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it upsets you when people misinterpret his actions because you love him so much you know why he's doing these things even though people may get it wrong? shane, on the other hand.... he's selfish. he's just stupid. he doesn't understand the dark side of hockey. he's oblivious. agrees with the popular hc that he's autistic and then walks it back bc that resulted in people having empathy for shane (and also makes clear that it is ilya's responsibility to communicate more effectively to accommodate his partner, which we just can't have. ilya can't change his behavior to accommodate shane. it always has to be the other way around).

"Not everything is about you, Hollander." He didn't look at Shane at all when he said it. His voice hadn't been angry. He just sounded...tired. And sad. Shane studied his profile. His own anger left him, and he found himself caring about Ilya Rozanov, which was an odd sensation.

Characters misreading each other is a very common romance trope, like in Pride and Prejudice. Usually that's something that is eventually resolved as the characters come to know each other better, but Reid cannot stand for Ilya to be thought badly of by the audience even for a scene--even when the characters barely know each other at all. Instead, Shane has to have a perfect perception of Ilya's mental state (even though that directly contradicts her description of Shane's qualities) and immediately puts his own feelings aside to center Ilya's. See, Ilya isn't being a jerk, reader, Shane is concerned about him so you should be too!

It happens in the Sochi scene as well.

Rozanov was being an asshole, which was nothing new, but he didn’t seem to mean it. In fact, Shane would bet that Rozanov would actually really like him to stay. He looked like he could use a hug.

i'm no hockey fan, but my reading here as someone who casually follows professional basketball is that the text, filtered through ilya's confusion, actually does provide an explanation for why the centaurs are underperforming: all the pieces are there, they just haven't clicked yet. the team is having chemistry issues, which is pretty important for a team sport! wyatt has to block an insane number of shots per game, which is only necessary because the cens' defense is letting an awfully high amount of shots through (and defense isn't merely a matter of talent and size, it's also about constantly putting in effort and applying pressure and being in the right place at the right time, which requires seemless coordination between teammates). and lastly, ilya is "still scoring plenty of goals," but "he couldn't be a whole team."

this is where the reader connects the centaurs' poor teamwork with where ilya's character arc is currently at. he's lonely, he's not communicating his mental health struggles with his boyfriend, he's cut off his friends in boston whom he's afraid of coming out to because he thinks they might reject him, and he's not as close to his new teammates as he wants to be.

thematically, it makes sense to interpret this excerpt as implying that part of the blame for the centaurs' chemistry issues rests on ilya's shoulders as their star center and captain. ilya is good enough as an individual player to force goals through on his own, so if you check his points total you get the impression he's carrying the team. but when it comes to the parts of the game that need more communication and coordination with his teammates, the less flashy details that transform a collection of talent into a well-oiled machine, such as defensive positioning and playmaking, the team is struggling. ilya is struggling, as their leader and star player.

this doesn't make ilya a bad hockey player by any means, but the description TLG gave here reminds me of plenty of other offensive machines (not naming names) in team sports whose heroball (or, in this case, heropuck?) tendencies can end up hurting rather than benefiting their teams. and ilya isn't noted for having a high hockey IQ either, so this interpretation and his inability to understand why the cens are losing don't contradict his established competence or intelligence. he's a great hockey player and a good captain and like any other athlete he has his flaws. it's just unfortunate for him that in TLG those flaws are exacerbated by his depression.

and to cement the subtext that ilya's leadership earlier in the book had failed to reapond to the moment (if months of losing and arguably being one of the worst teams in the league can be called a singular "moment"), the centaurs' post-emergency landing winning streak starts with ilya giving a locker room pep talk that his own narration admits is rare.

we don't see the game itself, but ilya's newfound openness revitalizing his team's confidence is narratively significant. it's the beginning of their upward swing. he's finally starting to communicate with them and the implication is that this change is reflected in their chemistry on ice too

so where was i going with this? oh right. it's that the "ilya chose shane over hockey" narrative is just patently false. ilya's self-perception that signing with ottawa instead of staying with boston (which he was never going to do in the first place, why did TLG just completely forget this?) and winning cups (which is never a guarantee in a sport, hello???) was a sacrifice he made for shane is incorrect. sacrifice implies he signed with ottawa expecting to lose a lot, and he didn't. sacrifice implies that losing a lot was part of the plan, that it was a trade-off he willingly made, and it wasn't. it just happened because that's how sports are! a team underperforming relative to its talent and roster construction because of chemistry issues—which they later overcome with the power of friendship!—is not making a sacrifice, it's a skill issue.

where it gets confusing to me is that the text shows us that ilya's self-perception is incorrect, it tells us through galina that he shouldn't have to choose between hockey and his boyfriend. but when it comes to shane, the book hammers in over and over again that he does need to choose between hockey and ilya. it tells us that he needs to make career sacrifices for ilya (taking a pay cut, losing the C and his position on the first line) that ilya already refused to make for him (we know this because at the end of HR he straightforwardly rejected that option, and at the end of TLG the idea of giving up anything to make shane's move to the centaurs smoother and less of an optics nightmare doesn't even cross his mind. he doesn't even go hey maybe my extremely overqualified and underpaid husband should at least have the A, and the fact that nobody else does either is so crazy!).

So, TLG has the fans being wild for Ilya and everyone on the team admiring and liking him, but is that actually reasonable?

When Ilya came to the Centaurs, he took a substantial portion of their salary cap (likely 16%-18% of the cap for 4% of the roster), a salary that was 2x+ more than any of the other players, and he wanted the C.

And then he apparently does the minimum as a leading player until the plane crash, refusing to attend team events to build bonds or lead his line.

Wyatt was a great goalie, and was regularly stopping forty shots or more to keep them from losing to badly. Ilya was still scoring plenty of goals, but it wasn't enough. He couldn't be the whole team.

This is a crazy take. If Ilya was a winger, fine, but he's the superstar center. It's his job to lead the offense as a playmaker. That means not only scoring goals himself, but getting his line going. Even in his best season, Ovechkin had 0.79 goals per game. Crosby's highest points per game in a season was 1.68 (Ovi, as a winger, was 1.51 because hockey is a team game, not heroball). Ilya is out here going, 'I'm scoring my 0.8 goals per game' while not setting up assists for his teammates, and you are telling me that his teammates don't care? That they wouldn't view this as him playing for highlights instead of playing for wins?

You are telling me that a Canadian hockey media market isn't pressing him on his tiny goals-to-assist ratio? No, everyone is just so happy this special hockey boy came to their team and then didn't improve it's record for years? And apparently can't work with anyone on the team?

Also, as soon as Ilya decides to start being present in the locker room after the plane crash, the team does a 180 and becomes good enough to knock out the reigning Stanley Cup champions in the playoffs. So, they had the assets for success and were being held back by dysfunctional chemistry. Doesn't that suggest that Ilya was a negative part of the team culture before? Wouldn't his teammates have resented him wanting the C and then not setting the mentality?