Chapter Text
The first time Pittsburgh plays Ottawa after the wedding, the storyline practically writes itself.
Two‑headed monster versus two‑headed monster. The First Husbands of Hockey vs the Powerful Old Guard. Talk radio and TV panels say “the Eastern Conference is basically fucked” so often it stops sounding like words and starts sounding like a weather report.
Sid pretends not to hear it. He’s been compared to too many people over the years to start keeping score now. But when he’s in the video room, watching Ottawa tape, it’s hard not to feel the echo.
On the screen, Shane and Ilya run a power play that looks like a funhouse‑mirror version of his own with Geno. Shane on the half‑wall, patient and deadly. Ilya roaming, blowing up seams, showing up at the back post like he teleported there.
“Look familiar?” Geno says, leaning back in his chair, ankles crossed.
“A little,” Sid says. They'll see the real thing in action soon enough.
The first game is in Ottawa, a week into the 2021–22 season. The Centaurs’ building is buzzing. New jerseys, new banners, a fanbase that’s changed overnight from resigned to rabid.
As they step onto the ice for warm‑ups, Sid hears the roar when Hollanov glide out together. It’s the same roar he used to get in Pittsburgh in those first years – the sound of a city pinning its hopes on a pair of shoulders and not caring how unfair that is.
At the opening faceoff, he lines up across from Shane.
“Congrats,” he says, because it’s the same thing he said on the phone in the summer, but it feels different with the crowd in his ears. “On everything.”
Shane’s eyes crinkle behind his visor. “Thanks,” he says. “Nice to see you.”
“Don’t go easy on me,” Sid adds.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Shane replies, and then the puck drops and the conversation ends.
The game is fast and ugly in all the best ways. Hollanov score once on the power play – tic‑tac‑toe, Shane to Haas to Ilya backdoor, the building losing its mind. Sid and Geno answer with something vintage in the second, a give‑and‑go that leaves an Ottawa defenceman spinning.
In the third, with the score tied, Sid wins a draw clean back to the point, slips into soft ice, and bats in a rebound. It’s not pretty, but it works. Pens win, 4–3.
In the handshake line, Ilya squeezes his glove a little too hard. “You are still annoying,” he says.
“You too,” Sid replies.
On the plane home, somebody texts a meme into the team group chat: a four‑headed hydra with Sid, Geno, Shane, and Ilya’s faces crudely photoshopped on. Caption: EASTERN CONFERENCE, RIP.
The guys howl. Geno quotes it with “We should get royalties.”
Sid smiles, but something in his chest feels tight.
He’s happy for Shane and Ilya, he really is; it’s not a performance. Every time he sees a clip of them doing a school visit together, of the Irina Foundation announcing another program, of the Centaurs chirping them in the comments of their posts, he feels this weird, doubled sensation – pride for them, and an ache for himself.
He had chances. Not the same chances, not exactly. The league wasn’t ready then, he tells himself. The country wasn’t, he wasn’t.
Still.
When Hunter kissed Kip on the ice, Sid felt the ground move. When Shane and Ilya posted their engagement video, he felt it shift again. Now, watching them skate in Ottawa, married, wearing letters, still playing their asses off, he feels like the ice he’s spent his whole life on has been quietly re‑flooded while he wasn’t looking.
He doesn’t say any of that out loud; of course he doesn’t.
Instead, he talks about neutral‑zone forechecks and power‑play tweaks. If anyone notices how intently he studies Ottawa film, they chalk it up to him being a hockey nerd. Which is true, just not the whole truth.
Back home, Taylor notices more than anyone.
His little sister has always had a talent for seeing through his press‑conference version. Even as kids, she could tell when he was genuinely fine and when he was doing the “captain voice” on a scraped knee.
Now, sitting in his living room on one of her increasingly rare visits, she sits cross‑legged on the floor, scrolling through her phone while a Pens‑Centaurs replay murmurs on TV.
“You’ve been watching a lot of Ottawa,” she says.
“They’re good,” Sid says. “We'll probably see them in the playoffs.”
She makes a vague noise of agreement, then turns the phone to show him a still of Hollanov at centre ice in Ottawa. Shane’s grinning and Ilya’s got his forehead pressed to Shane’s temple. The caption reads: They really did it, huh?
“It’s kinda wild,” Taylor says. “That this is just… happening. In the same league you’ve been in this whole time.”
“Yeah,” Sid says.
“You ever think about it?” she asks abruptly. “Doing something like that?”
He takes a breath. “I don’t think it’s that simple for me,” he says.
“Why not?”
He almost laughs. “Because I’m Sidney Crosby,” he says, trying to keep any hint of resentment out of his tone. He knows he's privileged, he should be grateful. “Because I’ve spent my whole life being… what I am. Face of Canadian hockey, blah blah. You know.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I know. I also know that you sounded really happy on the phone after you talked to Shane in the summer. And that you get this weird… pinched look when you watch him and Ilya on TV.”
“I get a pinched look when anyone misses an assignment in the d‑zone,” he says, trying for light.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t joke this away.”
He sighs. “Tay.”
She leans forward, elbows on her knees. “Look. I get why you stayed quiet. I really do. But it’s not-” She gestures at the TV, where a graphic is currently calling Hollanov “Trailblazers.” “It’s not impossible anymore. You can see that, right?”
He stares at the screen. Shane splits the defence on a break‑in, drops the puck to Ilya trailing. Goal. Ottawa bench erupts.
“I see it for them. They’re… brave. They did the hard thing.”
“You did hard things too... just... different ones.”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “Different ones.”
She hesitates. “Is it… about him?”
He doesn’t ask who she means. There’s only one “him” that makes sense here.
“We’ve got a good thing,” Sid says quietly. “We’ve had a good thing for a long time.”
“That’s not an answer,” she says.
He doesn’t give her one.
The season grinds on. Ottawa keeps winning. The two‑headed‑monster narrative gets trotted out every time their highlight pack rolls. Clips of Sid and Geno hugging after goals get spliced with Hollanov playful in warm‑ups or chirping each other in pressers.
In January, there’s another Pens–Centaurs game, this time in Pittsburgh.
Morning skate, Sid and Geno go through their usual routines. Sid lingers in the corridor afterwards, water bottle in hand, and sees Hollanov coming the other way.
“Hey,” Shane says. “Love the dryer challenge videos, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Sid says. “They’re fun.”
Ilya smirks. “You miss some shots,” he observes. “Is very embarrassing.”
“Gotta make the kids feel like they have a chance,” Sid shrugs.
They banter for a minute, easy and normal, before media flock in and haul the two away. Sid watches them go. There’s a weight to the way they walk side by side, a casual, unconscious synchrony he recognises from his own stride next to Geno’s.
They win some of those games. They lose others. Both two‑headed monsters collect their points, their highlights, their postgame quotes.
At night, Sid lies in bed and thinks about the things he never said. The ways he and Geno have built a life around almosts.
The sleepovers and dinners-for-two, looking after each other when one got sick, and forced each other to rest after an injury. Geno taking care of him after Sid got the puck to the face; Sid reciprocating when it was Geno's turn to be injured. The summer in Cole Harbour where Geno came up to the lake and spent a week fishing and barbecuing and pretending not to stare too long when Sid came in off the dock, dripping and laughing. The texts exchanged during Hunter’s coming‑out, the silence between them when they watched the kiss. The careful way they’ve always pulled back, just enough, when cameras swing their way.
He thinks about what Taylor said: It’s not impossible anymore.
He thinks about the kid in the Hollander jersey, showing him the FanMail video and saying, I think it’s cool.
He thinks: Maybe I’m the example of what happens when you don’t move. And they’re the example of what happens when you do.
Because after years of almosts there was a wedding and a child and...
Sid had his almosts that led to misses and he doesn’t know what to do with that yet.
The season inches toward spring. Standings tighten. Every talking head with a microphone wonders out loud about a Pens–Centaurs playoff series, the “two monsters enter, one monster leaves” storyline too juicy to resist.
Sid watches the graphics, the endless photos of his face next to Shane’s, Geno’s next to Ilya’s. The league loves symmetry.
He looks across the room at Geno, laughing with younger teammates, hair a little thinner, eyes a little more lined. He feels an ache that has nothing to do with age.
He tapes his stick. He goes back to work. You can't win a game on almosts.