the "ilya chose shane over hockey by leaving boston/signing with ottawa" narrative has already been debunked like ten different ways. (it's been pointed out that he was already going to leave boston and sign with a canadian team, that he could have signed with montreal to be teammates with shane earlier but he didn't want to take the pay cut, etc.) but has anybody talked about how the text itself asserts that the centaurs should, on paper, be a great team? in theory, they're not supposed to be a "sacrifice," they're supposed to be good. great, even! in chapter 7 of TLG, ilya himself is confused about why they're losing all the time
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!).
there's just this deeply uncomfortable double standard in the way these two characters are written. it's meant to convey that shane is a selfish partner who needs to repay his perfect sad white boyfriend's alleged sacrifices, and we know this for a fact because rachel herself calls shane selfish (while ilya's supposed greatest flaw is his fear of being hurt ijbol), but that's not what's happening here at all. that narrative falls apart so fast under the gentlest of scrutiny. like if anything, the exact opposite of that narrative is happening?? how do people read this and not go, wow this story is so weird to its protagonist of color
