters, hockey socks, sock-socks sometimes, and skates on the bottom. Some guys don't wear UnderArmor—look up interviews with Jake Middleton if you're bored. He came out with a shirt on for an interview recently and we were all worried.
All players after 2013 (with a few rare exceptions) have worn visors on their helmets, the clear plastic covering their eyes. A few guys have ear coverings on their helmets; Crosby does. Guys are supposed to wear mouthguards so they lose fewer teeth, but if you see a mouthguard in a game, it’s probably because a guy is chewing on it. (Matthew Tkachuk is a serial offender.)
Also, hockey jerseys all have a little strap (called the “fight strap”) on the back that attaches to their shorts, so it can't get pulled off (or, more relevantly, over their head) in a fight. Sometimes it malfunctions. (See: https://www.nbcsports.com/nhl/news/video-wayne-simmonds-finishes-fight-with-kevin-bieksa-completely-shirtless For the record, the guy he fought is now a TV commentator in Canada.)
Goalie pads are special. I can’t explain them, sorry. There’s probably a video out there for them, too. Their masks (which cover their whole faces, with bars over their eyes so they can see) are often designed by local tattoo artists and can be extremely cool!
Contracts
Contracts in hockey are complicated, again! So you come into the league at whatever age (under 25, usually) and you first sign an entry-level contract, which is always 3 years long and has a maximum contract value (just a bit under $1M—minimum is always the league minimum, which is currently $775,000). When that ends, you’re a restricted free agent (RFA), which means that your team gets first dibs on you, but if they decide not to re-sign you, then you become an unrestricted free agent (UFA) and can go anywhere. (It’s more complicated than this. Google “offer sheet Holloway” if you want to know.) Your next contract, unless you’re Shane or Ilya, is usually a short one (a “bridge contract”) to get you to age 25, when under the modern (post-2013) rules, you’re allowed to get a contract that has no-trade provisions. (Some possibilities are a list of teams you won’t be traded to, something like 10 or 14 teams long; some are no trades at all [no trade clause; you can still be waived, which I’ll talk about in a second]; some are full no-movement clauses, no trades or waivers.)
(A waiver is where they put your contract up to be claimed by someone else if you want; if you clear waivers, as in don’t get claimed in 24/48 hours, you can be assigned to the AHL. OR they can put you on waivers for contract termination, which sometimes happens for okay reasons—guy desperately wants to go home and play in the KHL or something—but is most likely because the guy did something shitty and they just want to get rid of his ass.)
Scott Hunter, for example, probably signed his first big-boy contract prior to 2013, I think, since he’s a few years older than Ilya and Shane (I think 3 in canon, but……… yeah), and that means he could have signed a 13-year contract, which is frankly absurd. When the 2013 CBA (collective bargaining agreement; hockey players are unionized but they don’t call it a union because of snobbery) was signed, contracts were limited to 8 years, and teams were allowed to buy out guys with contracts longer than 8 years if something blah blah you don’t need to know this go look up Danny Brière if you’re actually interested.
If a team wants to re-sign a player at the end of the contract, they are allowed to start negotiating with a player a full year before the contract ends. Other teams are not allowed to approach the player directly until after the contract officially ends (July 1, usually), but what usually happens is that if the player doesn’t want to sign with the team, or the team doesn’t actually want to sign the player, they trade the player before the end of the contract, which gives the other team the right to negotiate with the player either immediately (if it’s less than a year to the end) or right on July 1.
The current salary max for an individual player is I think $19 million. No one is making that; the most anyone currently makes is around $15M, and Kirill Kaprizov will make $17.6M starting next year. If your question is how much are Shane and Ilya making, probably $9-10M, based on, you know, what similar players were making at the time.
I have more to say about this, but I can't do it without spoilers for episodes that haven't happened yet, so maybe there will be an update in a few weeks.
More?
I have like. So much more knowledge, like, defensive structures, specifics about the power play and penalty kill, line structure, different kinds of players, hockey fights (I have a whole PowerPoint for this but it's not available until after the first of the year), why refs suck (they do, just accept this), suspensions, different kinds of hits, why the vast majority of coaches are old enforcers/4th-liners, why the PWHL is the superior league (JAILBREAK GOALS Y'ALL and also the 3-2-1 points system is inherently better), and the Olympics/Olympic break, but . . . This is much too long, anyway.
"Stephanie, how do you know all this?" I watch a LOT of hockey. Like. So much. I'm the jackass reading hockey romance and complaining about mistakes to my friends. (Functionally none in RR, for the record. A few quibbles, like the fact that after the 2013 CBA, basically no one has road roomies, but whatever.)
Anyway. Ask questions! Please. Or watch videos for hockey newbies! Or ask a million other people—I’m just some rando.
Also thanks to sunlight, beautifulduckweed, vinia, and PerfectlySteadfast for suggesting things that I failed to explain that seem perfectly straightforward to me! Like . . . how many players are on the ice at once.
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hi syn! love the anti tlg posts yayy i really agree so hard about how it feels like being gaslit by an entire fandom. regarding hollanov playing on the same team, i have a question for you as someone who knows way more about hockey than i do!! i totally agree putting them on different lines is very unsatisfying for a lot of reasons, but what about the all stars 2017 setup (move one of them to the other's wing)? how realistic and feasible would that be? or would it still be a downgrade for whichever takes the move bc it's not his usual position?
Generally no, but it kind of depends on how you look at it.
It’s not unheard of for players to change positions. Hall of Fame player Sergei Federov switched from center to defense. Claude Giroux went from center and right winger and he did that switch as the captain for the Flyers. Like it’s rare to change positions but it very much does happen, and I’ve never seen it be perceived as a mark against the player who makes the switch. Like, it usually means that there’s a weakness on the team that they’re trying to account for and that the player who made the move is skilled enough to succeed in both positions.
That being said, center is typically perceived as the position that is more difficult and controls more of the play.
To be clear, being center does not mean that you are the team’s best player. Quinn Hughes is widely considered to be one of the best players on the planet and he’s not even a forward, let alone the center. Being center is not per se considered an indication of a player’s of skill level. It just means that you’re playing a role that is generally considered to be more demanding and in control of more of the play. That being said, there are plenty of teams that have wingers (the position Ilya plays in the All Star game) as their best player, with a big example being my favorite player, Jason Robertson. I personally think he’s the best player on the Stars and he plays left winger. So moving one or the other of them to winger wouldn’t be publicly viewed as a downgrade, and it wouldn’t be a downgrade to their game play as long as they were happy and fulfilled and successful in that position.
To be clear, it’s not unheard of to have a top of the line player on second line.
The first line is traditionally comprised of the best offensive players on the team. But sometimes you put a top offensive player on the second line for more depth. The other team doesn’t get as much of a break and the scoring happens more regularly. It can be strategic and usually happens if you’ve got two top tier players who play the same position.
That being said, I do personally think putting Shane on second line is still a downgrade to his career, especially on a team like the Centaurs.
The second line is traditionally comprised of worse players, and hockey is very much a team sport. The Centaurs are doing better by the end of the long game but they’re still struggling. Shane is going to go from being the first line of the best team in the division to being linemates with some of the worse players of one of the worst teams in the division, including most likely Tanner Dillon, who gets demoted from first line and replaced by Troy Barrett for fucking sucking at his job. I can’t remember if he’s ever explicitly stated to be second line now, but that’s most likely where he is. So Shane’s not going to be able to do well if the rest of the line doesn’t get their shit together and learn how to pass to him. You can only do so much as a single player.
Second line also typically gets less ice time. Shane will likely be playing less hockey because he’s on the second line, which I think is going to hurt him. He likes every second he spends on the ice.
I think the biggest reason why having Shane on second line would be a downgrade is optics. Shane’s just taken a cataclysmic career hit. People are likely going to laugh at him for being second line on a bad team now and treat it as a sign that he is a worse player in a way that they wouldn’t if you just move one of them to first line winger. And you can say “who cares what people think” but I frankly would care. Like. I think it would take some remarkably thick skin to just ignore the level of life-ruining public vitriol that is directed as Shane at the end of the long game. People have committed suicide over that kind of public backlash. It is so far from a minor thing.
And I think the biggest reason to have them both of the first line is because they legitimately like to play together, and they simply won’t get to do that anymore if they’re on different lines. One will tag out when the other tags in. I think it would drive them fucking nuts. At least if they’re on the same line, they get to play together.
And it would also mean that both of them are played out to maximum effect. If you put either one of them on second line, their efficacy will be crippled by their linemates, who, again, just aren’t very good. Putting them on the same line means that you’re getting maximum impact out of two generational talents. Spreading them across two lines means that your scoring is going to be more evenly distributed, but one of them is going to be much less effective than he otherwise could be because his linemates are fucking ass.
I personally think the best option is to have them both on first line delivering maximum damage together when Shane joins the Centaurs. It wouldn’t be perceived as an insult to either of them, and neither one of them would be handicapped by having shit linemates. Down the line, they can always explore putting one of them on the second line to better distribute the scoring, especially once they improve the players on the second line. There would be more distance and insulation from the backlash of the trip so it would be treated less like a career demotion and more like a strategic decision in the eyes of the public. And, again, putting one of them on the second line only helps distribute scoring if their linemates aren’t totally useless. I think until you improve the second line players on the Centaurs you’re more likely to decrease how much Shane can score rather than meaningfully increasing scoring on the second line. It’s going to make Shane’s career worse more than it improves the team.
I’m far from a hockey expert, so a lot of people may disagree with this assessment, but that’s my take on it.
This is a great post. I've seen so many posts about Shane has to play 2C, it's the only thing that makes sense that I researched real line strategies and multiple team compositions, but I read this post and then I wondered, what the fuck am I doing?
I have come to the conclusion that Shane should play 1C and Ilya should play his wing all the time. "It's bad hockey strategy"--I don't care. If this is a fluffy wish-fulfillment romance book, and the only stakes that matter are the character's feelings, then Shane's feelings should be prioritized by the narrative. I don't care about what makes realistic hockey strategy in a book that is completely unserious about its world-building stakes. If "it's wish fulfillment" can handwave away actually grappling with the rape culture, racism, and homophobia it brings up, it can handwave away maximizing the strategy of line deployments in a book series that has literally never shown a single hockey game for more than one play.
Last year Ottawa sucked and won the draft. They got the first pick and drafted a great center who played one more year in the NCAA to lead his team to championship victory and now he's making the move to the NHL. He can be 2C. Luca and Troy can be his wings. The top line can be Shane, Ilya and Bood. Reasonable development. Problem solved.
I’m currently rereading Heated Rivalry, and in the first lines of the story —-the prologue—- we get Shane’s POV in 2016, six years into their situationship era. We learn three key things about Shane right away:
–He hates losing to Ilya, and it makes him so mad he goes home and drinks a beer.
–He sleeps with women because he thinks if he keeps doing it, he’ll eventually find the right one.
–He doesn't just take Ilya’s chirps. he is actually chirping him right back to the press.
There is also this conversation he has with Ilya that I think is very important to show their dynamic where Shane is an active participant in the teasing and bickering and is not sitting there taking it.
The epilogue also shows us Ilya taking care of Shane through sex because it’s their only language and he can tell that Shane is pretty mad about losing. But there is no power exchange dynamic going on.
I feel like if this scene was actually shown in the series, it could have changed how the fandom interprets Shane as a vulnerable, helpless child. Show!Shane is never shown picking up women, is only shown chirping Ilya once, and is never egotistical about winning against Ilya or mad about losing. Which is a big part of his character. His compHet, his competitiveness, and him in relation to Ilya.
I think this scene is so important. Because it does encapsulate Shane's characterization as you point out, and also because it's the direct bridge between vegas and tuna gate. I also think they should have cut the scene between Carter, Scott and Shane about Russia's gay laws because it gave a lot of fans the wrong impression that Ilya didn't want to talk to Shane at the rink because he was worried about being outed (and that Shane was stupid for not understanding that when there's literally no chance that Russian intelligence is going to interpret 'are you okay' between two work colleagues as a sign of gay sex), instead of that he was worried about how much he wanted to emotionally lean on Shane. Ilya could have brought up the Russian law in the Tampa hotel room, which is when it's emotionally relevant anyway.
The books have very clear cause and effect in their relationship, and I do give Reid credit for being the stronger romance plotter in HR than Tierney.
Sochi: Ilya gets scared of his feelings for Shane and pulls away, ghosting him ->
Vegas: Ilya tries to convince himself that he can have emotionless sex with Shane, fails, but Shane gets the message that this is fuck buddies only and is mad in the elevator at himself that he realizes he wishes it could be more ->
Prologue: Shane is fully in the mindset of fuck and get out, this is the emotional repression sex apartment, no feelings allowed, but Ilya is regretting the emotional distance and trying to flirt a bit without success ->
Tuna Melt: Ilya decides to up the stakes (stay over, eat) because he wants to be friends with benefits, but doesn't want to say the words and the lowkey flirting at hookups isn't working; Shane freaks out that Ilya is changing the parameters of their relationship again without talking clearly ->
Tampa: Shane has accepted what he wants and goes after it; they finally are brave enough to communicate
The show's romance is held up by the amazing actors over the story beats in my opinion. Sochi is turned into Ilya is mad that Shane is carelessly risking outing him, which just makes Shane look bad for no reason. The montage replacing the prologue shows everything's great, which makes Shane's freak out in Boston seem entirely on his internalized homophobia instead of equally Ilya's communication choices throughout their situation. I actually dislike that Shane apologized about Boston and Ilya didn't, when Ilya's actions during their situationship were also contributors, because a lot of people have taken that to mean that Shane was being unreasonable or stupid in freaking out when he wasn't.
the "ilya chose shane over hockey by leaving boston/signing with ottawa" narrative has already been debunked like ten different ways. (it's been pointed out that he was already going to leave boston and sign with a canadian team, that he could have signed with montreal to be teammates with shane earlier but he didn't want to take the pay cut, etc.) but has anybody talked about how the text itself asserts that the centaurs should, on paper, be a great team? in theory, they're not supposed to be a "sacrifice," they're supposed to be good. great, even! in chapter 7 of TLG, ilya himself is confused about why they're losing all the time
i'm no hockey fan, but my reading here as someone who casually follows professional basketball is that the text, filtered through ilya's confusion, actually does provide an explanation for why the centaurs are underperforming: all the pieces are there, they just haven't clicked yet. the team is having chemistry issues, which is pretty important for a team sport! wyatt has to block an insane number of shots per game, which is only necessary because the cens' defense is letting an awfully high amount of shots through (and defense isn't merely a matter of talent and size, it's also about constantly putting in effort and applying pressure and being in the right place at the right time, which requires seemless coordination between teammates). and lastly, ilya is "still scoring plenty of goals," but "he couldn't be a whole team."
this is where the reader connects the centaurs' poor teamwork with where ilya's character arc is currently at. he's lonely, he's not communicating his mental health struggles with his boyfriend, he's cut off his friends in boston whom he's afraid of coming out to because he thinks they might reject him, and he's not as close to his new teammates as he wants to be.
thematically, it makes sense to interpret this excerpt as implying that part of the blame for the centaurs' chemistry issues rests on ilya's shoulders as their star center and captain. ilya is good enough as an individual player to force goals through on his own, so if you check his points total you get the impression he's carrying the team. but when it comes to the parts of the game that need more communication and coordination with his teammates, the less flashy details that transform a collection of talent into a well-oiled machine, such as defensive positioning and playmaking, the team is struggling. ilya is struggling, as their leader and star player.
this doesn't make ilya a bad hockey player by any means, but the description TLG gave here reminds me of plenty of other offensive machines (not naming names) in team sports whose heroball (or, in this case, heropuck?) tendencies can end up hurting rather than benefiting their teams. and ilya isn't noted for having a high hockey IQ either, so this interpretation and his inability to understand why the cens are losing don't contradict his established competence or intelligence. he's a great hockey player and a good captain and like any other athlete he has his flaws. it's just unfortunate for him that in TLG those flaws are exacerbated by his depression.
and to cement the subtext that ilya's leadership earlier in the book had failed to reapond to the moment (if months of losing and arguably being one of the worst teams in the league can be called a singular "moment"), the centaurs' post-emergency landing winning streak starts with ilya giving a locker room pep talk that his own narration admits is rare.
we don't see the game itself, but ilya's newfound openness revitalizing his team's confidence is narratively significant. it's the beginning of their upward swing. he's finally starting to communicate with them and the implication is that this change is reflected in their chemistry on ice too
so where was i going with this? oh right. it's that the "ilya chose shane over hockey" narrative is just patently false. ilya's self-perception that signing with ottawa instead of staying with boston (which he was never going to do in the first place, why did TLG just completely forget this?) and winning cups (which is never a guarantee in a sport, hello???) was a sacrifice he made for shane is incorrect. sacrifice implies he signed with ottawa expecting to lose a lot, and he didn't. sacrifice implies that losing a lot was part of the plan, that it was a trade-off he willingly made, and it wasn't. it just happened because that's how sports are! a team underperforming relative to its talent and roster construction because of chemistry issues—which they later overcome with the power of friendship!—is not making a sacrifice, it's a skill issue.
where it gets confusing to me is that the text shows us that ilya's self-perception is incorrect, it tells us through galina that he shouldn't have to choose between hockey and his boyfriend. but when it comes to shane, the book hammers in over and over again that he does need to choose between hockey and ilya. it tells us that he needs to make career sacrifices for ilya (taking a pay cut, losing the C and his position on the first line) that ilya already refused to make for him (we know this because at the end of HR he straightforwardly rejected that option, and at the end of TLG the idea of giving up anything to make shane's move to the centaurs smoother and less of an optics nightmare doesn't even cross his mind. he doesn't even go hey maybe my extremely overqualified and underpaid husband should at least have the A, and the fact that nobody else does either is so crazy!).
there's just this deeply uncomfortable double standard in the way these two characters are written. it's meant to convey that shane is a selfish partner who needs to repay his perfect sad white boyfriend's alleged sacrifices, and we know this for a fact because rachel herself calls shane selfish (while ilya's supposed greatest flaw is his fear of being hurt ijbol), but that's not what's happening here at all. that narrative falls apart so fast under the gentlest of scrutiny. like if anything, the exact opposite of that narrative is happening?? how do people read this and not go, wow this story is so weird to its protagonist of color
It wasn't a Sacrifice 😩 for him because he knows Ottawa are a good team, with a good roster, and a good coach, who can afford his salary, and even give him a captaincy over more worthy veterans.
The only reason they lose is Ilya's untreated depression and concomitant executive dysfunction / failings as a captain.
He traded for the Canadian passport; not Shane. Because America was bad for Russians. So he was never going to stay in Boston anyway, and Shane could've dropped dead and he would still be playing in Canada.
Despite Shane doing nothing wrong, the book argues that the white man shouldn't be suffering but the POC man should suffer or his love doesn't count?? Is that right??
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Would the Centaurs Actually Like Ilya By The Long Game?
So, TLG has the fans being wild for Ilya and everyone on the team admiring and liking him, but is that actually reasonable?
When Ilya came to the Centaurs, he took a substantial portion of their salary cap (likely 16%-18% of the cap for 4% of the roster), a salary that was 2x+ more than any of the other players, and he wanted the C.
And then he apparently does the minimum as a leading player until the plane crash, refusing to attend team events to build bonds or lead his line.
Wyatt was a great goalie, and was regularly stopping forty shots or more to keep them from losing to badly. Ilya was still scoring plenty of goals, but it wasn't enough. He couldn't be the whole team.
This is a crazy take. If Ilya was a winger, fine, but he's the superstar center. It's his job to lead the offense as a playmaker. That means not only scoring goals himself, but getting his line going. Even in his best season, Ovechkin had 0.79 goals per game. Crosby's highest points per game in a season was 1.68 (Ovi, as a winger, was 1.51 because hockey is a team game, not heroball). Ilya is out here going, 'I'm scoring my 0.8 goals per game' while not setting up assists for his teammates, and you are telling me that his teammates don't care? That they wouldn't view this as him playing for highlights instead of playing for wins?
You are telling me that a Canadian hockey media market isn't pressing him on his tiny goals-to-assist ratio? No, everyone is just so happy this special hockey boy came to their team and then didn't improve it's record for years? And apparently can't work with anyone on the team?
Also, as soon as Ilya decides to start being present in the locker room after the plane crash, the team does a 180 and becomes good enough to knock out the reigning Stanley Cup champions in the playoffs. So, they had the assets for success and were being held back by dysfunctional chemistry. Doesn't that suggest that Ilya was a negative part of the team culture before? Wouldn't his teammates have resented him wanting the C and then not setting the mentality?
There's really no point to all this, and I don't think this reflects on Ilya's character. I think it's just more evidence that the hockey is treated as nonsense in these books.
entry-level job with a 23k salary asking me to write a minimum 2,500-word essay where i extravagantly praise The Company and express dewy-eyed admiration for their Glorious Mission Statement. i hope king arthur returns and slices every hiring manager to ribbons with his big sword
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