I love the sochi outing au for so many reasons (like omg it has Obama rpf and hollonov are having their everlark plot) but my favourite thing about it is that Shane's ending is so much better than canon. He gets to keep his dream of staying at montreal!! He's going to retire there!! That's his city!! This version of Shane is probably more traumatised then Canon and yet the ending is so much better that it really goes to show just how bad the tlg ending is. For so many reasons but also bc it ruins the hr ending for me. The reason shane brings up ottawa is bc they can afford to pay ilya what he's worth, he can be captain there, and he can be the first line centre. The fact that apparently none of this matters to ilya when he suggests Shane moves to ottawa just makes him look like a massive dick and also makes me think that ilya should just have gone to montreal at the end of hr. "Oh but the rivalry means - " if people found out Shane got Ilya to come to montreal they would be high fiving him on every street in the city. Ahhhhhhhh thank you for writing aus that are saving me from this dog shit ending that I pretend is not real
In the books, when theyâre talking about Ilya switching to a Canadian team, Ilya proposes leaving Boston for a Canadian team himself. It is brought up explicitly because America is bad for Russians at the moment, and he wants non-Russian citizenship. And during the conversation, Ilya has this moment where he can tell Shane wants him to come to Montreal, but Ilya doesnât want to because Montreal could never afford both of them. Ilya says âNot Montreal,â and Shane immediately understands. He proposes Ottawa as an alternative because it needs a star center and has the cap space for Ilya.
And, critically, I cannot find a single mention of the fact that Ottawa is a bad team in Heated Rivalry itself.
Like. Please correct me if Iâm wrong. I canât remember any mention of the fact that Ottawa is terrible. I pulled up the pdf of the book and searched couldnât find a single mention of the word âCentaursâ in it. I searched every mention of the word âOttawaâ and couldnât find a single mention discussing how Ottawa was a bad team. The closest we get is Shane saying that they need a star center, but still needing a star for one position is a very different thing than it being the shittiest team in the whole league. And youâd think that Ilya would maybe bring up the fact that that team is absolute ass and would destroy his career if he went there if that was a legitimate concern. The Long Game rewrites its own canon to victimize Ilya and make Shane the villain in the Ottawa move. Its claims are fundamentally and irrevocably inconsistent with the explicit text of Heated Rivalry.
The entire dialogue around Shane being selfish in the Ottawa move drives me absolutely raving insane because it is fundamentally based in revisionist history. Shane is at no point in the conversation a driving factor in Ilyaâs decision to leave Boston. Ilya decides he wants to be on a Canadian team before he even talks to Shane. The fact that he wants to come to Canada specifically is because of Russia, not Shane. And picking Ottawa is for the sake of Ilyaâs career.
Signing with Montreal is outright considered and rejected by Ilya so he doesnât have to take a pay cut. The explicit reason why he doesnât want to sign with Montreal is the fact that Montreal cannot afford both of them. And that decision is later recast entirely into Ilya picking Shane over hockey. If Ilya wanted to pick Shane, he would have just taken the pay cut in heated rivalry and they would have been playing on the same team since fucking 2018âand it would have been on a team that Ilya himself describes as âthe most legendary team in the entire league.â He would have had a great team and been tearing it up winning Stanley Cups but he didnât want to take the pay cut or hit to his captaincy and his position and Shane fucking understood that and found him an alternative that wouldnât require him to sacrifice his own position.
They explicitly pick Ottawa so that Ilyaâs career doesnât have to suffer and then the Long Game revises the entire narrative to turn it into how Ilya sacrificed his career for Shane. It is absolutely nonsensical when read in light of their conversation around the move itself. They outright reject playing on the same team so Ilya doesnât have to sacrifice his own career.
And then!! All of the reasons why Ilya shouldnât have to sign with Montreal suddenly do not matter at all when itâs Shane who has to suffer them. Shane has to take a pay cut? Laugh it off. Hubby will provide. He loses his entire career as narrative punishment for âmakingâ Ilya sacrifice his career, but signing with Ottawa was explicitly so that Ilya wouldnât have to sacrifice his career. Ilya actually does what Shane is accused of and villainized for in The Long Game, and Shane never did it to begin with. I feel like Iâm being gaslit by an entire fucking fandom. Can anyone hear me hello
Shane gets to keep his team in the Sochi outing au. He gets to retire there. I put him through so much shit in the sochi outing au, but he gets to keep his team. I am building him a dream team in my mind and it will be so fucking narratively fulfilling so help me god
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