ok ramblers, let's get rambling.

"You like tuna melt?" "You wanna... make me a tuna melt?"

do the cup wins still go as followed in canon? (boston win after sochi and then two back to back montreal (the montreal team does fuckin fall apart at shanes gayness in the story i think but then they did not have world leaders' opinions)) . if they do, i feel like every cup win wiuld have to have commentary on their relationship. and god forbid if the last match was between boston and montreal ! no one would be normal.

I don’t think even Crowell can touch them at this point. The United States and Canada, aka the two governments of the countries the NHL is fucking located in, just moved heaven and earth to get Shane and Ilya out of Russia. The United States specifically did it because they’re trying to use the story and ride the hype to force LGBTQ+ friendly legislation through the House and Senate. If Crowell goes after Shane and Ilya, he is going to get a very angry call from the President of the United States asking why the fuck he’s trying to screw the happy ending of a multi-nation rescue effort.

Like. Crowell just simply cannot afford to touch them. No one is investigating them. No one is making smarmy press releases about supporting traditional family values in the wake of this. Because the eyes of the world are suddenly turned in their direction, and the US specifically wants to make this into the part of a romance movie where the two love interests get to ride off happily into the sunset. If the NHL breaks from that narrative to investigate Shane and Ilya, it becomes increasingly likely that someone decides to turn around and investigate them.

The NHL is frankly a cesspit of systemic abuse. Like. The more I learn about it, the more horrifying it becomes. There was a case in the 90s where a couple of employees of the Toronto Maple Leaves were using their position to sexually abuse children in the stadium. One person eventually broke an NDA the Maple Leaves got him to sign about it and went public, and more than 100 people called the police to say the exact same thing happened to them. Some of them claimed that they’d been calling the Maple leaves for years telling them what had happened and that those employees should not be anywhere near children and they were just. Not investigating. And letting it continue. For years.

The NHL just. Routinely mishandles reports of abuse—verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. At most, people get slaps on the wrist before they’re reinstated a few years later, which is exactly what happened to a GM who covered up the fact that a Chicago Blackhawks coach was sexually assault one of his own players. He had to step down and was reinstated three years later, and he was immediately rehired by another team. The same bad actors never leave.

And it mishandles other reports too. Multiple players died from complications arising from CTE, a condition that arises from repeat blunt force head trauma, and the NHL purposefully elected not to investigate the condition so they could keep sending players back out post head trauma. Their favorite thing to do is to turn a blind eye.

There are just too many skeletons in the NHL’s closet, and if they piss off multiple world governments, then suddenly those same world governments may get very interested in investigating why their closet doors are always locked. They are gritting their goddamn teeth and shipping Hollanov or they risk sinking the entire boat.

For similar reasons, the Metros cannot get rid of Shane Hollander. They cannot hate crime Shane Hollander. The parasocial relationship he’s in with the entire country has now expanded to encompass an alarming percentage of the human population. The Metros owner is personally attending almost every home game now because every time a visiting dignitary that even vaguely supports queer rights is in the country, they attend a metros game to get a photo op with Shane Hollander. Members of multiple royal families have decided to attend a Metros game. You do not just fucking pass that kind of networking up.

Most people/megacorps that own hockey teams do not exclusively own a hockey team. Sports teams are the billionaire version of an investment property. Their fingers tend to be in many other pies.

Fuck off wealthy businessmen would absolutely kill for the opportunity to rub elbows with world leaders and major politicians that do shit like pass the legislation that affects their other business enterprises. No one on the metros is touching a hair on Shane Hollander’s billion dollar head. Ownership is not letting anything risk this for them.

I think the Metros still struggle in the wake of this. Some of the players are just straight up homophobic. The coach is straight up homophobic. His ass is immediately fired the second it gets back to the owner that he called Shane Hollander a faggot in the locker rooms upon his he return. Players who start shit or who stop playing well with Shane are offloaded. They are traded or sent down to the goddamn AHL.

The Metros cannot afford otherwise. The President of the United States is personally invested in Shane Hollander being one of the faces of gay rights, and they do not want that face to be “even in the best case scenario you will still be ✨hate crimed✨.” The liberal political party in both America and Canada share that investment.

Even beyond politics, the viewership on their broadcast just fucking skyrocketed from already-high numbers to a fuck-off record breaking high because all of those random people who’d never heard of the Metros before the Olympics are tuning in to see their boy again. And also the team is located in goddamn Montreal.

Again, Montreal is one of the most queer-friendly cities in North America, and it has been for a very long time. It has the oldest queer business on the fucking continent. Its gay village is the largest on the continent. And that is a city that loves to fucking riot. When Shane Hollander was outed as gay while in fucking Russia, the prime minister had to go on tv and beg the people of Montreal to not fly to Russia and try to take the riot to Putin because so many of them immediately bought fucking plane tickets to do exactly that. There were an alarming number of middle aged hockey dads who were convinced they were the key to Bringing Their Man Home.

Shane and Ilya went back to Montreal together as part of their Haha Thank You World For Saving Our Lives tour that they have to white knuckle their way through following their return and you would have thought it was goddamn pride month. Montreal was so so ready to embrace its gay hockey boy. They have never loved him more, and they already loved him to an alarming degree. Ilya makes it three days there getting the shovel talk from what feels like the entire population of Quebec before he’s like. Shane. You are being stalked by the entire city that you live in. And Shane’s like. Stalking is a very strong word. And Ilya’s like. Shane. There are shrines to you on what feels like every street in this city. You are like the gay hockey pope to them. And Shane like. Not loving the use of the word “pope” in that sentence. But. Sort of. Yeah.

The metros have no option but to pull the plug on anyone who is not willing to work with Shane after this. He is just worth too much money to them. The entire team would be rebuilt around them if needs must.

I think the cups go the same way they do in canon. Ilya still wins his immediately after Sochi. He would feel like he needed to prove himself more than ever. He just got driven out of his home country. Multiple world leaders had to intervene to get him out alive. Shane Hollander had to set his own life on fire to get him out, and if we go the route that I mentioned in the tags of the last post and say it was the Vegas rooftop kiss that did them in, then Ilya would be blaming himself because he initiated that kiss to begin with. And if you say the Metros had to be rebuilt around Shane because some of them were homophobic to him after, he would feel even worse about it, because he would feel like he had concrete proof that helping him made Shane’s life worse.

Ilya would need that goddamn win. He would want to prove to himself and to the rest of the world that he wasn’t just the guy whose country washed out at the Olympics and then immediately tried to kill him after. He’d want the cup to prove to himself and everyone else that he was worth the effort that went into saving him.

The next year, Shane would be the one that would need the win more than ever. His team just had to be rebuilt around him because he was too gay for some of them to work with him. He is someone who has always changed himself to conform with hockey. This is the first time ever that hockey conformed to fit him, and there would be a lot of people criticizing the team’s performance while it was still being rebuilt and saying he was not worth the effort they put into it. He’d be desperate to prove that he could still do this even though he was gay and with Ilya. So I think he still gets his back-to-back Stanley Cup wins.

I don’t think Shane and Ilya face each other in the playoffs immediately after Sochi. I think Shane’s team washes out because the coaching staff and multiple players had to be suddenly replaced mid-season. And there would be an agonizing amount of commentary around that fact. The blame for the metros suddenly failing would be placed squarely at Shane’s feet. His leadership and his ability to play would be questioned endlessly.

The Ilya we see in Heated rivalry would not be throwing the first punch, he's not an enforcer. Ilya is a star center and a Pest. He wouldn't be doing his job correctly if he was punching players every other game, it would end up with not enough ice time to let him be the playmaker he's paid to be.

But being a pest can be playmaking! Find a player to bait, emotionally push them just enough that they try to fight you, and then get the fuck out of there before the ref gives you both penalties. This gets your team the power play. There is probably someone on Ilya's line dedicated to helping him get out of the fights he starts, and finishing them for him!

I also think this is also something that Shane would respect. Ilya is good at it and it's a good strategy for his team. I don't think Shane would see it as some dirty tactic, because Shane probably thinks everyone with a brain can see it for what it is! He probably thinks everyone should be able to see that being an asshole is a tactic for Ilya, that it's something to ignore and not fall for, that it's a strategy and not personal beef.

[...] get me a frame of pretty green eyes again.