The Writings Of The Menace.

To the people who see this and at least sort of follow my blog in general:

Hi there! I’m so glad you like my silly stories!

I hadn’t thought about putting them in a series, but that might be a good idea! Especially if it keeps expanding as it has been.

Yuna isn’t quite as surprised, but nobody is ready for their only child to outstrip all of their peers.

And also a bunch of adults.

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.”

So, an update on the Wallander Yank; part 3 is solidly underway, and while it’s not flowing super smooth, I’m also working on it in snatches and bits, so this might be the roughest one yet. And they’re all rough!

But! Part 5 is complete! Since like, a month ago! And that one is my favorite! So after this, all I have to do is grind out part 4, and then make good use of my time with part 6.

This is not just “what a fine ass” in passing. This is 100% Beefcake Territory. It is not sculpted like a Greek statue. It is built like a Mack Truck. This is the inspiration for bulldozers. There is so much going on. Is it picturesque? Only for anatomy and physiology textbooks, probably under “proportional and healthy bodybuilder’s musculature” or something.

This is not your average aesthetic specimen. This is not your sleek little thoroughbred racehorse. This is a thick-ass draft horse who could pull a brick house off its foundations.

This is a 5’10” hockey player that can go 0 to 30 miles per hour in two seconds flat.

His barbell squats are the stuff of nightmares.

Nobody wants to work out next to him. He uses half the plates in the gym for his “easy day” workouts. It’s worse if he’s bulking.

Every single set of muscles has a spot on his workout list. It is an unending cycle of every quarter getting leveled up, like the video game psychos who level up every stat at the same rate for the whole game instead of focusing on the “important” stuff first.

His hip adductors and abductors are of a size that should be studied, and their flexibility on paper should be a joke, but his yoga absolutely is not.

Resistance training? Those are not exercise bands, Hollander. Those are gaskets for an fifty-ton industrial vehicle. Where did you even get them? Is it even legal for you to have them?

He gets bullied into participating in the “crack a watermelon with your thighs” challenge, and he makes it look so easy.

Box jumps? Mister five-foot-ten does a disgusting sixty-six inch jump.

That “fight” with Scott? The only reason Shane “Thunder-Thighs” Hollander moved at all when his teammates pulled him away was because he hadn’t set his skates and decided he wasn’t moving, actually. And what do you mean having skates on means you can be moved across the ice easy when someone wants to move you? Nobody ever told him that. Shane Hollander sets his skates and that’s the end of the negotiation. Between his beefcake-ness and skill in wearing knife-boots, forget moving him if he doesn’t want to be moved.

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.