https://www.tumblr.com/urmomisabeefjerky/822794031657631744?source=share
In the final episode of the show when Ily and Shane are outed to his parents and Yuna is kind of unimpressed with the plan to get Ilya to Ottawa and Shane says something like "he's being loyal to me!" Is that part of the conversation in the books? I don't remember. And I feel like that's the only way you can interpret Ilya actually choosing Ottawa for Shane as early as the first book.
Nice perspective, anon. I mean, it does correlate pretty well with chapter 27 of HR for sure, but I would say it more shows Ilya choosing his priorities!
Either way, Ilya would need to get Canadian citizenship (since he doesn't want American), and so he has like 6-7? teams to pick from in Canada. In HR, Ottawa and Montreal are one hour apart, so it's nothing crazy to pick Ottawa as his team since they "need a star center" and are willing to shell out for Ilya. In fact, it's weirder that Ilya & Shane find long-distance to be so hard when it could've been written that they have a house in the middle and then boom 💥 a thirty-minute commute to see each other. But if you’re sending me an ask, you probably already know how much I hate TLG and RR's shallow writing in general.
Honestly, the only reason that the Ottawa move makes it seem like Ilya is choosing Shane over hockey is that TLG rewrites its own canon to make Ottawa a terrible team. It doesn't say anywhere in HR that Ottawa sucks or that Ilya would have to sacrifice by playing there.
Actually, there is more canon evidence that Ilya was just kinda a terrible captain, rather than Ottawa actually being a terrible team. There was this excellent analysis of how Ottawa-the-team turns into a metaphor of Ilya's mental state in TLG - not great, not clicking, not winning. But as soon as Ilya starts locking in and communicating with Shane, as well as trying to give speeches to the team and making them click, Ottawa is actually good. If you're interested in that analysis (far better than my little one), send me another ask, and I'll dig through my reblogs to find it!
Oh, here is the HR convo about Ilya moving from Boston "for Shane." [Shane's name in brackets was done by me]
Excerpt from Heated Rivalry Chapter 27: [Shane] told his parents the Ottawa/Montreal plan he’d outlined for Ilya the night before. “That,” Dad said, considering, “isn’t bad.” “You would leave Boston?” Mom asked, stunned. “For Shane?” Ilya didn’t hesitate. “Yes.” She frowned, as if she couldn’t believe anything he was saying was real. “Oh my god!” Shane exclaimed. “You’re actually conflicted, aren’t you, Mom?” “What are you talking about?” “You’re bothered by his lack of loyalty to his team!” “Well!” Mom said, as if that was a perfectly reasonable way to react to the fact that Ilya was so madly in love with her son that he was willing to throw his whole life into upheaval.
