#shane wallander

So, imagine we have Shane “The Wall” Hollander who is a freaky good goalie, and not a brawler. He is a certified polite Canadian boy. He is also The Best at his job, as Shane Hollander would be.

Hockey players are feral about their goalies. You hit the goalie, it’s like crawling into your casket, because you’re going to get buried.

With this in mind, this goalie does not fight often, and if the goalie does not really want to fight on top of this, perhaps the goalie gets some leeway when there is a scrum.

Perhaps the goalie sees a guy who perhaps should not be getting into a fight.

Perhaps the goalie is a powerhouse, which it could be argued that every goalie must be in order to do goalie things, and doubly so if the goalie is the best goalie to be had.

So, minding all these things, I posit that Shane Wallander has the privilege of an indeterminate number of “yankings” of players from scrums that he spends carefully throughout his career.

It starts as a small, somewhat silly thing with his own teammates. He’s strong and quiet and possess a sense of authority that he does not exert often (one might imagine he could have been a captain in some other world). So when The Wall rips you outta’ a fight, you sit outta’ the fight.

It’s funny, it doesn’t happen super often, and nobody gets mad about it because he doesn’t abuse it. The first time he does it, it’s a brand new rookie who’s trying to carve out his place with the Voyagers, but he’s also not prepared to scrap with the seasoned NHL’er’s piled up behind behind the net… so as the most chill spectator on the ice, Shane pulls him out and they watch the linesmen sort everything out.

The day he pulls Boiziau out, a guy utterly unafraid of fighting, and he just goes with him without any real protest, is the day it sort of unspokenly becomes An Officially Understood Thing among the team that Hollander has pulling privileges with fights, and the Voyagers respect it. He usually has reasons, and they’re good ones, and everyone gets it once everyone chills out again. Like, someone with a pesky injury who probably shouldn’t be fighting, someone with some kind of “has to look nice” event coming up, or someone with a pregnant wife who really should not be unnecessarily stressed… the point is, Hollander keeps a very cool head, makes good life choices and all that, and if he pulls you out of a fight, you can bet there’s a good reason you forgot about and he’s remembered it for you.

Except, one day it’s a guy on another team. I’m going to borrow the “former teammates” situation from Stolarz and Zegras. It’s a guy who played with the Voyagers, he was nice, he got traded, and he has no business being in this scuffle. So, the “Wallander Yank” (I’m workshopping the name for this as I go here) is executed, and the sportscasters love it!

Hollander is known for doing this to his teammates, but now apparently he’s doing it to former teammates! The pool has widened!

And so it goes, the pool slowly, reasonably, calmly expands, and Hollander has proved himself to be such an elite caliber of goalie and hockey player, most submit to being pulled. And if you’re chill, you might even get treated to some dryly hilarious comment about what’s going on, the players involved, linesmen’s actions… goalies are weird, but they can also be funny, and it’s not so bad.

And pretty much everyone knows that if the Voyagers goalie grabs the back of a player, he’s not fighting, so nobody tries to smash him about it. Most of the time. There have been exceptions though, but he also doesn’t do this horribly often anyway.

Ilya probably thinks it’s hilarious, and I don’t know if he hopes it happens to him, if he tries to get into scrums that happen by the net so there’s probable cause to be yanked by The Wall. I dunno. He’s probably not super successful with that avenue.

Shane probably knows this and only does it in very special circumstances, maybe when Ilya doesn’t actually want to be yanked, because that’s probably the best time to do it.

But yeah! That’s what I got.

What do the people think?

Could he instead be developing on the same timeline as #1OVA marc andre fleury and debut in the same rookie season as Ilya? Yes, but the point is imagine you are Shane Hollander and you’ve sucked dick at the draft and you try to lock your queerness in a box of childhood and you get down on yourself it probably didn’t mean the same to him as it did to you, he probably hooks up with guys all the time, no he’s got a reputation for hooking up with girls, he’s probably also put this in a box and forgotten all about you, you want to make him remember you IN A HOCKEY WAY, because hockey is special and that sex toootallly wasn’t Shane is thinking this and the radio plays this new song called You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful By One Direction

What if, after the Wallander Yank gets noticed as a standard occurrence, Shane Hollander gets invited to Sesame Street as a novelty?

Imagine this nice goalie, if you will, who has a reputation for calm and collectedness, talking very seriously with muppets. And it’s immediately apparent to all of the adults that he also has a lot of experience talking with small children.

There is a part where he blocks a handful of pucks gently tossed at a little net on the set, and then the Count gets to count all of the ones he stopped (which is all of them).

“Mister Hollander stopped all the pucks! Let us count them! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! Ten pucks!”

“Yes, and we collected them all for the Count to count them.”

“And Mister Hollander did not miss any of the pucks. That is a good job!”

“No goals; that is correct Count.”

And then he gets to meet Cookie Monster and they discuss the composition of hockey pucks and the structural unsoundness of cookies for a hypothetical game of hockey using cookies as pucks.

The joke for this segment is Shane having to keep Cookie Monster from trying to eat a puck, saying very seriously,

“Cookie Monster, if you try to eat a hockey puck, you’ll get sick and you might hurt your mouth.”

“Hurt his mouth! Cookie Monster does not want to hurt his mouth on rubber cookies!”

“No, we wouldn’t want that. Then you would have to go to the dentist to get it fixed.”

“Has Mister Hollander had to go to the dentist to get his mouth fixed because he tried to eat a hockey cookie?”

“No, I haven’t had to get my mouth fixed from taking a puck yet. I wear a very big mask to protect my face. See?” And he puts on his goalie mask with the dangler.

“Ooh! That’s very big! But you cannot eat cookies with that very big mask on!”

“No, I can’t eat anything with this on, but I can drink water by squirting it through the cage.”

Which he demonstrates, and Cookie Monster oohs and aaahs and says that Shane could absolutely put milk in his squirt bottle and have cookies on his break. And then Shane replies that milk might make him sick in the middle of a game, and that he needs electrolytes and salt during a game to stay hydrated, and that cookies wouldn’t be a good idea in the middle of a game either and that they’re a sometimes food for special occasions.

And then there’s the “healthy food discussion” for the day, and Shane says that athletes have to eat the right kinds of fuel so their bodies can work really hard to have fun and play their games, and it’s a really cute segment.

Shane gets to talk to Elmo and demonstrates how he puts on his gear, the names of the pieces and what they do. Elmo finds it very funny that Shane looks so much bigger when he has all of the pieces on, and ask how he can possibly move in them. Shane demonstrates how his range of motion is still very good because he practices with all his gear and he’s flexible enough to be able to move around.

Shane talks to Big Bird about being brave when lots of very big men are skating at him very fast and aiming pucks at him in goal. But then they talk about how Shane’s friends help keep them away, and they help to take the puck away to try and score points in the other goal, and how the other team helps their goalie out too.

He talks to Bert and Ernie about getting along with friends who are very annoying. He mentions his best friend Hayden, who comes to visit him in the crease from time to time and makes sure he’s okay, and J.J. who also enjoys good jokes, and then tells them the story of the last prank J.J. Had pulled which involved mayonnaise in pudding cups.

Shane helps Grover dish out yogurt, and agrees with him that granola is a little suspect, and might best be left out of the yogurt. It may, by far, be the most stressful part of the day, because Grover accidentally spills a little, pulls out the wrong tub twice, and tries dishing up with a fork and a whisk before they manage to locate a spoon.

He talks to Oscar the Grouch about the nature of keeping people and pucks out of his crease, and how he deals with days when he gets angry or upset, and how grouchy hockey players can be, and how Shane learned how to be nice on grouchy days when people upset him. Oscar the Grouch isn’t totally convinced that it’s possible for Shane to be “happy in the paint” when people are slapping pucks at him, but Shane at least gets him to waver.

Hayden doesn’t understand why he wasn’t invited on Sesame Street, because he has kids, and they love the episode with Shane. Hayden does not realize the curse that is your children not being impressed when you have anything to do with their preferred entertainment/stories.

Ilya can’t believe Boring Shane Hollander got to go on Sesame Street and Star Center Ilya Rozanov didn’t, and he says as much when a reporter finally asks him what he thought.

Absolutely yes!

I love this idea, and I’ve played around with a draft where Shane makes an unexpected goal, but I love that you thought to take it further and gave him enough goalie goals to lead in them!

Headcanon Accepted!

That is so cool of you! Thank you so much for sharing!

Adding @the-loon-and-the-bear’s tags because they’re absolutely a golden addition!

#in my mind there is absolutely a moment where another player complains about losing #clearly implying that if /someone/ (coughcoughgoalie) did their job they would have no issue #and Shane sits there like #welp #would really help if I didn’t have to get /all/ of our goals #seeing as I have more than you this season <3

Not only can The Wall block your shots and make you cry like a middle-schooler who has never made a goal in his life and loses every game, he can also clear you like a track hurdle from a literal standstill while wearing almost fifty pounds of gear, instead of getting knocked over like a bowling pin when two hundred pounds of man comes careening at him in the crease.

So in one corner we have the most infuriating thing to ever happen to college hockey, McGill’s own problematic shadow-dweller and king of textbook hockey, David Hollander. In the other we have a budding masonwork masterpiece, pint-sized Shane Hollander in too-big goalie pads.

David starts to notice around age eight that Shane swaps between shooting pucks and blocking pucks when they’re play practicing frightfully well. He later learns that Shane is the only kid in his whole Timbit class who doesn’t make a fuss over being the goalie for the day, other than the singular boy who flat came to class on his first day talking about how he wanted to be a goalie. Wendel, was it? Wayne? Anyway, once that kid moved away, the only other kid who wasn’t mortally offended by being asked to wear goalie pads was Shane. And Shane was really good in goal, for a ten-year-old boy.

But ten-year-olds grow. Shane gets better.

David has to start practicing and polishing up his, not inconsiderable, old skills in earnest just to keep challenging his son. It gets to the point that he recruits all his beer league buddies and anybody around from college days or work who played hockey to come and play hockey with him and his son on the odd weeknight and rare, clear weekend… all to keep ahead of Shane. Just to keep him challenged and hungry and learning how to cope with a faster pace, more chaos, traffic, confusing plays, and no-win judgement calls.

By the time Shane is fifteen, he subs in every once in a while for this very team when their goalie is out. It squeaks by because it’s rare, and even though he’s not very big, he’s good enough to hold his own in an adult’s game.

Quiet, compact, eerily sharp Shane Hollander slowly becomes a name to watch for in Juniors.

Goalies don’t develop as fast as the other positions, but Shane is notable before he can legally drive.

Thanks to all the extra practice with Shane in goal, David’s beer league sharpens up and takes their championships more often than not. A bunch of blue-collar men have to work harder than they have in years to outwit lil’ Hollander in goal.

It’s frustrating when he’s not in goal too, because he’s a great forward in a pinch, with an impossible stride thanks to his flexibility rather than long legs, freaky fast without thirty pounds of pads strapped on, and a good head for defending. David’s friends have shaken their heads and tutted that his son has settled into the crease instead of a position as a flashy forward.

By the time Shane Hollander hits the NHL, he is like a shark moving quietly through the development teams, devouring the confidence of every puck handler that faces him in the net, leaving wrecked egos in his wake, and he is the only goalie prospect in the first round of the 09’ draft.

Nobody expects him to be the rock that Ilya Rozanov crashes into, and does not give ground in the onslaught.

Greater, more experienced, award-rich goalies get bamboozled by Rozanov.

But not Hollander.

Not David Hollander’s son. Not the son of the man who cut through flashy feints and straight to the quick when he checked or stole the puck.

Hollander has been defending against bigger, better, faster, more experienced players since he was ten years old. He sees your bullshit, raises his glove, and swallows your dreams of a goal. He is the only player, goalie or otherwise, not intimidated or enraged by Ilya Rozanov after playing him. Rozanov will have to work hard to break the brick wall that Hollander has made himself in goal. And Hollander will improve his game to keep abreast of all the skill and pressure Rozanov brings to the ice.

David enjoys listening to his friends lose their marbles over every Montreal game that his boy owns the net in, and basks in the satisfaction of watching all the hard work his son put in over all the years as it pays off and Shane lives his dream.

So now I have half of a one-shot of David coming to terms with the fact that his Small Boy Son is a holy terror to his grown-ass hockey friends who play competitively for fun.

It kind of creeps up on him over the years, and then cracks him over the head in the shower one night.

Yuna is… not so much blindsided as deeply surprised at the depth of critical skill David is itemizing. She knew Shane was good, but it didn’t hit home how good until David is saying he does the same with with a bunch of adults who’ve played hockey since they were little kids, and went to college to play and still play, as she watches him do with the actual kids in his class who complain that it’s “not fair when Shane is playing goalie.”

Because who would expect the goalie to hip-check people?

Nobody. Not a single soul.

Just join me in my imagination for a moment.

There you are, a regular little hockey player, you go after the puck behind the net where it’s just the goalie. This’ll be easy! Goalies play a different game than everyone else, just be careful not to smash them and spark a brawl… Then all of a sudden, you’re flying through the air, rethinking your life choices.

You just got hip-checked by a 5’10 goalie who might as well be a brick-and-mortar fixture living in the crease, with all of the zero times your team has been able to connect a puck to the back of his net. And he just booped you into the boards like it was nothing.

And you didn’t even get to touch the puck he was back there to set up.