Kip (who is much more a menace in the books) Grady meets Ilya Rosanov and finds him hilarious. Anything Ilya dishes out, Kip can easily meet without being flustered or resorting to yelling (unlike the other hockey players). They hit it off well and have fun talking.
Kip, who knows that Ilya has called Scott a "fossil", a "dinosaur", and a "dad", teaches Scott how to fire back because as Scott's boyfriend, he does have to help him out. However, Scott just refuses to practice stooping to Ilya's level, so Kip has to be sneaky about it.
Kip starts referring to Ilya as "the baby" when talking to Scott trying to program the language into Scott's brain. "If you're old then he can be a toddler. He acts like one around you anyway." That's true. Scott's known Ilya for 8 years at this point and continuously forgets that the brat is no longer eighteen.
So Kip hatches his plan. He will teach Scott how to chirp Ilya without having to think about it. It's all about some neurolinguistic programming. Easy. Now after Admiral vs Raiders games, Kip asks Scott, "How as the baby today?" and at a certain point, Scott's adjusted to the termand replies with something like, "Cranky. He got a minor for slashing and got put in time-out only three minutes into first period."
And Scott and Kip just continue on with this until one day when they're all in the Kingfisher hanging out and Scott just naturally makes a comment about "the baby" to Kip right in front of Ilya, and Ilya just freezes. Shuts down completely for a good full minute before he can respond. Because it's very obvious from the conversation just who is the baby they are talking about.
"Who are you calling a baby?"
Scott, who realizes he might have finally flustered Ilya, just leans back and gives Ilya a smug but also affectionate smirk. "Honestly, Ilya, at this point, it’s just easier to categorize you as the 'baby' than it is to explain why a twenty-six-year-old multi-millionaire follows me around like a lost duckling just to tell me I’m old."
And later that night Ilya just has to call Shane about this and he's just yelling about the dinosaur having finally lost it and the world ending, and Shane is at first thinking their secret's out. However, once he drags the full story out of Ilya, he's just doing his best to hide his own laughter because "Yes, yes, he's losing it. No, you're not a lost little duckling. No, you don't act like a toddler around him....No, I'm not laughing. I...um...am crying over the obvious decline of a grea-decent hockey player."
