Chapter Text
Shane spends the next few days in a bit of a fugue state. He goes to physio, he shows up for the team in the ways he can, and he spends a lot of time wandering around his house, picking up things and putting them down at random. It’s a mausoleum to the failures of his late 20s. Actually, fuck that, no, his late 20s were great. He won two cups in his late 20s. He won two Harts and a Con Smythe in his late 20s. The house is a mausoleum to the failure of his marriage, and to his relationship failures in general, and also, possibly, to his inability to care about anything more than he cares about hockey. He’s probably going to have to figure that out. He tables the thought, though, because where to even start?
Instead, he reorganizes the kitchen, gets rid of a horrible painting Claire hadn’t taken with her when she moved out, and donates eight bags of clothes he never wears, a full fifty pounds of athleisure. The blank spot on the wall where the painting had been is not the strange, unmooring space of a missing tooth so much as it is waking at dawn to find that it has snowed overnight, and the world is fresh and new, waiting for something to happen to it.
He goes to physio. He goes to the gym. He texts his mom for the recipe and makes okonomiyaki. He eats half of it, and then he thinks about nineteen years of broiled salmon and brown rice. He thinks about how last Thursday, Rozanov had run one finger around the lip of the ramekin to get every last drop of the aioli that came with the frites, and how he’d sucked his own finger into his mouth, and how the inside of Shane’s head had gone all grey and fuzzy for three full minutes before rebooting. He thinks that maybe he’s been hungry his entire life. He eats the other half of the okonomiyaki.
*
Tuesday morning, and Jackie calls him frantic from the car. Jade and Ruby have lacrosse tryouts after school that conflict with Arthur’s appointment and Jackie’s supposed to be in class at the same time, and does Shane think he could possibly —
“I’m on it, Jacks,” and it’s only an hour later that he remembers that he’s still not allowed to drive. He’ll hire a car. It’ll be fine. It’ll be good, actually, to go someplace that isn’t his house or practice or physio. He doesn’t see the kids as much these days, since they’re all teens and usually too busy, cool, or both to hang with Uncle Shane.
Arthur’s therapist is a warm, softspoken man with a ginger beard and a fondness for loud, colorful button-down shirts. Today’s features a kickline of trumpet-playing crayfish. Shane wonders where a person would buy a shirt like that, and then wonders what it might feel like to wear a shirt like that, and then spends thirty-five minutes scrolling on his phone. He purchases two shirts and a pocket square for his grey suit. There’s room in his closet, now, after all.
There are three flags shoved into the pebbles of a potted succulent on the receptionist’s desk, and Shane spends a long time looking at them. One of them matches the little strip of tape he’s kept on his stick, just below the grip, since Scott’s 2022 camp. It’s a strip of tape that has cost him and the other members of the Coach Coalition (ugh) upward of two million dollars in fines over the course of the 2022-2023 season. The league changed the rules, though, and Shane’s still got the tape on his stick, and it feels good, seeing those colours here, too. He doesn’t interrogate the swell of warmth in his chest too closely. For now, it is enough to sit here in the hushed, cool waiting room and wait for Arthur’s hour to be up.
*
A week, then two. Shane gets cleared to swim and spends an hour in the pool. The stillness in his mind when he finally levers himself onto the deck, panting and pleasantly shaky in the shoulders, is astounding. He hadn’t realized how bad the noise was until it went away. He texts Rozanov from the locker room:
2:22 pm. me: I just swam like a mile and a half and my skin feels all weird.
2:22 pm. me: Why does all the land-based cardio require legs?
2:23 pm. me: I never thought I would miss bag skates but here we are.
2:23 pm. Ilya Rozanov: OK it is official, you love hockey more than I do.
2:23 pm. me: screenshotting this and posting it immediately
2:24 pm. Ilya Rozanov: I said love it more, not better at
2:30 pm. Ilya Rozanov: and I can think of a land based cardio that doesn’t use your knees
2:31 pm. Ilya Rozanov: though it wouldn’t hurt 😈
Shane throws his phone into his bag and takes a very long, very hot shower. He finally replies late at night, after he’s home from an evening of watching the Voyageurs lose to North Carolina and literally biting his tongue so he doesn’t yell at Johanssen about not dumping the fucking puck for the fortieth time this month.
11:47 pm. me: Not sure which activity you mean. I’ll ask my physio at our appointment tomorrow, I’m sure he’ll be able to figure it out. 🙂
Rozanov sends a GIF of a bald man wearing a plaid shirt. He has his hands on his hips and looks frustrated. Shane grins all the way through his skincare routine.
*
A rainy Sunday, and the Voyageurs are starting an eight-day West Coast trip: Vancouver, Seattle, Anaheim, then back up to Seattle to make up a game that was cancelled back in December before they swing up to Calgary. There are just under four weeks left in the regular season. The Voyageurs are officially out of the running for the wild card after losing four straight at home. And while it’s about five days too early for Boston to have officially clinched their playoff spot, there’s no way they don’t this year. Rozanov is sitting every third game or so, which Shane begrudgingly admits is a smart move from management. The Bears are good enough to not have to rely on Rozanov, and it’s good practice for them to get used to playing without him. It’s Rozanov’s nineteenth season, too, after all.
Anyway. It’s a Sunday evening in March, is the point, about forty minutes after the Boston-Columbus game ends, when Rozanov calls.
Shane’s at home, of course. Where else would he be? The team invites him out when they’re on a home stand, and sometimes he even joins them, but they’re in the air somewhere over the Midwest right now and Shane is —
Shane is fine. His knee is doing as well as can be expected. His surgeon is pleased with his recovery. His physio is pleased with recovery. Shane, who has lived in his body for nearly 39 years and has used it to play hockey for three dozen of those years, knows that his knee is deeply and permanently fucked. His parents come in from Ottawa most weekends, and it’s fine. Claire even texted, once, a week or so ago, to ask about his recovery, and they had a pleasant, stilted conversation that felt like the last four years of their pleasant, stilted marriage, and that was also fine. Shane goes to the gym and the pool and the park and out for coffee when the solitude of his house gets to be too much, and that’s fine, too.
Shane is fine right up until the moment his phone buzzes with Ilya Rozanov’s name and then keeps buzzing, and then he is incandescently not fine at all.
“Hello?”
“Say no to this,” Rozanov says, “if you want to be boring and ethical, but I need your help. Actually, wait, no, stop, I am rude. Hello, Shane Hollander, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“This is not true.”
“I mean, yeah, but you don’t really care.”
“What do you mean, of course I care. How is the knee?”
“It’s –”
Shane starts to say fine, the way he has been saying fine to his mom and dad and physio and doctor and surgeon and trainer and coach and teammates, but he finds he cannot say “fine” to Ilya Rozanov, whose body is also a thirty-nine-year-old machine whose sole purpose is to make other grown adult National Hockey League players want to cry for their mothers and reconsider all their life choices.
“It’s so fucked. I could take a year and rehab it back to ten or fifteen minutes of ice time per game, probably, but –”
“Ah.”
“I just don’t —”
“No,” Rozanov agrees. “No.”
They breathe down the line together about that for a while. Shane, who had worried for days that he would burst into tears as soon as he even came close to talking about this, feels better than he has in ages.
“I’m going to retire at the end of the season,” Shane says, a little too loud.
“Yes,” Rozanov says, like Shane has remarked on the weather.
“That’s it?” Shane asks.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I dunno. I don’t — forget it.”
“You want me to say, what? That you are Shane Hollander, and you more than anyone deserve to retire on your own terms, not trotted out for ten minutes a night for one or two more years like the family dog that no one can bear to have put down? That it is awful to have played hockey for your entire adult life, because what the fuck else is there to do once your body stops cooperating? That I have to get steroid injections in my spine to skate, but even with them I am in pain and I cannot take medication that works without being afraid I will wind up like my mama, and I think about you getting ten minutes a night and it makes me want to quit on the spot. This is what you want me to say?”
Shane laughs, high and wild. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
“OK, well. I have said… all that.”
“You have.”
“OK.”
“Thank you.”
“When will you announce?”
“Last game, probably. We aren’t making playoffs, so it won’t detract from a run.”
“Ah. It is a home game?”
“Yeah.”
“That is good. Nice for fans, and for you.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think – I’ll just put out a statement after the game.”
“Hollander, no.”
“What?”
“This is a Hayden Pike retirement. This is not how Shane Hollander retires.”
“Shane Hollander retired in Tampa on a Tuesday in February.”
“Yes, but no one knows that yet.”
“You do.”
“Nyet, no, I do not accept this. I am the best player in the league, I require more, what is the word? Pageantry when my nemesis finally quits.”
Shane is grinning now. “Oh, you require it?”
“Yes, keep up.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you. See that you do.”
Rozanov is smiling too. Shane can hear it in his voice. He can imagine it, can imagine Rozanov grinning all the way back to his molars like he’d done once or twice during All-Stars, when Shane had sunk a goal off Rozanov’s perfect pass, or vice versa. He can imagine Rozanov smiling like he had in the bar a few weeks ago, radiant and warm and fond.
Huh.
“Anyway, sorry, you were gonna ask something when you first called?” Shane says, and there’s a long silence on the other end.
“Well, you just said you are retiring, and that Voyageurs are not making playoffs.”
“...Yeah?”
“We will never play each other again.”
“No,” Shane agrees in a whisper, and he wants to take the word back and swallow it.
“So while on paper it might look like collusion, in spirit, it is almost definitely not?”
“What.”
“Uggggggggh, Hollander, please just re-watch today’s game with me and help me figure out what the fuck is wrong with Gordo’s passes. I have watched tape until I am cross-eyed and I cannot see where breakdown is. You don’t have to even say anything, I will just talk and you can sit there and I will read the angle of your eyebrows or something to know whether I am right or not.”
“How do you propose to do that over the phone?”
“It is 2029, please tell me you know about FaceTime.”
“You want to FaceTime me while we watch Bears tape together and you want to read my eyebrows to figure out what’s wrong with your left wing?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m a thousand years old and getting shots in my spine so I can win one more Stanley Cup.”
“Life is pain.”
“I’m afraid of needles.”
“Don’t you have a tattoo?”
“I have three tattoos, but that is different. Those needles don’t go in.”
“Pretty sure they, like, definitionally go in, at least a little.”
“I will show you something that goes in at least a little,” Rozanov mutters and Shane laughs, but he also holds his glass to his warm cheeks.
“I will watch the game with you,” Shane says, “but I’m not saying anything.”
“You will not need to.”
“Bet.”
“Ugh, yuck, you sound like rookies.”
“Ew, no, I know, I don’t know why I said that. I mean, I do know why. Hayden’s twins are seventeen and I had dinner there the other day.”
“I will forgive you,” Rozanov says earnestly, “but first you need to get out your computer.”
*
So there’s definitely something wrong with Gordo’s passes. His timing is all fucky, but it’s fucky in a slightly different way each shift, and by the end of the game, Shane’s no closer to figuring it out than he was two hours ago, when he’d opened his laptop.
“Huh,” he says, and pushes his glasses up on top of his head so he can rub his eyes. Rozanov’s expression is inscrutable, but in a good way; a Christmas-season smirk that promises something worth waiting for.
“Huh,” Shane says again, because the situation is exactly as bad as Rozanov had made it seem.
“Right?”
“Huh,” Shane says a third time, because it feels appropriate for an issue of this calibre. “I think he’s probably just going to have to quit. If the two of us can’t figure it out…”
“Is not fixable, yes, exactly, this is why I called you.”
“And you said he’s seen the psychologist?”
“Yes, she had nothing useful.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe.”
“Huh.”
“I swear to God, Hollander, if Gordon Hines is the reason I do not win the cup this year —”
“I already told you, Chicago is going to be the reason you don’t win the cup this year.”
“Ehhh,” Rozanov says, and waves a hand from side to side. “They are hungry, yes, but I think I want it more.”
His voice drops into a rumbling sort of purr at the end of the sentence that briefly short-circuits what feels like an important part of Shane’s brain. Most parts of the brain are important, probably.
A whole lifetime ago, back in school, Shane had done a chemistry experiment. He remembers that now, how he’d poured two liquids together and watched, a little awed and a little bemused, as something new and unexpectedly solid appeared out of absolutely nowhere. Now, the precipitate of Shane’s certainty swirls and swirls. Slowly, it begins to settle. There has been a small, cataclysmic shift and Shane is newly conscious of his desire not as the abstract, unfocused, academic thing he’s used to, but as a transitive verb that takes the direct fucking object of Ilya fucking Rozanov.
Fuck, Shane thinks, and runs a hand through his hair.
Somehow, he manages to get off the phone. Something something, it’s late, something something, he may try to look at a little more tape tomorrow to see if he can do a little more digging.
“Thanks,” he hears himself saying. “Thanks for this, though. I mean, it was fun. I had fun,” like he’s a kid on a playdate.
Maybe he is.
“Yes,” Rozanov says. “Maybe it is something we could do. You know, if you are bored, and there is time, and you wanted.”
Shane doesn’t think he’s imagining the flush high on Rozanov’s cheeks and absolutely does not let himself imagine what it might taste like.
“Yep,” he says. “Yep, yes. Yep. Okay, bye!”
His watch beeps at him to let him know his heart rate is in Zone 3, and does he want to record a workout?
Fuck.
*
Shane parks himself at the dining room table with his laptop, a notebook, and a cup of tea. He watches more tape, because of the problems for which he does not yet have a solution, this is the one he at least knows the steps to solve. Tape, and more tape, and several more cups of tea, and when he finally puts it all together at about four in the morning, he laughs at how simple it is.
Maybe the other thing can be simple, too.
The thing is, Shane has been sort of obliquely, tacitly aware that he might be, like, not entirely straight for a while now. Decades, even. In a profession that involves spending an inordinate amount of time among other men in various states of undress, you can’t help but notice things about them, and about yourself by extension. So while Shane’s never been caught looking, he’s certainly caught himself looking. It’s fine. It’s whatever. It’s fine.
And okay, sexuality is supposed to be a spectrum, right? It stands to reason that if that spectrum follows a normal distribution, he’s statistically much more likely to be somewhere in the middle than at either tail. So, really, the awareness is academic more than anything – a little quirk he can mostly work around, like noticing prime numbers and wanting to line up his toiletries in the hotel washroom and automatically counting the calories in everything he eats. He’s a little gay, but in the way that probabilistically speaking, lots and lots of people are a little gay. He’s not gay enough to have to actually do anything about it.
The problem is, he suddenly really, really wants to do something about it. He wants, ferociously and with a raw, gnawing hunger he had not known he was capable of, to do something about it with Ilya Rozanov, specifically, and athletically, and in several inventive configurations. He wants to suck Ilya Rozanov’s thick fingers into his mouth, wants to kiss the ridiculous bow of his upper lip, wants to feel him pressed against him without two layers of hockey pads and an audience of 20,000 people in the way.
Shane brews another cup of tea and watches the sky begin to lighten in the east. He could ignore this. He could. He could fold it back up and push it back into the cupboard in his mind where he stores many of the scary or inconvenient truths about himself. He could stash it away with his rage and his loneliness and the nagging doubt whether he belongs in any room he walks into. He could stow it away and continue living in greys and navy, continue in the routines that are carved so deeply into the fabric of him they’re functionally indistinguishable from ruts. He would do these things, probably. He’s always been a little bit of a coward, or at least tends to arrive at courage much later than he ought. He would ignore this, except he can’t help thinking that Rozanov might want him, too. The blush, and the innuendo, and the texts, and the dinner, yes, but also nineteen years of a strange, weighted friendship that has always felt more important than it looks on paper. Nineteen years of chirps that are more targeted and more intimate than they have any right to be, nineteen years of each of them grinding their bones into dust to get the other to notice him. Nineteen years of a rivalry that has never once held animosity, and isn’t that strange? Nineteen years of knowing what the other was going to do before he did it, of being able to read each other like ciphers only they hold the keys to. Nineteen years of Rozanov looking at Shane like he knows him, and now, Shane wants to be known.
Shane opens his laptop again. He’s always been a little bit of a coward, or at least tends to arrive at courage much later than he ought, but it’s been nineteen years. He doesn’t need to rush this. It’s impossible, at this late date, to rush this.
4:49 am. me: Ask Gordo if he remembered to put his orthotics in his new skates last time he switched. He’s not pronating in the week leading up to new skates on 27 Feb, but starting then his right foot starts rolling in more and more. It’s affecting his stride, which is throwing off his timing because he’s getting there slower than he expects to.
4:49 am. me: [MOV_338.mp4]
4:50 am. me: [MOV_339.mp4]
4:51 am. me: [MOV_341.mp4]
8:33 am. Ilya Rozanov: Shane fucking Hollander
8:34 am. Ilya Rozanov: Good job, I love you
8:35 am. Ilya Rozanov: Gordo loves you even if he doesn’t know it yet
8:35 am. Ilya Rozanov: City of Boston will love you by June, but I won’t tell anyone
8:37 am. Ilya Rozanov: It will be our little secret
8:37 am. me: Pretty boring secret. We could come up with something better, don’t you think?
8:38 am. Ilya Rozanov: 👀
*
Shane goes to physio. He has a photoshoot with Rolex, one of the few sponsors that doesn’t mind that he’s got a couple grey hairs these days. He has dinner with his parents. He sets the retirement wheels in motion. He has meetings with Farah, and mom, and mom and Farah. He buys a painting for the empty space in the hall. He has dinner with the Pikes. One night, as he’s helping Jackie with the dishes and listening to the twins in the next room arguing about whether Kaelyn R. or Kaelyn J. is a better fit to be their third attacker, he gets a text from Rozanov. It’s a selfie, sort of. It’s mostly of his dog, but she’s lying on his chest, and the slope of his bare shoulder makes Shane half wish he were the sort of person who wrote poetry. The other half wishes he were alone in his bedroom with a box of tissues, but he ignores that half.
He dries his hands and turns the water off and doesn’t make eye contact with Jackie. There’s a pothos on the kitchen window sill and he looks at that instead. It needs to be watered. Shane has a surge of kinship for it. He takes a glass down from the cupboard, fills it, carefully pours water into the soil, watches it sink in. He refills the glass, gives it to the plant. This time, the soil absorbs the water more slowly. In a couple hours, the plant will have perked up. In a couple hours, Shane will be alone in his too-big house.
“So, uh,” he says, and Jackie’s ready for him.
“Is this something Hayden should be here for? So you don’t have to say it twice, whatever has you looking like that?”
“Um. No? Thank you, but – yeah, no. Nope.”
“Sorry, you look like someone died, I thought maybe we should get Hayd in here.”
“No, it’s not – It’s nothing, I just –”
Jackie waits him out. In the living room, Jade and Ruby have devolved into that strange, abbreviated twin language that consists of single, seemingly unrelated words that somehow telegraph a whole conversation’s meaning. Arthur is up in his room. Hayden and Amber are out back, doing something with fire and a marshmallow. Shane looks back at the pothos.
“I think I like someone,” he whispers, small and miserable. “And I don’t know what to do about it. Like, at all.”
Jackie punches him in the arm.
“For fuck’s sake, Shane, I thought you were going to say you were sick, or your parents were sick, or, I don’t know, you were going to change your mind about retiring and get yourself traded to Buffalo or something.”
“Ow, what? No, no, I said, it’s nothing bad. I mean, it is bad, it’s awful, it’s Ilya fucking Rozanov, Jacks, and I don’t know what to fucking do.”
“It’s — who?”
“I’m not saying it again,” Shane mutters.
“Yeah, that’s fair. God, you never do anything by halves, do you?”
“Guess not.”
“You want to make a spreadsheet about it?”
“Yes, please.”
Jackie pulls him down into a tight hug.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know everything.”
“Okay.”
He lets her pour him a glass of wine, and they sit at the kitchen island, and he tells Jackie everything.
*
Shane spends three days drafting his retirement post. On the third day, he FaceTimes Rozanov.
“Hello, Hollander.”
“I give up, I’m not retiring, I’ll let them trade me to fucking Buffalo or wherever and play ten minutes a night until I physically cannot stand up anymore.”
“Read me what you have.”
“No, it’s awful.”
“Come on.”
It’s probably weird how much Shane enjoys it when Rozanov gets a little growly and bossy. It’s probably weird that half the fun of protesting is pushing Rozanov to get just a little meaner.
“I can’t, it’s so bad.”
“OK, I see how it is, Shane Hollander is xenophobic. Thinks poor Russian immigrant cannot help him with his composition homework.”
“Yeah, that’s totally it, Mr. “Oh By The Way I Take Summer Courses At Harvard For Fun.” You know, I’m not actually certain that I graduated from high school?”
“Really?”
“I was homeschooled the last couple years, because the juniors schedule was actually insane, and I know I met the requirements for getting a diploma, but I’m not sure we ever submitted the paperwork. Meanwhile you’re down there taking History of Western Civilization in between concussions. How many credits are you away from having a bachelor’s degree, anyway?”
“...Sixteen, but this is not the point. Read me what you have, please.”
“Ugh, fine. Okay, so, uh. Dear Montreal Voyageurs Fans, it is with a heavy heart that I am announcing my retirement effective today, April 19, 2029. I appreciate all the support through the years and hope that the Voyageurs continue the momentum we created together – I need to thank the coaches and staff in there, somewhere too, probably.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I told you –”
“That was not just bad, that was dire, Hollander. Do you even like hockey?”
“Of course I do, you asshole, you know I love it.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you love hockey? Why do you love playing hockey for Montreal, specifically?”
“I dunno, I – I mean, I always dreamed of being a Voyageur, you know? When I was a kid playing pond hockey with my dad, I’d pretend I was Jean Vienot. My mom listened to the games on the radio, and during the playoffs I’d get to stay up late to watch them on TV. It was the only team I ever thought about, and then to get drafted to them…”
“Even as the number two?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course. Can you imagine me in Boston, anyway?”
“No. I think we wound up where we were supposed to.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
Rozanov’s smiling around the eyes, like he’s got a secret.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“C’mon, what? I read you my stupid draft –”
“Yes, and do you know how to make it less stupid?”
“No, obviously, or I would have –”
“Start it with what you just said to me. You’ve wanted to be a Voyageur since you were a kid, it has been the honor of a lifetime to be their captain for seventeen years, you are proud of leading the team to five cups in fifteen years, you are proud to lead Canada to Olympic gold, you are proud to have worked with Scott Hunter and the other Game Changers to make hockey less toxic. Thank Hayden Pike for always making you look like such a better hockey player, thank Ilya Rozanov for keeping you humble. Love, Shane Hollander.”
“That’s – I mean, with some seriously heavy edits, that’s not actually terrible.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes.”
“So what were you smirking about?”
Rozanov sighs and rolls his eyes. “I just wonder sometimes, what it would have been like to play with you. Do you ever think about that?”
“Playing on the same team?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Yeah, after All Stars in 2017, and then in 2021, during the expansion draft, I did, kind of a lot, yeah.”
“Not even for you would I play in Seattle.”
“It could be nice,” Shane protests. “A little house overlooking Puget Sound. Getting the Narwhals into cup contention before next century.”
“Ah, and that’s how you know it is a fantasy.”
“Fair.”
They’re both smiling too soft, too knowing, and Shane can’t decide whether he wants to rip all his skin off and set himself on fire or just sit here on the phone forever with Rozanov until the sun goes supernova and the final Ice Age sets in.
There’s a sound on Rozanov’s end of the phone, and his mouth twists.
“Fuck, I have to go. Game prep starts in an hour and I have to eat something first. Send me your next draft, if you want.”
“Yeah, maybe. I will, thanks. Good luck tonight.”
“We won’t need it.”
“Asshole.”
“Thank you, Shane.” It’s said mockingly, but Ilya’s smile is genuine.
“You’re welcome, Ilya.”
*
Merci, Montréal.
Quand j'étais ti-cul…
Thank you, Montreal.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of playing for the Voyageurs. I pretended my grandparents’ pond was the Bell Centre, and I got red and blue pajamas for Christmas until I was fourteen. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined a career like mine, though. Nineteen seasons as a Voyageur, seventeen as captain. Thirteen playoff appearances, five Stanley Cups. Those numbers aren’t just statistics, but represent decades of training, grit, focus, and love. Love for hockey, love for my teammates, love for this city.
Thank you to the Voyageurs for trusting me to lead this team for so many years, and for allowing me to continue to lead from the sidelines following my injury this season. I am so proud of what we have built together: our culture, our courage, and our competitive spirit, which are now bigger than any single person and will continue with a new generation of skaters. I think that’s what I’m proudest of.
To every single person who was part of my hockey journey, from the GMs and the Canadian Olympic Committee, to my coaches, trainers, and teammates, to the Game Changers, and perhaps especially to my opponents: thank you. You’ve made me a stronger player and a better person. To the fans, to the city of Montreal: thank you. Thank you for loving this team, for supporting us through the ups and downs, and for adopting me so warmly as one of your own.
I owe everything to my parents. Their love, sacrifice, and support made my career possible, and I can never thank them enough for that gift. Everything I’ve accomplished is because of them, and for them.
I’m retiring filled with pride, gratitude, and love. Hockey will always be part of my life, and as I step away from the ice, I can’t wait to find out what’s next.
– Shane Hollander
PS: To Ilya Rozanov: Looks like I beat you to retirement, too. :-)
***
Shane posts his retirement announcement at 7:00 am on Wednesday, April 18 and turns his phone off. He goes for a long walk. He gets a cup of coffee and a croissant. He drinks a litre of water, more out of habit than necessity. He reads a chapter of his novel. He watches the curtains stir in the breeze from the open window and thinks about summer, the cottage, an invitation that’s sitting in his throat, just waiting for him to give it air. He goes to a movie in the afternoon, and meets his parents for dinner. The last game of the season is tomorrow, so of course they’re here for it. Here for him. He hugs them both extra hard, lets his mom wipe nonexistent grime from his kitchen counters, lets his dad slip a bunch of extra food in his freezer. God, he loves them.
On Thursday, he wakes at six and begins his game-day routine. It’s silly, maybe – he hasn’t played in nearly eight weeks, and he won’t be playing today, of course, but it’s the last time. He wants to honor that. So he wakes at six and does his yoga, drinks his water, has his first protein smoothie. More water, light cardio, second smoothie. Mindfulness meditation, visualization, car to the area.
He enters through the loading dock to dodge reporters. Even still, he’d put on his game day suit, complete with his new pocket square. He checks in with the trainers, spends an hour doing physio and another hour and a half doing light weights in the gym. He showers. He’s in the dressing room doing up his cufflinks again and chatting with Shep and Matty and Walt when Theriault pokes his head in.
“Hollander, you’re dressing,” he says.
“I’m not,” Shane protests. “You can’t – But I’m on the LTIR.”
“The league made an exception,” Theriault says. “The boys want you on the bench with them today.”
“An exception?”
“They’re not docking us your cap space. You’ll be off LTIR for less than six hours and won’t actually play, there was a vote, it’s all above board. Get dressed.”
“Coach,” Shane says, because the option is crawling into his locker to cry into his jersey. He’s vaguely aware that the room is grinning at him. Theriault waves his clipboard at him threateningly and Shane capitulates. He starts undoing his cufflinks to cheers.
“This is so – I didn’t think –”
“We want you with us on the bench tonight,” Matty tells him. “Doesn’t matter that we’ll be one man down.”
“It’s the least we can do,” Walt adds, and Shane just ducks his head and shucks off his dress shirt.
He’s just gotten the knee sleeve situated under his pads when there’s further weirdness.
“Friends and Family room, Hollander,” one of the equipment managers yells through the dressing room door, and Shane actually says, “No,” because everyone he knows knows not to come to the friends and family room before a game. Mom and Dad are here, and the Pikes, and JJ and Selene said they’d come, too, but they all fucking know better than to come to the family room before a game, even if it’s one Shane isn’t actually playing in.
Shane doesn’t have skates on yet, at least, so he gets down the hall with a rapidity that would make his physio proud and stops dead in the doorway.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Well,” Rozanov says slowly, with a wide, spreading grin that Shane wants to reach out and touch, “Montreal only has Friends and Family room, no nemesis room, so. Is the best I could do under the circumstances.”
“Don’t you have a game today?”
“I’m sitting. They want me fresh for playoffs next week.”
Shane steps into the room and lets the door close behind him.
“You’re insane.”
Rozanov shrugs, and Shane wants to reach out and touch that, too. He wants, globally, to reach out and touch Ilya Rozanov, who is standing in the Bell Centre Friends and Family room looking entirely too comfortable. He is, Shane remembers in a rush, such a large person. Tall and broad, sure, but also just big. Big eyes, big hands, big personality, big heart. He’s not in Voyageurs branded merch, of course, but he’s wearing a red cowlneck sweater and dark blue jeans, and Shane is suddenly crossing the room as fast as the knee will take him. He just catches the flash of alarm on Rozanov’s face before he flings his arms around him and drags him into a crushing hug.
“I am,” he says into Ilya’s neck, “So glad you’re here. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for coming, but why are you here?”
He releases him and takes a half step back, just to get a good look into Ilya’s eyes. Time is a flat circle, because Ilya, here, today, a little lost and trying to find the right words, is also Rozanov, nineteen, at a press conference with reporters hounding him with convoluted syntax. Shane, here, today, is also nineteen and kicking Ilya under the table. I got you.
Shane, here, today, though, doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or his arms, or his feet, or his mouth. He wants to hug Rozanov again, and he wants to punch him, and he wants to step closer and feel the hard line of Ilya’s body against his, and he wants to bite him just to taste, and he wants to take him by the hand and lead him out of the arena and drive him up to the cottage and teach him how to play cribbage just to watch him try to cheat. He wants all of these things at once, in the space of about two seconds, and it’s the photo negative version of when his knee had gone, a bone-deep rightness that makes him sway under its force. Shane has never, not once in his life, felt certainty like this off of the ice, but Rozanov is not technically off the ice, is he? Not really. He has always been of the ice, somehow, like he brings a little of the zing and certainty along with him wherever he goes.
Rozanov is watching him carefully, and seems to find something in whatever Shane’s face has been doing in the past five seconds, because he closes the distance between them again and slides one hand down Shane’s arm. They’re standing very, very close, and their fingers are brushing. Shane’s mouth is dry. Why is his mouth dry? He’s been so good about his hydration today, even though he won’t be playing.
“I had to come,” Rozanov murmurs. “You are – you are hockey, Hollander. There is no point to hockey without Shane Hollander in it.”
His tongue is pink and wet as his mouth forms Shane’s name and it’s finally this that breaks through the roil of emotion and desire and terror and –
“I have to go,” Shane announces, because nope, this is exactly why he doesn’t do the Friends and Family room. This room is too full of feelings, lingering in the atmosphere like incense in church, or rather like measles in a classroom. Contagious. Dangerous.
“I have to – the game. I will – will I – will you stick around after?”
Ilya shrugs himself into something that is almost a nod. It looks uncomfortable. Shane grins at him, and Ilya looks like he’s been gutted.
Four years ago, thirty-eight seconds before the end of the fifth game of the Stanley Cup finals, Shane went over the boards and saw the play before it unfolded. He saw the angle of Hayden’s stick in his hands, the speed and trajectory of Vancouver’s forwards, the course Nash was on to check their right wing. Shane saw the play before it unfolded and thought, right before he launched himself into the fray, Oh, this is why I have a body.
It feels a little like that now. He lets his fingers tangle with Ilya’s. He lets himself look at Ilya’s wet, pink tongue, at the golden stubble on his chin – the fucker is getting a head start on the playoff beard, God, he’s such an ass – at the sweep of his eyelashes, at the wideblown pupils, at the mole above his lip.
“I have to go now,” Shane says again, “but will you please stick around after?”
“OK,” Rozanov says.
Shane turns, and takes about three steps into the hall, but it feels wrong: a skate untied, dirty dishes left in the sink. He turns, slips back into the room, walks back up to Rozanov, who is staring at him, wide-eyed and earnest.
“Sorry, I just needed to see something,” Shane murmurs, and brings his hand up to cup Ilya’s cheek. He does it slowly, to give him ample time to flinch away on the off chance Shane has got this wrong.
(Shane doesn’t think he has got this wrong.)
He cups Ilya’s cheek and sweeps his thumb, once, twice, thrice across the mole there. Rozanov leans into it, lips parted, and Shane leans into him. Their noses bump, their lips catch, and then Rozanov is angling Shane’s head a little to the right.
Shane can’t think for all the feeling. Ilya’s hot, slick mouth is the best thing Shane has ever known, aside from maybe hock— you know what? No. The best thing Shane has ever known. He moves in a little bit more to press his body against the firm, warm weight of Ilya, and that is so, so good, too, and Ilya seems to take that as an invitation to both deepen the kiss and get his hands involved, one hand on Shane’s face, the other snaking around his waist to draw him even closer and Jesus fucking Christ, Shane might be gayer than he’d previously thought.
They kiss til Shane is trembling slightly all over, a heady mix of fear, desire, and catharsis. The kiss slows, gentles,and they breathe together in the loud fluorescent light of the Friends and Family room, their foreheads pressed together.
“OK,” Rozanov says, it occurs to Shane that maybe he really should stick with “Ilya” full-time now that Shane has licked his teeth, “That is what you figured out?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“Yep,” Shane says, but more emphatically.
“Can I get a little more than that?” Ilya asks, and squeezes Shane’s hand.
“I really like you, but I’ve never – I didn’t really think – I just needed to be certain.”
“Certain.”
“That I like-like you.”
“There it is again, the reduplication.”
“Shut up.”
“Mmm, no, I do not think I will, unless –”
Shane kisses him again, because he wants to and because Ilya’d all but asked him to. When they come up for air again, they’re both panting hard and a little more rumpled, and Shane really does need to go.
“I’ll see you after,” he says, and Ilya nods.
Somehow Shane makes it back down the hall, back into the locker room. Walt bullies him into his skates (“You can’t be on the bench if you’re not fully dressed, man, c’mon, you know this”) and then into his full knee brace (“Dude, if you tear something because you’re walking around in skates, you’ll be turbo fucked, just put it on to be safe”). So that means his mom was in on this, somehow, because the full knee brace had definitely been in his bathroom at home this morning.
Finally, Shane stands at the door one last time as his team begins to filter out of the dressing room.
Every man in the room goes in for a hug, even Müller, and there’s not enough hand sanitizer in the world for this. It’s lovely and it’s awful, and Shane is willing to bet every dollar in his bank account it’s about to get a hell of a lot worse.
Walking in skates down the hall with a knee brace in full extension and eyes full of tears is objectively terrible, but he makes it to the bench and does some deep breathing while the boys start their warmups. The crowd is loud and huge and electric, like they’re here for a final instead of the end to an uninspiring season. Shane spots his parents in the family section, with the Pikes to their right and Ilya on Mom’s left. There are other faces, too. Holy shit, there are a lot of other faces. Cliff Marleau is there next to Ilya, and Scott Hunter and Kip are there with Ryan Price and Fabian and, yep, pretty much every other guy who’s ever coached at the Game Changers camp. Then there are three whole rows of former Voyageurs teammates, and another four of what looks like half the league from about 2009-2019, and okay – it feels like half the crowd is NHL players, period, including several who finished their seasons just yesterday. He ducks his head to hide his red face and redder eyes, but he’s pretty sure he’s on the Jumbotron, and — Yep. Yeah, okay. Cool.
The ice. The anthem.
Shane makes his way out slowly and carefully, stands between Matty and Walt and sings along to O, Canada. He’s teary again as he makes his way back to the bench, but then Theriault’s handing him his stick and helmet and mouthguard, gesturing him to centre ice for the faceoff.
“No,” he says, “no, Coach, no, I can’t.”
“Hollander.”
“C’mon, man,” Walt says. “We got you. Trust us, c’mon.”
The crowd is on its feet and eerily quiet as Shane skates up to meet Luca Haas.
“Congratulations, Hollander,” he tells him, and shakes his hand. “It’s been an honour.”
“Thank you,” Shane says, “Thanks, but I don’t – This is crazy —”
The ref blows the whistle and Shane’s body, at least, knows what to do. He gets in position as best he can. Haas puts his stick down first. Shane follows instantly. The puck drops, and Shane wins the faceoff by virtue of Haas not even pretending to try for it. Both teams have dropped their sticks and are applauding, though Shep has skated forward to hug a Centaur in the worst approximation of a fight Shane has ever seen. It’s patently ridiculous with a paper-thin veneer of plausible deniability, and that, more than anything, makes him wonder whether Ilya was involved in orchestrating it. Pageantry, indeed. Shane is crying like a fucking baby. The Voyageurs are surrounding him like he’s just sunk a winning goal, and then the Centaurs are coming in, too, and Shane has never gotten this many hugs in his entire life, thank God. The crowd is screaming his name, and once the press of bodies eases a little, someone grabs his shoulder.
“Go on, Hollander, take a lap.”
“You need a hand, Cap?”
“No,” Shane says, because it’s true. He can take a lap under his own power. He could take a lap under his own power in his sleep, with a freshly fucked knee. He can do it now.
He tosses his helmet down and raises a hand in salute, and tries to stop crying enough to see where he’s going. He skates slowly and takes it all in. The ice under him, the crowd above and around and undeniably with him. He stops in front of the family section, blows a kiss to his parents, makes heart hands toward Hayden. He meets Ilya’s eyes.
“Thank you,” he mouths, and points to him. Ilya nods, one hand on his heart.
Somehow, he finishes the lap without tripping over any of the stuff that’s raining down – hats, cards, flowers, flags. A ref skates up to him and shakes his hand.
“You’re being assessed a two-minute delay of game penalty, but your coach tells us you’ve been injured. Please return to your bench, number 24.”
“If I’m injured, wouldn’t I have to go straight to the dressing room?”
“Jesus fucking wept, Hollander. Can you please sit down so we can start the fucking game?”
“Thanks, Wes. Sorry.”
He sits and cries a lot more, and drinks some water, and watches a hockey game from the best fucking seat in the house.