I know you're not a heated rivalry blog so no worries if you don't wanna talk about it, but something I've seen people talk about wrt Shane being iced out of the team is that it'd actually be BECAUSE of the fact that the Canadiens carry more meaning than one player himself. I guess the theory is that because Shane made himself a story and stand out/bigger than the team identity, he had to go. Personally I disagree with this theory because I think his personal story and life being given precedence over what he did for the team's legacy itself with the cups would be worse, but I'd love your thoughts
i did watch the show, because it would be insane of me not to watch the hockey show made by certified guy who went to my high school jacob tierney, but tbh the fanbase was designed in a lab to get on my nerves, so i mostly stay away.
short answer: boooooo tomato tomato tomato that's mtl slander get out of my house
long involved navel gazing answer: first of all that absolutely stinks of people who want the storyline to be justified (for whatever reason they might want that) so they assume the conclusion and work backwards.
so obviously the closest real life comparison we have to shane's position is pk subban, who, being Black, was the constant scapegoat in certain elements of the press and the fanbase, but who (despite that attempted scapegoating) was and is utterly beloved by The City at large. like this dude was the non stop target of press guys like jack todd who still want every hockey player to be a cardboard cutout in public (lest they be accused of having "character issues"), but he was larger than life anyway, thrived in the spotlight, and regularly had his name chanted by the bell centre faithful. he "made himself a story" constantly, because he was electric and loud and expressive. like, the pk trade to nashville is probably what rachel was mad about when she wrote Villainous Montreal into the long game, let's be real. i personally think pk's been spending too much time being wealthy in the united states lately, and he's had some dumb takes about e.g. wayne gretzky's politics that i wish he hadn't said out loud in public, but all that aside, i am 100% confident that if he went to the habs game tomorrow and his face appeared on the jumbotron for 1.4 seconds, the whole crowd would stand up and delay the game for several minutes.
pk subban, for all his and (and carey price's) brilliance, won zero stanley cups.
and somebody wants to tell me that a three-time cup winning captain, a franchise hero, a man whose place in the rafters would be secured before the age of 27, could be dropped from the montreal roster--for reasons unrelated to hockey, mind you--without the city going so berserk that the book would have to change genres??
habs who win are canonized. we all know this. and the montreal canadiens' history being so intertwined with that of a literal political and cultural revolution gives us, frankly, an outsized interest in underdogs. we fucking love an underdog, man, we love fighting the english, we love overthrowing the catholic church. i am completely convinced that a three-time cup-winning habs captain getting outed against his will would activate a level of montreal-ness about said captain never before seen in the modern era. responding to the injustice of him being outed would be folded right into the franchise's whole identity instantly and without hesitation. a gm who traded him after that would be run out of town, pelted with rotting produce.
and the fact that none of these repercussions are handled in the books just tells me that rachel fully does not understand what the relationship between montreal and its hockey players actually is. obviously, randoms reading the books/watching the show can say whatever they want to justify the storyline, that's their right. but im gonna hate it and make fun of it because mfs are talking shit about my city.
"responding to the injustice of him being outed would be folded right into the franchise's whole identity instantly and without hesitation" this is absolutely it. it'd be folded into mythology. the captain who was outed against his will, the hero who brought the cup home three times who was made a targetāgod can you guys even imagine what would happen when they realized the commissioner was threatening him? montreal fans are like, practically desperate for a reason to get mad at the league and this would be the perfect time, even beyond the shane of it all
