There's something sort of funny but also very sad about how so much of the stress of keeping their secret is all down to things Shane and Ilya do early on to distance themselves from even the passing notion that they could be friends.
Shane could have let Scott's comment about "your boy, Rozanoz" slide and say yeah, actually we're really good friends, turns out no one else understands what it's like to have all this pressure and the manufactured rivalry, alone at the top together, etc. I like the guy, we hang out.
Scott (and probably lots of other players) just assumed they'd know each other and bought the way the league was selling them as a package deal. They totally could have taken advantage of that and made being seen together a normal thing from the beginning if all that paranoia wasn't so deeply ingrained, if the fear hadn't been quite so palpable.
Similarly, Ilya could have hung out with Shane in Russia. I know people like to defend his harshness at the arena because of the danger, and sure, there was legitimate danger. But it's obviously normal for players from opposing teams to hang out - Scott and Carter Vaughn can come say hi to Shane and get ice cream and go watch figure skating together and it's normal, even when they have US vs Canada games coming up.
Shane isn't trying to flirt or make a move on Ilya when he goes to check on him, and he doesn't ask anything that would give them away. He's checking on Ilya because he's concerned, offering his condolences on the bad game, etc. Even if the Russian players phones were being monitored in this fictional world, a simple conversation between friends about the competition wouldn't have stood out too badly.
Tbh, Ilya made it more dramatic than it needed to be, brooding on an empty balcony and being extra cryptic. "We are not anything" is a lot more suspicious in my mind than Ilya sitting with his fellow coworkers and watching the skating, or sharing a quick "yeah, the game sucked, talk to you about it later, man" or a simple text (in the real world, if Ilya's phone was truly bugged, the secret would be out anyway because it's not like the gov couldn't find out whose number that was, pseudonym or not, so I assume they weren't actually monitoring Ilya's communications in this 'verse).
It's just crazy how many of the hurdles they have to get over later on are ones they constructed themselves. The rivalry is partly a fun competition for them but also it's a very real barrier they've hidden behind long enough that it builds even the idea of them being friends into a legitimate mountain to climb before they can even think about coming out.
Like sure, the league is already a saw trap for them and would have been hostile regardless, but they make it even harder on themselves without realizing it will be harder to change the narrative later on. And a lot of that is because they're scared and in denial and because they don't think ahead or know any better, but it's also just sad. Because it didn't have to be that hard, and they have no way of knowing until it's almost too late to change it.
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