brb going to the cottage

and then there’s shane. our socially awkward baby dealing with the weight of being the "future" for every asian kid who dreams of pro hockey. he has to be the perfect, polite golden boy to be respected, while ilya is pigeonholed as the "partying bad boy." they’re both being used as tropes while they’re just two isolated kids trying to survive the pressure of living up to the world's expectations

so ilya is sitting there drowning, masking his panic with faux-bravado, and then the STUTTER.

the normally chirping asshole phenom stutters, and in two seconds flat, shane helps. BUT THE FACT THAT SHANE ASKS FIRST?? he doesn't steamroll ilya; he looks at him and asks if it’s okay to speak for him. it’s the first time someone has offered ilya a hand instead of a leash. i am physically SOFT.

Shane isn’t just polite, he’s kind. And Ilya responds to that kindness. Shane could’ve easily let him twist in the wind during that press conference, but he didn’t.

And yeah, the league damn well should’ve provided an interpreter for this 19 year old rookie who’s still learning English. They were probably hoping ESL Ilya would accidentally say something newsworthy. Something that would fuel the rivalry narrative the league is already getting rich from, when they’re still just teenagers.

I suspect that, quite apart from being a kind person, Shane could also empathize with Ilya’s stutter here and fear of giving the reporter the wrong answer. For a canonically autistic person who is generally pretty awkward, Shane is smooth with the media.

I suspect Yuna got him extensive media training (because unlike Grigori Rozanov, she gives a shit about her kid and wants him to succeed as more than just an extension of her own ego). Shane knows how to react to tricky questions from reporters because he learned how.