Archive of Our Own

Unnecessary Roughness or Roughing shall be considered any act where a player uses unnecessary force to push or shove an opponent, or makes avoidable physical contact (non-body check) with an opponent, after the whistle.

It starts at three in the morning with a crying toddler, and that’s just the beginning of a long list of mishaps and misfortunes to come. Looking back, there were signs — the Thai food, the video, the leaks, among others — but there’s a saying about hindsight, and one about things coming in threes, and about rain, pouring. Shane thinks, then: should have seen this day coming from at least a mile away. But first, he thinks: fuck, my baby’s crying.

“Not it,” he mumbles, refusing to open his eyes, maybe to deny reality a few seconds longer. It’s not unusual for a three-year-old to be crying at night, and certainly not for their particular three-year-old, who is as restless while sleeping as she is during the day and who has a tendency to scare herself awake when she shifts and kicks and rolls. Sometimes, even when she’s sound asleep, he swears he can hear her cries under the hum of their bedroom fan, like his brain is playing a mean trick on him. He thinks he’ll be listening for that sound his whole life — he’ll be 90 and half-deaf, straining to hear Yuriko’s screech in the night.

All it takes to put her down again is rubbing her back and humming, but Shane is so tired, and it’s Ilya’s turn anyway. Ilya, who hasn’t so much as stirred yet. How that man can sleep through this, Shane will never know. He can fall asleep anywhere, at any time. Shane once found Ilya snoring on the floor next to Yuriko’s bed when he went to put her down one evening, with her still awake and jumping on the mattress. It’s a real talent — a real pain in the ass, too.

Shane nudges his husband, who startles.

“Huh? What?”

“Baby,” Shane says.

“Yes?” Ilya’s voice is rough and confused.

“No, the baby. You go.”

Ilya groans then shakes himself, finally hearing their daughter’s hiccuping wails. “Okay, yes, yes.” He takes a deep breath and sits up all at once, smacking himself on the cheek as if to shock himself awake. Within seconds Shane feels the pull of sleep again, his anxiety calmed knowing Ilya will take care of it, of her. He hears Ilya’s soft footsteps walk the length of the hallway down to Yuriko’s room, his soothing voice cooing at her, and her crying quiets, and then Shane is gone under again — until, rudely, seemingly just moments later, the light turns on in their bedroom and a tiny, soft body runs in, launches itself onto his bed, and lands directly on Shane.

“Oof, jeez, what are you doing here?” Shane says, catching his daughter and peering at her chubby face, her pyjamas different from the ones he dressed her in hours earlier. Her black hair is wet and she smells like oversweet strawberry-scented soap. The weight of her is almost unfamiliar, if only because she is growing so fast now she feels heavier and heavier by the day. Ilya denies this, and sometimes Shane doesn’t know if he’s joking or not. God knows he doesn’t like thinking about it too much either. Even now the unicorn-patterned onesie she has on is too small, riding up at the ankles and stretching taut over her diapered bum, and Shane knows this is the last time she’ll wear it.

“I frow upped,” she says. Ilya appears at the doorway, rubbing his eyes. Nika shuffles in behind him, her ample fur smushed to one side of her body from her previous sleeping position, apparently woken from her slumber by the unusual middle-of-the-night happenings.

“We took a tubby,” he says. “And had some pink medicine.”

“Papa said, he said, Papa said, I could, um, he said I could, I can sleep with you.”

Ilya, for what it’s worth, appears apologetic. “Special circumstances and all that.”

Shane sighs, resigned to a few hours of getting kicked and pushed by a kid who somehow takes up as much space as two grown men in a king-sized bed. He accepts that tomorrow will also be fucked. They have a full day of media for the Foundation, including a photoshoot with the other coaches, preceded by a board meeting that was only called yesterday that Svetlana said was ‘urgent’ for reasons Shane still doesn’t know. And now Yuriko, having been sick, won’t be able to go to daycare, and of course her regular nanny is on vacation, so they will have to find someone else on short notice to watch her. He huffs again. That’s a problem, certainly, for seven o’clock Shane and Ilya, not three-thirty in the morning Shane and Ilya.

“Alright, you little turkey,” he says. “Get under the covers.”

“The, the pink mecidine tasted, it tasted like, it was, it was bubblegum.”

“Med-i-cine,” Shane corrects half-heartedly as she squirms her way under the blankets and finds a spot as diagonally as possible. Ilya turns the lights off and gets in bed himself, and Nika jumps onto their feet, warm and heavy. Soon, of course, Ilya is snoring softly and Yuriko’s breaths have calmed even as she rolls around every few minutes getting comfortable, and Nika whuffles periodically as she dreams her little doggy dreams. Shane listens to the sounds of his family and the careful measures of his heart beating in time.

He dozes, in and out of true sleep, thinking of everything he has to do when the sun rises. There is always something to do. Life in retirement is relentless. Before, when he was playing, he would have told you he was busy, and he would have been right, surely. There were games, carefully drawn schedules, small moments of time he and Ilya stole for themselves — a constant go-go-go of improvement, of fighting, of winning, the rush of it all taking up every crevice he had left to spare in his body. Importantly, he also had an army of people telling him what to do, what to eat, where to go, what to say, what to wear, how to move. All he wanted to do was play hockey, and when it came down to it there was really so little actual hockey. Only 60 minutes every few days. The rest was travel, and media, and training, the shit he had to do that was inextricable from the sport.

Then when he and Ilya finally managed to cut themselves loose from the great machine of the MLH and were faced with the impossibly vast vacuum left behind, it felt natural to continue in the same vein: keep busy, at all costs. Expanding the Foundation came first, and hiring real staff to manage it – their friends, mostly, and friends of friends they trusted. When their roster filled out and new swaths of time became available, Shane did podcast appearances, commentating gigs, brief cameos in TV shows and movies, all while investing further into their property portfolio, now coast to coast, and subsequent renovations. For Ilya, private training felt like an obvious choice following the discovery of his coaching talents at camp, and that soon led to recurring contracts with the Centaurs’ offensive program. Soon their days were filled with little time to think about how they even got there.

And of course, of course, there was Yuriko: sweet, bright, delightfully round-cheeked, a little tender green bud unfurling toward the sun, now kicking him in the shins as she turns and clamps herself to her Papa, who does not move. They had grand expectations for her, like any Hollander. They imagined reading her books, letting her stir pancake batter in the morning, teaching her to skate, letting her play in the yard at the cottage, taking her out to restaurants with friends and bringing her to Centaurs games in tiny jerseys. Unfortunately, many of those activities require Yuriko to be someone she is not, because Yuriko has never been still or quiet a moment in her life. She is a runner, a climber, a jumper, an everything-er. They cannot turn their backs on her for more than a minute or else they’ll find she’s clambered onto the kitchen counter to grab and fill her own bottle of water, or she’s figured out how to unlock the front door to go play in the snow barefoot, or she’s opened the fridge and helped herself to a whole container of plain greek yogurt to use as finger paint. Taking her to a game or a restaurant requires her to sit for more than thirty seconds at a time, so they can’t, yet. They’re working on it but it is slow-going. She is also deeply loving, terrifyingly smart and inquisitive, and as dexterous and preternaturally athletic as any child of Ilya Rozanov’s and Shane Hollander’s would be. But God, what would he give for a calm day for once. Shane’s parents laugh and laugh and say he was the same way – precocious and independent to a fault – and this does comfort him a little. He turned out alright, he thinks, given everything.

If this was a novel Shane thinks this part would be the epilogue. Happily ever after — the future he told his parents he and Ilya wanted nearly two decades ago. Forty-four years old and running around after the most rambunctious toddler he’s ever met, unafraid to hold his husband’s hand in public.

And exhausted. He didn’t think he’d be so tired, all the time. A tired that goes deeper than just the lack of sleep they’ve both been dealing with for three years, though it has certainly contributed. But while he may be unwilling to compromise himself for his sport any longer, hockey has had no such qualms, and his body does feel, in fact, quite compromised. Shoulders that ache after driving, creaky knees, a jaw that clicks when he eats. New little aches and pains showing their face all the time. Is it age, or is it hockey? Ilya says both. Shane is not yet willing to concede to either. In the meantime, he has become quite familiar with the burning herbaceous smell of Tiger Balm and eucalyptus bath salts.

He blinks blearily in the dull grey dawn light as Yuriko turns and tucks into his side, pulling Ilya with her, and the three of them curl up together. She will wake soon, as she always does even when sick or low on sleep or both, and the dog will want to go out, and Shane and Ilya will make phone calls and start preparing for the day already turned upside down, but for now, this: soft morning, strength-gathering morning. Home sweet –

—

A week ago a video was posted to Reddit, then subsequently picked up by Deadspin, SBNation, The Athletic, a few talk radio stations across the country, and finally Tiktok, Bluesky, X, Instagram and Facebook, where it has been making the rounds to great discussion.

It’s an old video, pixelated, maybe from one of those long obsolete Blackberries or a flip phone, from before Shane was playing Major League Hockey. The original video and the account that posted it were deleted almost immediately, and no one has been able to figure who exactly did it, but it’s clearly something the poster had been sitting on for years, waiting for the right moment to share it with the world.

The right moment being, of course, four days after Shane received, and did not even read, a DM from an anonymous Instagram handle. The message outlined the contents of the video and a request for a cool hundred and thirty two grand, which was incredibly specific and, frankly, a bit of a lowball, Ilya said later. Like, if you’re gonna blackmail, go all out. But because Shane never checks his DM requests, especially not from empty accounts with no followers or profile pictures, the video went unwatched for ninety-six hours almost to the minute, until it was forcibly brought into the harsh, unyielding light of the internet and the world.

Whoever was holding the phone to film was probably drunk or laughing, because the scene is shaky, but unmistakeable: three boys, tall and lanky in the way athletic teenagers are, just growing into their size, bound and gagged in the middle of a locker room, wearing nothing at all. The video isn’t censored and their dicks are out, but it’s so grainy it’s impossible to make out the details of them, which is probably a blessing. The boys – because they really are just boys, none older than 16 – are wriggling on their knees, trying to get out of the rope tying their hands before them. From somewhere off camera, a voice yells at them to quiet down, but no one else is in frame until a figure walks in front of the videographer in a black and yellow Kingston Wasps jersey, holding three cans of beer in his hands. The figure, awkward in his movements and not yet grown into his bulk, takes up most of the frame for a minute, so it’s easy to read the name and number on the back. In this jersey 17-year-old Shane approaches the rookies and speaks to them in a low voice, but the camera doesn’t pick up the words. Someone in the background whoops — it is clear the rest of the team is somewhere off to the side in the dressing room, egging on the scene.

The person filming drops the phone with a clatter just as Shane pours a beer over each of the rookies’ heads, and the video ends there. Before, he noted to Ilya when they watched the video in horror as soon as Farah sent it to them, the other guys on the team showed up on camera, ripping away the gags to force feed more beer down the poor youngest players’ throats until they threw up.

“You never told me your Juniors sweaters were black and yellow,” Ilya said, nonsensically, after the video was done. He was not surprised by the display. No hockey player at their level would be — they’ve made their way through every miserable rank there is and seen hazing of all kinds. Truly, he told Shane, this is gentle compared to some of the stuff he’s seen and done. Now, of course, leagues have all put out policies about it, following a rash of news stories in the mid 2020s about hazing and its effects, but whether the policies are actually followed, Shane doesn’t know. He has his doubts. But when they were coming up it was different. He remembers Akim Aliu, he remembers the Nova Scotian players that made national headlines about some nasty incident involving mini sticks, and he’s heard all kinds of stories from other past teammates that he doesn’t like to think about.

Of course, in light of this video, he is forced to think about it. And talk about it, because though Farah has done her best to keep Shane out of the news and he really doesn’t spend any time online at all, he is, in fact, a public figure, who runs a mental health charity with a focus on inclusion and acceptance in a famously violent, white, homophobic sport. So. A few interviews here, a quiet statement there. Whatever. Shane is 44 — apologizing for something he did when he was 17, even if he does feel terrible about it and did back then too, is a bit of exercise in futility. None of the rookies in the video have come forward. The names of his Wasps team members are public knowledge, and certainly some news outlets have dug them up and begged them to give their own statements or tried to figure out the source of the video, but no one has spoken. Like him, they are all in their 40s, and likely have families and jobs to take care of. Some may even be coaching their own teams by now. Unlike him, their names are not known across North America and spoken of in the same breath as Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt and the like. If they come up in this hazing story, it would be the first result on Google for decades to come. And truthfully speaking, Shane barely remembers them. Maybe one of the guys was from Manitoba, but that’s the best he can do. He doesn’t even remember who was filming. Is that fucked up? Not long after it was filmed he played in his first Prospect Cup, met Ilya in a frigid Saskatchewan parking lot, and started setting his sights on bigger and better things than the Ontario Hockey League. None of those other players made it to the show. He had no reason, back then, to keep in touch.

The camera doesn’t show the front of his jersey but he was wearing the C, and he felt deeply that if he did not participate, encourage, and even coordinate the traditional rookie hazing, he would lose the respect of his room, the trust that he’d fought hard for. It was just what you did. He couldn’t afford to question it, and hasn’t really thought about it since. He did it, and it was done, and his teammates laughed about it and clapped him on the back and listened to him afterwards even if he didn’t raise his voice like other captains did. Plus, he was a stupid fucking kid. In terms of the many unpleasant things he’s had to do to get to where he is now, this barely cracks the top ten.

Still though – he remembers feeling antsy and too big for his body, a little drunk on cheap beer that was way too warm to be good and a lot on the fear that they would get caught after-hours in their training facility. Looking back it feels likely that at least some of the front office staff knew about it — he had to get the keys from somewhere, after all, and he was and still is such a bad liar there’s no way they believed he just wanted access to the ice for extra practice time, plus this kind of stuff had been happening for generations of players, year after year, and the coaches themselves probably had done similar or worse — but it was understood that this was part of the deal, and you didn’t say anything about it, because this is how it had always been. It was probably meant to be good for team-building, somehow. Everything was about team-building, in Juniors. Team parties, team drinking games, team poker games while travelling. Making the rookies clean out the veterans’ lockers, carry their bags, sit at the front of the bus with the coaching staff. He remembers his captain keeping a tally of who had hooked up with which local girls, and if you didn’t add enough new names to the list every so often, you would be grilled and made fun of relentlessly. It makes Shane feel ill to imagine it now and even worse to know without question that every single player he’s worked with over the years has stories like it. Some may even think it was all totally fine.

The statement he posted was simple and perfectly serviceable, if boring: I acknowledge the role I have played in upholding the most toxic aspects of hockey culture. I apologize for any hurt I have caused. I work hard every day to make hockey a more welcoming, inclusive place free of hazing. This sport is for everyone. To continue this important work I will be donating $250,000 to the Irina Foundation.

“It doesn’t feel like enough,” Shane said after he pressed post and it was immediately picked up by news outlets and hockey blogs and podcasts, starved for content in the tail end of a boring playoff series and before the trade news and draft stories would start coming in. He didn’t just mean the money, even if it was more than what the would-be blackmailer asked for in the first place. He meant all of it. None of it felt like enough. Ilya understood this, too.

He wonders about those rookies. He was them, once, undergoing his own similarly humiliating and startlingly homoerotic hazing ritual at the hands of older teammates. Have they spent the rest of their life resenting him? Or have they bragged about playing with him in Juniors? He is the kind of person people bring up to others. His acupuncturist has his photo on the wall of her office. He still, four years past retirement, gets stopped for photos and autographs regularly, and probably always will. And the video — it will become part of his story, his legend. A mark against an almost spotless public record, the gay thing aside, and frankly, people seem all too comfortable forgetting the gay thing most of the time. But those men — boys — did not even get an MLH career and accompanying salary in exchange for what he made them do. They got a few fun anecdotes to pull out at parties and tell their kids. Did I ever tell you I played with Shane Hollander in Juniors? No really, the Shane Hollander. Nice guy, kind of quiet, pretty intense. Now this is tainted by the video, or maybe the stain was always there, just below the surface. Did the blackmailer even think of them, or only of getting to Shane Hollander and his money?

One of the guys was from Manitoba, maybe. It probably is fucked up Shane can’t even be sure about that.

—

Yuriko does not give them a moment to breathe when she wakes — she is immediately up and running and talking and asking for breakfast, asking to go to the pool, asking to go see Nana and Grampie, asking for new toys, asking for candy. She pauses long enough to give each of her fathers a kiss before she takes off for the living room, and they immediately have to get up and scramble behind her to make sure she doesn’t elope, or scale the TV stand, or find a way to start the oven, or any other such things that sound like far-fetched anxieties but are actually distinct possibilities with a child such as her. By six she has cried three separate times: the potty lid is closed when she would rather it be open, the banana she climbs up onto the kitchen island to steal isn’t yellow enough, and it’s too early to Facetime her grandfather, who, in his old age, has begun sleeping in later than Shane has ever known him to do. All in all, a regular morning in the Hollander-Rozanov household.

“She doesn’t look sick now,” Shane says, an eyebrow raised, as he texts her daycare teacher to let her know Yuriko won’t be going in due to potential illness. His daughter, ever the hurricane, is pulling out toy after toy from her hot pink toybox, scattering them around the living room with Nika looking on sagely from the couch. Why they bother cleaning them up every night is anyone’s guess – by next morning they will be back on the floor, ready to trip any distracted person trying to make their way through the house.

“Kids heal fast. Should have seen her last night,” Ilya says. He is scrambling eggs and cutting up fruit for her breakfast. “Broke her little Papa’s heart. Must have been last night’s Thai food that — Hey! Yu-yu!”

The child in question looks up from what she’s doing now, which is chucking a naked Barbie as hard as she can at the picture window. They watch as the Barbie clatters against the glass and falls onto a heap of toys.

“I’m just, she’s just, she’s, the Barbie is just flying!”

“That’s not flying, that’s throwing,” Ilya says with the patience of a man who actually got some sleep. Shane is feeling no such patience this morning and turns away from the scene just so he doesn’t say something he’ll regret. “No throwing in the house.”

“I need some fucking coffee,” Shane says. He considers his options: fancy and extremely expensive custom espresso machine, much less fancy but serviceable Nespresso, and an ancient $20 Hamilton Beach drip machine he’s been lugging around from place to place since he first moved away from home at 16. He chooses the Nespresso today for its speed and ease of use only but the Hamilton Beach is secretly his favourite.

“Make me a latte,” Ilya says.

“You’ll get what you get,” Shane says, but he pulls out the milk from the fridge and the frother from the cabinet anyway.

They are supposed to leave by seven if they want to make it to the meeting on time, which gives them just under an hour to convince Yuriko to eat breakfast (a struggle on the best of days), get her dressed and her hair brushed (better not to discuss this), put clean clothes on themselves (one at a time, so Yuriko is never left alone for a second), and drop the dog off at her doggy daycare (the easiest part — Nika would drive herself there if she could). Shane is not optimistic they will accomplish all this in the given time but they will do their best. Thankfully, he and Ilya can do this in their sleep, or with very little sleep, as it were. After they have their coffee Shane grabs the diaper bag and stuffs it with wipes, snacks, diapers, a change of clothes. Another bag gets books, toys, her tablet, a blankie, and some stuffies. Ilya wrangles Yuriko and straps her into her high chair to eat while he does her hair into two neat little space buns — like her Nana, she calls them panda ears — and she pokes and prods at her eggs before refusing them outright in favour of the blueberries and apple slices on her plate. It is a careful dance they do, brushing past each other to get ready for the day. Shane squeezes Ilya’s waist as he slides past and Ilya twists his neck to plant a kiss on Shane’s cheek and then they keep moving onto the next thing.

He is tired, yes, but he is always tired. Probably he should be used to it by now but he never is. It makes it harder not to snap at Ilya when he stands too long in front of the cabinet where they store the sippy cups or when Yuriko throws a piece of egg at the dog, but he manages it for now, and proudly so.

When he steps into the bathroom to get dressed and enjoy one blessedly quiet minute he dashes off some quick texts.

To his Mom: Can Grampie come with you to the meeting, no daycare for Y today

To Svetlana: May be late, start without us

To Hayden: Bring Amber to media day if possible please

To Rose: Why did I think it was a good idea to have a baby at 41 years old

He gets back three thumbs-ups and, from Rose who is in Spain shooting an action flick with Jacob Elordi and is therefore annoyingly unmoved by Shane’s early morning whining: Boo freaking hoo. Should have knocked me up when you had the chance. Send pics of my best girl now thanks xo kisses from auntie

Of course he obliges, because even if most pictures of her are blurry from the fact that she does not stop moving even to smile for the camera, his daughter is really fucking cute, and he loves to hear other people agree. Like, they made that baby, hello. She has Shane’s eyes and his black hair and his cheeks and his extremely strong hands. Ilya’s laughter and stubbornness and preternatural dexterity and sweetness.

“Shane, can you –” he hears Ilya yell for him, so he hurries to finish dressing and go back out to his family. Never a dull –

—

Five years earlier, give or take, on a wet September Thursday after a rough pre-season skate that was more frustrating than particularly exciting or invigorating, Shane and Ilya sat down with the GM of the Ottawa Centaurs to tell him they were going to retire at the end of the season.

It was not a surprise to anyone. They were on the tail end of their final contracts, timed to finish up together, because they had long agreed that neither wanted to play without the other. They were no longer at the top of their game, and though they were each still managing to put up 80-point seasons despite a series of baffling moves from the GM over the past few years that left them without defensive depth or much in the way of offensive support with seemingly no will from front office to fix these or any other issues, they felt it was time to go before major injuries took them out for good. Already Ilya’s doctor had warned him that another concussion could spell bad news, plus there was the matter of his fucked hip, and neither of them were healing as quickly as they once were, or keeping on weight like they should. Their last playoff run two years prior was a miserable slog — Ilya played with broken fingers taped and splinted in his glove, while Shane survived on cortisone injections and so many painkillers he worried for his kidneys – and while they were ready and willing to go the distance again, they knew it would be for one final time.

Then there was considerations for the future of their family: for the past eight months they had been quietly interviewing and getting to know potential surrogates through an agency, and were drawing up the final contracts with the woman they had chosen to work with. Baby-making is serious business when you can’t conceive naturally, and the unpredictability of the human body meant they needed to start working on it soon, unless they wanted to become parents at 50. Already 40 felt late. Shane and Ilya had recently watched Ruby and Jade graduate from their Cégep programs in a kind of jealous wonder, and when Jackie offered them tissues at the sight of their tears, neither could tell her why they were really crying.

The GM, therefore, should have already been making plans in preparation for their departure. A boisterous man from Kapuskasing who had come up not through hockey but through tech start-ups, Jean-Louis Cinq-Mars had stood at the helm of the Ottawa Centaurs since the year before Ilya’s defection to the team, and he’d been riding the high of that unexpected Russian windfall ever since. Nice guy, really, but totally incompetent if you asked Shane and pretty much anybody else with a working brain. To build a team around Ilya Rozanov was obvious, if a little near-sighted. To then have Shane Hollander fall into your lap and together with his husband lead your relatively young franchise to its first Cup win in history, and then promptly blow it through a series of morale-breaking trades, coaching changes and front office restructuring along with an outright refusal to invest in any kind of upgrades or renovations to any of its infrastructure, was pretty fucking brainless. Wiebe was sent packing after three consecutive years without making it past the second round of playoffs. Troy (and subsequently Harris) was traded to Anaheim for a couple early-round picks that never amounted to much. There was a rotating cast of coaches that never stuck around longer than a year or two. Then there was the trouble with keeping sponsors, the name of the stadium changing four times in six years, finally settling on the Giant Tigerdome, which still made Ilya sigh, and which turned their home barn into a meme practically overnight.

Of course Jean-Louis Cinq-Mars had not made plans for their departure. He instead begged them to stay, offering each an exorbitant short-term contract that would eat up a significant amount of cap space that was, frankly, sorely needed elsewhere.

“Hunter was 43 when he retired,” Cinq-Mars said, almost petulantly, when Ilya laughed in his face at the offer.

“And got a double knee replacement two weeks later,” said Ilya. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“We’re not giving up on the team,” said Shane, already anticipating the headlines. “And we’re happy to help prepare for what comes next. I know you’ve invested a lot in us over the years and we do love this organization for everything it has done for Ilya and I. It’s long been said that the Centaurs are the most inclusive franchise in the league and that is in large part thanks to you. And we certainly cherish the partnership with the Irina Foundation. We could help develop a transition pathway, maybe. You know, like a roadmap for the next few seasons.”

It felt a little like a last desperate attempt at salvaging the team they had given so much of themselves to, the place that had provided them a life outside hockey for the first time, the people that had believed in them no matter whose dick they were sucking. Neither had expected or even wanted to end up in Ottawa but in the bizarre Kafkaesque way of professional hockey this was where they had landed and they really had tried to make the best of it, despite management’s best efforts.

“We could do some special edition merch,” said Cinq-Mars thoughtfully. “Something with your hyphenated name on it? I’ll talk to marketing.”

Even if their best efforts weren’t really that great at all.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane said. Ilya just laughed again, a thin sound of disbelief, and stopped when something cold dripped onto his forehead. He looked up at the ceiling.

“It’s raining inside,” he said, dumbly. He didn’t even wipe it away, just let it run down his face a little like a tear.

Cinq-Mars swore and pulled out from under his desk a red bucket. “Sorry, the roof is leaking. You know how it is. Here, put that where you were sitting when you go.”

Shane and Ilya took that as a sign to indeed go.

—

There is really no time for Ilya to be pulling into the Tim’s drive-thru but he does it anyway, to Yuriko’s utter delight. She starts clapping as soon as she sees the sign. The long line of cars filled with people on their way to work crawls while Ilya fills out his order on the app — he loves getting points at any place, even if he never uses them. It’s like a little game he plays with himself, Shane thinks. He usually finds this endearing. Today, in his grumpiness, he finds it annoying.

“Timmits! Timmits! My Timmits are here!”

“When have you ever had a Timbit before?” Shane grumbles, even if he knows the answer lies somewhere in the countless hours she spends with her grandparents on a weekly basis.

“She was sick last night. Let her have a Timbit,” Ilya says. He adds two boxes of 50 Timbits to his order and a dozen muffins, then Shane watches him click the plus sign 15 times on the packs of hockey cards. “You know they have a little game on here during the season where you guess the players who will make points every night?”

Shane did not know that. He does not have the Tim Horton’s app on his phone, despite having done a good dozen commercials for them over his career. He even had a product collaboration once, a protein bowl with chicken and edamame and a sesame mayo that was both insulting and disgusting, but it was at least a better option than the matcha maple donut they first pitched.

“What can you win if you’re right?”

“A Ford Escape.”

Shane looks at the Lamborghini emblem on the dash of their Urus and makes a face. “We’re good.”

The line trundles along slowly and Yuriko starts singing the Paw Patrol theme song, though she only knows a few words and repeats them over and over and over. Shane really wishes he had gone to bed earlier.

“Oh,” Ilya says, “I meant to tell you — wait, do you want anything, they have the — Yuriko, please do not kick Daddy’s seat — okay, yes on the spinach egg bites?”

“Jesus, was that a full sentence?”

Ilya snorts, and Shane, despite himself, giggles, and Yuriko asks, “Daddy, what does, what’s Jesus mean?” which shuts them both up immediately.

“Oh no,” Ilya whispers, wincing, “do we have to start watching what we say around her? Is she at that age?”

“Daddy!”

“It’s something for adults to discuss,” Shane says, which of course means —

“Daddy, what’s dick-uss?”

Shane bangs his skull against the headrest and closes his eyes. “I can’t do this right now,” he whispers.

“Well. Whatever. I got the egg bites, eat them if you want.”

“Daddy?”

“Let’s put on the Frozen 5 soundtrack,” Shane says quickly, and this distracts Yuriko enough that he doesn’t hear any more questions for at least a minute. It isn’t until they’re nearing the pick-up window that Shane realizes he never heard what Ilya meant to tell him, and by then Ilya seems distracted by a word game on the Tim’s app. That man really is too susceptible to marketing.

With each minute they sit in this line, they will be a minute later to this apparently very important, very urgent meeting, and the rest of the day the team has planned. There will be a press conference announcing a renewal of their partnership with the Ottawa Centaurs, some social media videos to film, and the thing Ilya is most excited for and Shane is most dreading, a sexy-ish photoshoot with all the coaches for a calendar they will use as fundraising. Emphasis on the ish, because they are an organization that works with children, but, as Sveta says, sex sells, and hot shirtless hockey players talking about mental health sells even more.

The Foundation’s camp facilities, which are currently under extensive construction and when finished will include dormitories, meeting rooms and offices, a press room, a gym and room for dryland training, a cafeteria, a common room, a small pool, and of course, a rink with bleachers and a hospitality suite, are an hour out from the city on the Québec side of the border, close to Mont-Tremblant in a small blink-and-you-miss-it village in the woods, smack between Montréal and Ottawa. Currently the main building with the ice and offices is finished, but the rest is a mess of builders, electricians, plumbers, landscapers and more. When complete it will be almost as nice a training facility as any professional team’s, save a very select few. Some have called it overkill. Shane and Ilya and the rest of the board don’t care. This will be the thing that lives on after they die, he hopes. It’s what he wants people to remember about him. Not that he’s gay, or Asian, or that he once set records still standing unbroken today. Not his Olympic medals or his Stanley Cups, but the Foundation.

This is a new feeling, really. The Foundation was important to him before, of course, but he can admit that when he first came up with the idea all those years ago, so wrapped up in loving Ilya and desperate to find any way he could do it freely and openly, it was more of a means to an end than something that felt real. The logistics were blurry, the concept more aspirational than tangible. It took many people much smarter than Shane and Ilya to nail down the specifics: insurance, facilities, contracts, staffing, salaries, pricing, donations, taxes, and so on and so on. Now, more than 15 years in, it’s a full-blown full-time organization, no longer bumming space in the Centaurs’ decrepit training rink in the off-season like they did at first and renting out windowless rooms in high-rise office buildings.

The camps too, now running throughout the summer for all age groups and abilities, are just part of it. Their counselling staff travels across the country visiting AAA and Juniors teams to give talks to the players and staff. They run, of course, anti-hazing and anti-bullying campaigns. Support groups for parents and caregivers. And then there are research grants for mental health in sport studies, partnerships with other charities and universities, collaborations with You Can Play, Bell Let’s Talk, and so on. The scope of the work has grown so large Shane can no longer claim he nor Ilya have anything to do with it, even if they do sign off on everything Svetlana and her team come up with, and continue to coach in the summers.

Still it does not feel like enough. He’s not sure if anything is changing, for hockey. How can they measure something like that, without being in the rooms themselves anymore? He sees the things people say online, about the Foundation. There is a pervasive feeling that to critique hockey culture is to critique hockey, and by extension everyone involved, and somehow, the country of Canada as a concept. They aren’t critiquing it at all, is what Shane wants to say. He’s not even sure if he wants to. They’re simply offering a place for kids to learn to play the sport that is safer than any Shane and Ilya grew up with. If that is sending a message, well, so be it. There have been a few more coming-outs in the years since Scott, since Troy, since Shane and Ilya, but only a few. The rest of it, the racism and misogyny and bullying and hazing — he has to assume it still happens, but behind closed doors. But perhaps not as much. Their very first camp alum, a young defenseman from rural Northwest Territories, was drafted in the second round this year and it felt like a victory. A small one, definitely, but not inconsequential.

So. A legacy, eventually. Some changes in hockey culture, hopefully. And an emergency morning meeting called by the CEO, as soon as they can get out of this god-forsaken drive-thru and get on the road. Shane sighs. Patience is a –

–

Last night, together with Shane’s parents, a couple of Ilya’s friends from the Centaurs coaching and development teams, Bood and Cassie and Milo, and Luca and his wife Margo and their young son Josef, Shane, and Ilya watched the Stanley Cup Finals. Yuriko and Josef paid little attention to the game, choosing instead to find every toy and book in the house and bring them to the living room to fight over, which, Shane thought, was probably a better use of their time than watching the Seattle offense make short, dirty work of Montréal’s everything. They did pause for Thai food, which Shane ordered for everyone instead of cooking or, God forbid, hosting a potluck, and it was a good time, really, even if the game was terrible and Shane felt unsettled, like he always did on Finals night. Even worse was that it was the Metros, though it was only their first Finals appearance since Shane hung up his tricolore for the last time. Maybe Shane should have felt good about that. Vindicated. When he left Montréal the pundits all agreed: without #24 the team would have to rebuild from the ground up, and it would be years until they’d get close to winning a Cup again. But there is a new #24 on the team, because they never retired his number like he dreamed they would. There’s a new everyone else too, because hockey franchises are a real Ship of Theseus sort of deal, constantly changing and rebuilding while the fans stay religiously dedicated to the abstract concept of the team. So the Metros got close to the Cup but not close enough to take it home, and Shane couldn’t even look away.

Everyone was talking, laughing, while he sat staring at the TV, his mother as ever at his side, the both of them speaking in snarky half-sentences they didn’t need to finish because they understand each other implicitly on matters of hockey. She still follows the Metros, of course, though she probably thinks she’s keeping this a secret from her son. Yuna Hollander is many things but a good secret keeper she is not. Everyone thinks Shane gets his inability to lie from his charmingly earnest father but it’s his mother, really, who has a hard time keeping her thoughts to herself. He remembered, sitting next to her on the sofa watching the Metros flounder pathetically while she tried and failed to hide her disappointment, the time Shane got both of them in trouble when he was 6 because he told his unpleasant Grade One teacher that his mommy said that even if Madame Lafleur was a mean asshole mouthbreather, Shane still had to listen in class.

Fifteen years since he was a Metro and he still felt responsible for the loss and then subsequently guilty about it, like Ilya could read his mind and be disappointed in him for it. Probably Ilya did actually know his thoughts, and this was why he left Shane and Yuna to their bitching while he entertained their guests and watched Nika in case she tried to sneak any people food and made sure Yuriko didn’t set the house or herself on fire. It was just that Shane’s embarrassment when the Metros failed to kill off a penalty or when a pass went wide when it should have been a gimme was as keen as it was when he’d been the face of the franchise, and his pride when they did manage to convert was as visceral. Maybe if they’d been any kind of good at all in the past decade it would have been easier to shrug off. But as it was, his name was still brought up by analysts and in interviews every day in relation to the team, even post retirement, like he was some kind of dead wife everyone remembered with yearning and wistfulness.

Even the gay thing hadn’t been enough to tamp this down, and in fact probably made it worse. Montréal, the queerest city in North America that also happened to be the most hockey-obsessed, mourned him with protests that turned into riots. He was asked to be Grand Marshall of Montréal Pride four years in a row, though he declined each time. Eventually they even named a street after him. FouKi mentioned him in the single that played nonstop on any francophone station in Ontario for a whole summer: Ma baby girl a quitté Montréal comme Shane Hollander / j’m’ennuis d’elle pis j’m’ennuyerai forever. He would always be linked to the team and the city. His Wikipedia page started with it: Shane Kyoshi Hollander-Rozanov (né Hollander, born May 10th, 1991) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who played twelve seasons for the Montréal Métropolitains of Major League Hockey and with whom he won three Stanley Cups. Considered one of the best players in the world during his career, Hollander is the player with the most assists of all time and third highest regular season goals. He finished his playing career with the Ottawa Centaurs, winning a Stanley Cup with them in 2023.

At the second intermission he forced himself to get up and make a round, trying to shake off the unpleasant thrum in his stomach. Yuriko was wriggling on her grandfather’s lap while he fed her bites of pad see ew and Shane bent down to press a kiss first to her head and then to his father’s.

“Don’t give her too much, she has to go to bed soon,” Shane murmured.

“I’ll put her down in a few,” David said, which meant she would convince him to read three stories instead of one and sing a few extra lullabies too, thereby extending bed time even longer than it already was — the Stanley Cup finals being a special occasion, and all. Shane said nothing and let it happen. Grampie and Yuriko are each other’s favourite person.

Eventually Shane made it to where Bood and Milo were chatting with Ilya. Milo, all of 13 years old, seemed bored with the conversation and general company, though Shane supposed most 13-year-olds would be apathetic about attending a party with only their parents’ friends, even if said friends are who they are. Regardless of his stance on middle-aged get-togethers, Shane likes Milo. He is serious and smart like his mother and a promising right-winger like his father. He’s been a fixture in the camps since he was old enough to skate, now even helping out occasionally with the littlest skaters, and the coaches are all impressed with him. Ilya especially, who’s known him since he was born, loves him deeply, and sometimes takes him out on drives to get ice cream or bring him to the rink for private ice time.

“How are they doing?” Bood asked Shane. That he didn’t have to specify who ‘they’ meant was damning — it sure as hell wasn’t Seattle.

Shane shrugged. “Bad,” he said. “Kind of shocking they made it this far.”

“Seven games is tough,” Bood said. “Remember when—”

He continued with a memory from their own successful Cup run together, back when they thought they’d never lose again, and playing through injuries and maladies seemed worth it. Was worth it? Hard to say, now. Ilya stayed quiet and wrapped an arm around Shane, who felt the weight of his husband’s heavy assessing gaze. Milo stared at his socked feet, clutching a can of Sprite.

“School almost done?” Shane asked Milo when Bood stopped talking. The kid seemed surprised Shane said anything to him. A little startled.

Milo nodded but didn’t meet Shane’s eyes. “Next week.”

“You got plans? We could use you at — oh,” Shane said as his phone started ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out to see Svetlana Vetrova (CEO) listed on his caller ID, and tilted it to Ilya so he could read it too. Ilya frowned.

“Sorry, kiddo, we gotta — okay, come on,” Shane said. He stepped away to find some relative quiet and Ilya followed.

“Shane,” Sveta said when he answered on speaker mode. They were in their walk-in pantry surrounded by clear containers of different varieties of grains and rice, protein powders and spices, and snacks — apple sauce pouches and dehydrated fruit and the like for Yuriko, popcorn and kale chips for Shane, and whatever the hell caught Ilya’s fancy every week, this time being Ritz swiss cheese crackers, dill pickle Crispers, maple leaf cookies, and of course, as always, sunflower seeds.

“I’m here too,” said Ilya, “obviously.”

“What’s up?” Shane asked. She was meant to be flying in for their marketing day the following morning, because she lives most of the time in New York and comes into Ottawa only when she can’t help it. She keeps an apartment in the Glebe but most of her work can be done from anywhere. This was one of her stipulations when they hired her — or rather, begged her to sign on. It felt too good to be true that they hired mostly their friends and teammates to work for the Foundation at first but they knew these were people who could be trusted and were competent. Plus, Ilya said, what the fuck was the point of having their own charity if they couldn’t be picky with who they hired?

“Listen,” she said, right to business, which Shane appreciated. “I switched my flight to an earlier one. Could you make it to the facility for eight-thirty instead of ten? I’m calling a board meeting.”

“You need me to pick you up?” Ilya said.

“What the hell?” Shane said at the same time. “What’s going on?”

“I booked a car service,” she said. “I’ll explain tomorrow. I think most of the board can make it.”

“Hunter—”

“Flight’s already rebooked. A few will be virtual. The west coast people are flying in as we speak.”

“Jesus,” Shane said. “How do you — you know what, I don’t want to know how you do this. I bet there’s magic involved.”

“She’s amazing, I told you this when we hired her, you remember I told you this?” Ilya said. “I always say, my Sveta is amazing. I say this all the time.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Shane said, fondly.

“Okay, see you tomorrow,” she said, then paused and sighed, sounding very put-upon. “And Shanya — don’t beat yourself up about this. You are more than who you were when you were twenty four.”

Shane huffed a laugh. Of course Sveta would know just what to say, even in a different country, even if he hadn’t seen her in months, even if he’d never shared his feelings out loud with anyone. She could have been talking about anything, really, the video leak or the Cup, or whatever it was that was so urgent she had to move heaven and earth to get people to fucking middle-of-nowhere Brébeuf, Québec tomorrow, but whatever it was, Shane appreciated it.

“The age or the number?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and hung up, probably already moving on to her next call.

“Is she actually a witch, do you think? Because, like, that’s just freaky.”

“No, no, I was texting her earlier,” Ilya said. “I told her my husband looks like he is going to commit mass murder and his mother is going to help him hide the bodies.”

“Hey!” Shane gaped, half-offended, half-pleased. So Ilya had been giving him space on purpose, which he appreciated, but also had not said anything to him in favour of texting Sveta about the issue. Not that there was an issue, really, it was just Shane’s stupid conflicting feelings about the team that built him — the team he built — two decades ago. Flashes of memories tumbled through his head, unbidden. Standing next to Comeau at his oceanfront Nova Scotia wedding, visiting the sick kids at Sainte-Justine with the team, Miitka showing up to Shane’s apartment with lurid yellow Swedish soup when he was sick with the flu in 2011, playing round after round of poker on long flights, baby Amber tottering on unsteady legs into the practice facility dressing room, Shane invited along to JJ’s Cup Day where they visited his church and his friends and family in Saint-Michel, Hayden at his side throughout it all. Lifting the Stanley Cup for Montréal for the first time in decades. Youngest franchise captain of all time. Before everything went to shit. Probably there would never be a resolution, he thought. He didn’t know if it would be better if they never won again or if they never lost.

Ilya shrugged and reached over to pick some lint off Shane’s shoulder. “I would still love you if you were a mass murderer.”

Like that made it any better.

“Not sure if that’s a strike against me or against you,” Shane said, mulish, not yet willing to give in to — well, anything, yet. Except, “Dad has the baby. Wanna make out a little?”

Ilya brightened and reached for Shane and by the time they left the pantry, confetti was falling on Centre Bell ice in Seattle blue and grey.

—

They arrive at the Foundation’s campus at the same time as half a dozen construction workers’ trucks and Yuna and David’s Cadillac. Three of the trucks have some kind of Metros merchandise displayed — a bumper sticker, a license plate, a dangling car freshener in the shape of the Sainte-Flanelle. The men spilling out of them seem dejected and hungover, but at least they’re here, which Shane thinks is a mark in their favour, even if they decidedly ignore Shane and Ilya stepping out of their car. Kind of funny, really. They probably bragged to their friends and family about this gig — j’te jure, Hollander pis Rozanov, en vrai de vrai! But there’s nothing like a failed Stanley Cup run to remind people of their longstanding grudge against the very same Hollander pis Rozanov. Likely there are many across la belle province today who are similarly compromised by last night’s loss. As soon as they’d crossed the border into Hull there was evidence of Québec’s dedication to its favourite team everywhere, Centaurs on the other side of the river be damned, with blue and red flags flying outside every house, posters in apartment windows, tricolor pennants hanging off balcony railings. As if this jingoistic show of support would have had any effect on the outcome of the series or anything else other than feeding the hockey machine hungry for fan money. Shane hears Rose’s voice in his head, the sneering one only a select few get to hear: Wake up, people, no one on the Metros is gonna fuck you because you put up a tacky sign on the side of the road cheering them on!

Yuriko immediately starts screaming at the sight of her grandparents’ car and trying to get out of her seat, but her chubby fingers don’t yet have the strength to unsnap her seatbelt, thank God. Soon though, they will, and they’ll have to figure that one out somehow.

“Grampie, Grampie, I want Grampie,” she chants as Shane gets her out, but not before pulling on the socks and shoes she kicked off during the drive.

“Nana’s there too, you know,” Shane says mildly, dodging her flailing arms and kicking legs as she tries to escape his hold and run across the parking lot, which is very much a construction zone.

“Where’s my Yu-yu?” David is reaching for her as soon as they are close enough.

“Sorry we’re a little late,” Yuna says, ignoring the fact that Shane and Ilya are also obviously a little late. There is a fleet of black rental vehicles already parked, and some of the Foundation team’s, and Shane is sure Sveta is huffing at them as they speak. “Someone had to spend half an hour on the toilet before we left this morning.”

David rubs his chest with one hand as the other hand holds onto Yuriko, perched on his hip. “Ah, a bit of indigestion, you know how it is. That pad see ew did a number on both of us, huh?” He tweaks Yuriko’s nose, and she giggles sweetly.

“Shanya,” Ilya says, from where he’s bent over digging through the trunk of their car, gathering the many things they need for the day. Having a child is not for those who like to travel light. “Where is the—”

“Back seat,” Shane says.

“And the—”

“In the diaper bag.”

“Okay, got it.”

Yuna raises an eyebrow at them but says nothing as she follows them in, Ilya now laden with bags, blankies, and a very important pink elephant stuffy. God forbid they forget the elephant stuffy. Shane grabs the muffins and Timbits, though there are suspiciously fewer of these left than when they were first purchased.

The rink and office building, of course, is beautiful, with locally-sourced wood and stone accents, tall windows that let in as much bright summer sunlight as possible, and lush accoutrements like a coffee bar for parents and team members and a kid’s playroom, which they staff with child-minders during camps and games to watch the players’ little siblings. This is where David heads with Yuriko now, with nary a glance behind them at Ilya and Shane and Yuna.

“Have fun,” Shane calls, “I guess!”

“Looks like David spoils her,” says Scott Hunter, rounding the corner of the corridor that leads to the administrative offices. Ilya jumps and swears.

“Spoiled? Like rotten meat?” he sniffs, trying to play off his surprise. Shane grins at the way he carefully schools his face into the picture of disdain. “I think not.”

“I am not saying — for the love of God — you know what I — Jesus,” Scott stutters, “nevermind. Come on, Svetlana sent me to look for you.”

“You? With those knees? Cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Ilya,” Yuna scolds, “don’t say that like I don’t know your physio referred you for a hip replacement consult.”

“Yuna! You betray me in front of him!” Ilya says. Scott looks appropriately delighted at the news.

“I tell only the truth,” she says, and leads the way to the conference room. Yuna is not, strictly speaking, a board member anymore, nor is she a paid employee, but works more as an on-call volunteer consultant whenever a situation arises. Semi-retired, she says, when people ask, much like Shane feels, what with all the running around and meetings and emails and decisions and ad hoc gigs. Ilya too, due to his coaching contract with the Centaurs, does not get a vote at board meetings, but attends as a founder and observer. Plus, he’s gotten very good at Robert’s Rules, to everyone’s surprise. But that’s Ilya for you: never quite what people expect him to be, always giving everything he has to what’s in front of him, even when he says otherwise.

The other board trustees are a collection of friends and colleagues from across the country: a rep from You Can Play, one from the Ontario Centre of Addiction and Mental Health, someone from the Kid’s Help Phone, Scott Hunter and Max Riley, a Doctor and researcher in exercise physiology from Dalhousie University, a KPMG accountant who played for the Toronto Marlies in the 90s, a lawyer from the firm that works with the MLHPA. It is a good team, even if they only meet a couple times a year. The bulk of the work is done by Svetlana and her staff, which has grown to a dozen people under her leadership, and could probably get even bigger if Shane pushed for expansion. There’s been some requests to grow the camps, set up sessions in Alberta, BC and Nova Scotia, but as of yet they haven’t moved forward with it. It feels insane, actually, that the little idea Shane had in the middle of the night when trying to come up with a way for he and Ilya to be together has led to this. He knew nothing of mental illness and depression back then, and now it’s gotten so big, and yet when he reads the stories about CTE and bullying and sexual assault it feels too small. How can they just focus on mental health, he asks himself, even if the answer is, how can they take on anything else? Hockey is a vast, vicious beast. It’s everywhere in this country and permeates every aspect of life. Once that made Shane feel important, like he was part of something great. Now, after the week he’s had, he wonders why he just sat back and watched the worst, grimiest stories play out in the name of focusing on his game and not rocking the boat, to protect himself, to protect his sport and his relationship, and it gets so jumbled up in his head he can’t unravel the knots.

In the conference room around a beautiful raw-edged table Shane himself sourced from a local indigenous artist, a few of the trustees are chatting amongst themselves, steaming cups of coffee before them. There is a large screen with a Zoom call started and two board members in little boxes drinking their own cups of coffee. Svetlana is sitting at the head of the table and she looks as put together as ever, but Shane can see the dark circles under her eyes that she’s likely tried to conceal as best she can. Ilya heads straight to kiss her on the cheek and give her a decidedly not collegiate hug, but the board knows them well and chooses, wisely, to ignore this.

“I brought presents for the baby,” she says, “please don’t let me forget them.”

“The last thing we need is more toys,” Shane grumbles as he finds his seat next to the Dal researcher, a petite woman who once played on the Canadian national soccer team and helps with both their research grant program and their conditioning program for players. He drops the boxes of goodies on the table.

“Isn’t she, like, three?” Scott asks. “She’s not really a baby anymore.”

Ilya’s eyes narrow. “Do not test me, old man,” he hisses. “The ice you are on is paper thin.” He actually sounds pissed for real, and Scott raises his hands as if asking forgiveness. Next to him, Max shakes his head.

“They’re always your baby,” Yuna says with a dramatic little sigh Shane knows she does on purpose just to annoy him. “Shane’s still my baby.”

“Mom, please,” Shane says. “This is highly unprofessional.”

“No, no, go on,” Max grins. “What was Shane like as a baby?”

“You see that face he’s making right now?” Yuna asks. “Imagine that but with the chubbiest little red cheeks.”

“Very cute,” Max says approvingly. The KPMG accountant snickers and reaches for a blueberry muffin.

“What were you saying last night about murder?” Shane asks his husband, who takes the seat on his left.

“I support you in all things.”

“Alright, let’s get started before this turns into a liability,” Svetlana says. She stands and hands out a packet of papers to each person present. As if by consensus they all leave them on the table without looking through them yet, curious and perhaps a little apprehensive as to what the reason for this meeting is. “We have a big day today. Coaching staff is getting here at ten-ish, plus some photographers and videographers. I really appreciate everyone coming here last minute like this. I understand this is quite unusual but, well, needs must.”

“What about the press?” Scott asks.

“Ah, well – the Centaurs have decided to pull out of our agreement. So…”

There’s a beat.

“What?” Ilya says, eventually. “What do you mean?”

Svetlana looks at everyone and makes a face as if trying to decide how to go about saying whatever she wants to say next. “I think we should proceed with the call to order and reading of the agenda and minutes before we maybe vote to go in camera. Not sure if we want this conversation on the record.”

Shane frowns, an expression reflected back at him on everyone else’s face at the moment. The Irina Foundation has had a partnership with the Ottawa Centaurs since its inception, orchestrated by Yuna when she was still acting as CEO. First it was for use of their practice facility and merchandise supplier and online store, then as recipient of their 50/50 raffles during games, loaning them Coach Ilya in the off-season, sponsoring some season tickets for fundraising purposes, and a million little things over the years that have made it a great and profitable collaboration. Cinq-Mars himself told Shane and Ilya dozens of times how great the optics were for the Centaurs to be working with the Foundation, and how he truly believed in their message of inclusion and mental wellbeing for players and their families. He was a regular at their fundraising galas and donated from his own pocket many times over the years. And today they are meant to be announcing the renewed contract between the Centaurs and the Foundation. There is supposed to be a press conference. Shane’s been practicing the key messages the Comms staff have drafted for him all week.

Quickly they proceed through the meeting housekeeping and finally get back to the topic at hand, now in camera, meaning there will be no minutes taken of their conversation, no record at all.

“Should I be here?” Ilya asks, turning to the lawyer at the table. The man, in a golf polo branded with a Toronto craft brewery, shrugs.

“You don’t have a vote anyway,” he says. “And Shane would tell you anything we spoke about.”

“If I was legally required not to–” Shane starts, then stops, thinking better of it. “No, yeah, you’re right.”

“What did they say?” Yuna asks, turning back to Svetlana.

“Well, you know, the 50/50, the intermission features, the merch infrastructure, the, um, the Irina branded jerseys, the joint charity gala, the Little Cens days we help with, the seminars for rookies, that’s all – that’s all part of the contract. Which they have annulled.”

“Can they just do that, a day before we announce it? Didn’t they sign anything?” asks Max. He looks bewildered, much like Shane feels.

“There are a few clauses they can use to terminate without notice,” the lawyer says. “Code of conduct type thing. Brand alignment. Bad behaviour.”

Svetlana grimaces and Shane feels his heart beat faster. “Is this because of me?” he asks. “Because of the stupid fucking – the hazing thing?”

“They may have implied it, but–”

“Sveta. I made a statement, I’ve apologized. That shit’s like – come on, you guys know what it’s like, it was the OHL, that’s like – oh my God.”

The hockey players around the table wince and nod. Even Max, who played in the WMLH, which, by all accounts, is not as toxic as the MLH, looks contrite.

“It was nearly thirty years ago. Ilya and I won them a fucking Cup since then. The only one they’ve ever gotten since fucking 1992. Is that – really?”

“Wasn’t 1992 their first season?” the researcher next to Shane asks.

“Fucking exactly! It’s their only Cup!”

“Hey, hey, whoa,” says Svetlana. “Like I said, it was only implied. They said they’re realigning corporate priorities, whatever that means.”

“Do you have any idea how much business we brought to that team? They would be nothing without us. Nothing. They would’ve gone bankrupt years ago!”

As he says it, he feels his breath steady and his heart calm. The lawyer makes a small noise and Shane knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’s right. Without them they would have gone bankrupt. And now that they don’t have them, not really, not on the ice anymore –

“Oh my God,” Shane says. “They’re bankrupt.”

Yuna’s jaw drops and Ilya puts his head in his hands.

“That would be another cause for termination, yes,” says Sveta. “And between us, there have been rumours of, ah, financial mismanagement. I mean, we’ve all seen the state of their infrastructure the past few years. Plus, they’ve been consistently under cap since Shane and Ilya retired.”

Ilya barks out a laugh. “Cinq-Mars told me last year he wished the MLHPA still allowed salary deferrals. I thought — I don't know what I thought. I should have seen it coming.”

“No one’s told you anything?” Yuna asks sharply. “Human Resources, or—”

“Nyet. No emails or anything. But maybe they are shopping around, see if they can sell first. Houston has been making noise about a team. Maybe Halifax.”

“I even heard Mexico City,” says the You Can Play rep. “There’s a fan campaign online.”

“I don’t really care about that at the moment. Right now we have to make a decision,” Svetlana says. “We only got word from them last night, at the top of the third actually. Like maybe they thought I’d be too distracted to check my email or something. My team is already working to reach out to other organizations that may want to partner with us. But we have to decide if we want to, ah, pursue the Centaurs or not.”

“Like, sue them?” asks Max.

“Which other teams?” says Shane.

“Yes, sue them for termination of contract,” Svetlana says. She ignores Shane’s question completely, which is answer enough. “Or at least push them to give us a clearer answer. Realigning corporate priorities or whatever it is they want to say about it is not reason enough. An implication is not reason enough. If they are selling, they need to say that. And if it is Shane, then we need to fight that. I don’t think we should take that lying down.”

“Christ,” Shane breathes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Honey,” Yuna starts, but can’t seem to come up with anything else to finish her sentence.

“At the very least,” says the Dal researcher, “we need to not be so reliant on one partnership anymore. We need to explore other avenues for merch and promotion.”

“Agreed,” says Scott. “And the money — is it a lot?”

“It’s not an insignificant portion of our yearly revenue,” Svetlana says, pointing to the packet of documents in front of Scott. “The financials are in there. But we can make it up elsewhere. I have a few ideas for some campaigns.”

“Oh my God, the press conference,” Shane groans.

“Cancelled. I already contacted the media reps. Everything else is still a go. The play is business as usual to the public.”

“Well, what the fuck,” Scott says. “Alright.”

They collectively sit in silence for at least a minute before Ilya clears his throat and the spell breaks, and discussion begins again, deciding what to say and whether or not to put out a statement and how to proceed with the day and if the information is confidential or not, and so on and so on. They go until the coaching staff arrive, called in from around the country for this media day in preparation for the summer camps, which start as soon as school lets out. Looking out the window at the parking lot Shane sees Hayden walk in, his gear bag slung over his shoulder, with 17-year-old Amber by his side, who loves Yuriko and who will be Grampie’s back-up babysitter for the day for when his energy inevitably starts flagging. Bood is talking, as ever, with Ryan Price and Leah, Max’s wife. Others they’ve recruited over the years, people they’ve seen play and coach and care deeply for the kids. Foundation staff in jeans and branded shirts, construction workers milling about. It’s a busy place, a lively hub, and Shane is proud of it. He really, truly is.

“Milo didn’t want to come today?” Shane murmurs to Ilya amidst the others debating. "If he's coaching this summer."

“Ah, fuck,” Ilya says. “I forgot to tell you. He is, ah, quitting hockey. Cold turkey, no coaching.”

“What?” Shane yelps. “But he’s so good.”

Ilya makes a face. “Yes, I told him that, but he wants to focus on school.”

“He’s 13. If he quits now he won’t be able to catch up if he changes his mind. He’s so young to make that decision.”

“How old were you when you decided hockey was more important than your education?” Ilya asks pointedly.

Shane shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Around that age, I guess. I had an agent already.”

“Yes, me too. Too young. Good thing it worked out for us but it can’t work out for everybody.”

Too young, too fucking young.

God.

“You don’t think there were other reasons? Racism, or…?”

Ilya grimaces. “He didn’t say. Would you have said anything?”

No, no he wouldn’t. He didn’t, when he was Milo’s age, no matter what they called him in on the ice and in the locker room, no matter how many stupid jokes he had to smile through.

Add it to the list of reasons he is perhaps not so proud of himself. If he’s wrong and the Cens really aren’t so deep in the red they’re looking for a way out of the game, if something he did when he was barely older than Amber really is the fucking reason they’re pulling away, after everything he and Ilya have done for them, after years, after countless thankless hours — he wants to bash his head against the wall. He was 5 years old the first time he wore a Centaurs jersey, one he’d begged for for Christmas. 40 when he wore one for the last time. It wasn’t where he wanted to end up, but little Shane, who had a chubby grumpy face and a meticulously-kept hockey card binder and a deeply held belief that hockey was what he was put on this planet for, little Shane would have been thrilled. That kid didn’t know yet about what he would have to do and hear and see to play his game. It feels like a betrayal, again. Happily ever after is bullshit. How is he going to be able to read fairy tales to his daughter after this?

He sniffs and Ilya hands him a tissue. Shane hadn’t even realized he was trying not to cry, but Ilya did, of course.

He looks to his smart, capable husband. Ilya does not seem as blindsided by this as Shane does, and he’s the one potentially losing his actual job. Ilya is never really surprised when terrible things happen, because he expects them to, and he is always calm through a crisis. He has had many terrible things happen to him in his life. Great things, beautiful things, but also just fucking awful ones too.

Is it people that are cruel, Shane wonders, or is it hockey? Or is hockey just people, all kinds of people, playing a game of money, of corruption, of bullying, of choosing the game over everything, even education and health? Surely there must be some good in it. Shane got his people out of it, after all. And he did love playing, more than anything. Still now he wakes some mornings desperate for the ice, his chest aching for the cold, sterile air of the rink, his muscles craving the push of the game. He was the best. He and Ilya were the best. They have worked so hard to make it better for others, too, while placating the powerful people who make donations. Focusing on mental health and bullying, hosting fun summer camps, while not really delving into the root of the issues, the culture of secrecy and sexual assault and the underage drinking and everything else that festers under the surface. And still, still, this is what he gets? The rug pulled out from under him one more time?

He always thought what hockey gave him was worth everything it took. His integrity, his privacy, his body — these things he gave willingly in exchange for the chance to play the game he loved with people he loved at his side. Of course he loved them. Didn’t he? They were a part of it. He was a part of it, part of a whole, a team. But what did he miss out on? Hockey has been his whole life, his whole life. Is there more to it?

Incongruously, interrupting the chatter around him, Shane starts to laugh. Being Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov has afforded them some protection from the uglier parts of the industry — or maybe he just ignored them for so long, and this week has brought it all to the surface for him. So he laughs, and Ilya stares at him with concern, and everyone stops talking. Yuna gets to her feet as if she can do anything to help her baby, and Shane just continues to laugh.

“You good?” Scott asks, when Shane’s cackles have quieted somewhat to unstoppable giggles.

“I think I’m angry,” Shane says. “I can’t believe it. I think — I think I’m really angry.”

He starts laughing again, ignoring the alarm on everyone’s faces. Maybe, he thinks, he needs to take a break from this miserable, dirty sport. He should get a hobby. People told him when he retired he needed to get a hobby. It’s just he could never think of anything he wanted other than hockey, and Ilya, who was also a hockey player, and Yuriko, who he hoped would become a hockey player, even if she forewent her fucking education to do it. Is he a horrible parent? It all seems ridiculous, now. The whole world is open to him. Marathon running, maybe, or he could get really into dog shows. Pickleball. Disc golf. Or there are things that are not competitive at all. Birding, or knitting, or fucking DIY home renovation. Whatever. He could do anything. It doesn’t have to be this. He could step back from the Foundation, let others do it all, and never think about hockey again. As they say, there’s no use putting all your eggs in one —

—

The meeting ends and Ilya herds Shane into the playroom off the lobby, shooting him concerned looks the entire time but not saying much. Shane knows he’s coming up with the right words to ask later when they’re in bed, when Shane will be so tired he’ll have no energy left to hide his answers. Yuriko is a good distraction, though, and when she spots them she jumps up from whatever game she was playing that had Amber and Hayden laying on their stomachs with her, toy cars and stuffies in front of them, while David looks on from a very tiny and very pink chair intended for toddlers.

“Daddy! Papa! We are, we, Unky Monkey and, and, Amber, we’re playing doctor,” she says. Shane swings her into his arms and breathes her in for a second before she starts squirming to be let down again. Her strawberry-scented shampoo, her sweet baby smell. She is his like Ilya is his and he is theirs.

Hayden groans as he stands to greet them, his knees audibly clicking. “Hey bud,” he says. He hugs Shane and claps Ilya on the back. “Ilya.”

“Unky Monkey,” Ilya says, grinning.

“I’ve been called worse by you,” Hayden says.

“You watch the game last night?

“Eh. Yeah, Jackie’s brothers came over. Enough said. How are your Celtics looking?”

“Great. Wanted to get tickets for a playoff game but hard to get away with this little one,” Ilya says. He sticks his tongue out at his daughter who laughs delightedly, a golden trill of a sound.

“I know what it’s like, trust me,” Hayden says then makes a face. “Look, I’ve got some bad news.”

“Of course you do,” Shane sighs. “What a fucking morning.”

“Don’t swear in front of the baby,” David says. He’s still rubbing his chest like he has heartburn.

“She’s being raised by two professional hockey players,” Ilya says. “Swearing is the least of her issues.”

Yuriko slithers down Shane’s body and hops on one foot over to Amber, and they start whispering together and moving the stuffies around in a way that seems to make complete sense to them and them alone.

“You’ve got a flat tire,” Hayden says, gesturing vaguely toward where the parking lot would be. “I assume a nail from the construction or something like that.”

It wouldn’t take much to set Shane off laughing again, and this almost does it. “Awesome,” he just says instead. “What the fuck do I do about that?”

David makes a scandalized noise and stands with a grunt from the little plastic kiddy chair to join them. “What do you mean? You don’t know how to put a spare on?”

“When would you ever have taught me how to do that?” Shane asks, thinking again of choosing hockey, and being too young, and of Milo, and his mom sitting beside him as he watched the Metros lose, and that he could not have chosen hockey without his parents choosing it for him too. Someone needed to drive him to practice and sign all the forms. He can see David open his mouth but Shane cuts him off. “Please. I need you to not have a crisis of parenting right now, Dad. I’m fine.”

Ilya snorts and Shane does not need to be a mind-reader to know what his husband’s thinking. His face is still red and warm from his anger and his breakdown earlier.

“I will call my car guy,” Ilya says.

“All the way out here? No, no, let me do it,” David says. “I have a jack and everything.”

“It’s a three hundred thousand dollar car. They better come to the fucking moon if I ask.”

“Let your old man help, Shaney,” says David. “Might need a hand though, I'm not as young as I used to be. Come on. No time like the present to learn.” He claps Shane on the back and glances at Yuriko now climbing onto Amber, who is on all-fours, apparently pretending to be a unicorn. Bless that kid and the seemingly endless patience she inherited from her mother.

“There are many other times,” Shane says, but he follows his dad out to the lobby anyway. Ilya is not far behind. “Like when I’m not scheduled to start a whole media day for work or when I’ve had more than fucking four hours of sleep.”

Standing around the coffee bar are a few young team members, trustees and the coaches. Svetlana and Yuna have their heads bent together and are whispering furiously while the sound of the construction outside provides a clanging, discordant backing track.

“Oh! There you are,” Svetlana calls to Shane. “We’re just about to get started, can you — David?”

As she says this Shane rams into his father, who has stopped walking quite suddenly and is rubbing his sternum and gasping, like he can’t catch his breath. The thin noise of him trying and failing to draw in air drowns out everything else, and Shane struggles to understand what is happening for a second.

“Dave? Honey?” Yuna runs over, her heels clicking on the tiles. David takes a few stumbling steps back and falls into Shane, who catches him with some difficulty.

“Fuck, he’s having a — someone get some fucking aspirin!” Shane yells, finally, terrifyingly, understanding. “No, no, no, not fucking today, Jesus Christ.”

Ilya’s hands join Shane’s and together they carry David to one of the couches in the lobby. He slumps forward but remains seated, and Ilya and Shane hold him upright the best they can. He is shaking but Shane can't tell if that's David, or Shane, or Ilya, or a combination thereof.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, we’ll get some help,” Ilya murmurs. He soothes his palm over his father-in-law's back.

“Is someone calling 911?” Shane says loudly, the only thing he can think of, and after that it’s all a blur. Someone brings over the emergency kit with some aspirin. Yuna cries. The drilling from the construction site rebounds in the lobby. Paramedics arrive — it could have taken seconds or minutes or an hour, Shane doesn’t know. People whisper as if not to disturb the scene. Shane is pretty fucking disturbed regardless. Hayden tries to stop Yuriko from leaving the playroom but she’s too quick and small and barrels into Ilya’s legs as Grampie is loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher with Yuna at his side.

“You want to follow them? I’ll get the car seat out of your parents’ car and Amber and I will take Yu-yu back home,” Hayden says. Shane doesn’t answer. He can’t answer. Ilya does, he must, he is so good, so clear and steady, but Shane’s ears are ringing and he feels empty and wrung out and tired, so fucking tired. And then he thinks: fuck, my baby’s crying.

There is no way out but –

—

With Ilya at the wheel they follow the ambulance through hilly, verdant land dotted with lakes that Shane would probably quite appreciate normally but instead takes it all in with a numb kind of anxiety. Cars pull over to let them go as they speed by faster than they normally would, allowed grace by the sirens and flashing lights that lead their way.

“I was so mean to him today,” Shane whispers at some point. He kind of needs to pee but the sensation is distant, undemanding. When he closes his eyes he sees his dad, red-faced and struggling for breath, clutching at his chest while Ilya tried to get him to swallow an aspirin from the first aid kit. The wheezing sound he made gasping for air — Yuriko wailing when they left her with Hayden and Amber — Mom’s heels click-click-clicking on the ground — Ilya repeating soft words over and over again — it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.

“You were just tired,” Ilya says sharply. “It’s been a long — ah, morning. Not even noon yet. Sorry. I should not have brought Yuriko into our room last night.”

“Hey, no, it was okay,” Shane says. “That’s not — she was sick, she needed us.”

Silence again until they pull up to the hospital in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, a surprisingly large modern building tucked into dense forest on top of a small hill, parking lot half full. Ilya stops at the emergency entrance and Shane dashes out. He’s panting as if he has been working out for an hour instead of just sitting in a car gripping his own hands tightly and wringing them together over and over, trying to remember the last time he told his dad I love you.

“Um,” he pauses when he reaches the registration desk in the waiting room. “Mon père est, um, venir en ambulance?” His French is fucking rusty and he knows that’s the wrong verb tense, but he’s in rural Québec so it’ll have to do.

“Ah oui, il fait justement d’arriver, tu peux passer par les portes à ta gauche pour te rendre dans la salle familiale.”

He nods to the white-haired woman looking up at him kindly from behind the plexiglass window. As he takes a moment to breathe, he glances around and realizes that the half-dozen people in the waiting room are staring at him.

“Câlice, c’est tu Shane Hollander ça?” a man in a well-worn Metros shirt says, and a woman who must be his wife shushes him and slaps his thigh. Shane ignores them.

“Je veux juste attendre, uh, mon mari,” he says, gesturing wildly behind him, as Ilya walks into the room.

“Pis Rozanov, esti de saint siboire,” the same man says.

The woman at the desk before him nods. “Correct, je débarre la porte.” There’s a click from the set of double doors to their left and Shane doesn’t wait for Ilya to catch up before he’s pushing through.

They are directed to a small, dimly lit room painted a sickly yellow and dotted with chairs that seem only slightly more comfortable than the ones in the waiting room. There’s a small TV in the corner playing, incomprehensibly, a French dub of John Wick. On the scuffed walls are posters with information about support groups, hospital cafeteria hours, and the importance of washing your hands along with vaguely comforting framed art prints of flowers, a sail boat in a harbour, a pastoral scene of a small dog walking along a wooded country road. Fuck, Shane thinks, the dog. Fuck, the media day. Fuck, the Centaurs. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Yuna is already there pacing around the room. She’s kicked off her heels, her long wide-legged pants brushing the floor as she walks, and she’s thrown up her hair in an untidy bun.

“Oh, honey,” she says when she sees Shane and Ilya, and all but falls into Shane’s arms. He is reminded again of his dad, and how it felt to carry him to a chair, like he was the child, and not the other way around. “He’s fine, he was talking, the aspirin did its job. They’re going to see if they need to put in a, a stent or anything.”

Shane nods, not trusting his voice.

“See, I told you it would be okay,” Ilya says. “I know my Hollanders and they are very tough.”

“You are a Hollander,” Yuna says. Her head is still tucked against Shane’s shoulder.

“Yes, this is why I know.”

“They’ll come get me in a bit, they said,” Yuna murmurs as she steps back and grasps Ilya into a hug. “By the way, are you watching your cholesterol? I tell David all the time, but does he listen? No way José.”

“Mom!” Shane says. “Is this the moment?”

“What? You should make an appointment with your dietician.”

They sit when a nurse comes to get Yuna. Shane feels restless and untethered, like he could run ten kilometers or else sleep for fifteen hours, anything to feel closer to his body again. He does really need to pee, now, and is probably hungry, but he doesn’t get up. Instead he just closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall and rubs his thumb across Ilya’s thigh in slow circles.

“I sent Hayden the codes for the gate and the door,” Ilya says eventually. Shane nods, eyes still shut. “Texted the doggy daycare so he can pick Nika up later. And, ah, my car guy will drive out to Brébeuf tomorrow and take care of the tire. Will cost us but whatever.”

“Whatever,” Shane agrees. “You’re good at this. Handling things, I mean. Logistics.”

He feels Ilya shift under his hand.

“I did it a lot when my father was sick,” Ilya says. “This is nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Cracking an eye open, Shane sees Ilya shrug and look down at the floor. Outside this room there are purposeful voices, and beeping, and humming fluorescent lights, and David Hollander, and doctors who know what to do to help him. Inside there are two scared men who’ve known each other for decades and are still learning new things about each other all the time.

“I was thinking,” Ilya says some moments later, “when we were driving, about the ah, Centaurs.”

Shane frowns but lets him continue.

“It’s just — if the owners want to sell,” Ilya says, then stops. He rubs his nose and turns his eyes down.

“Ilyusha,” Shane says slowly, almost willing himself to misunderstand his stupid, wonderful, big-hearted husband.

“Well, Mario Lemieux did it.”

“Are you – is this really what you’re telling me right now in this hospital while my dad gets a fucking balloon shoved in his heart?”

“We could change the fucking logo,” Ilya says, undeterred, like this is the top priority for the franchise as a whole. “And get rid of Cinq-Mars. I don’t care how much he loves gay people. We are gay people and we’re smarter than him.”

“This is crazy talk. You’re crazy.”

“Yes, we know this.”

“We don’t even know how much — no, no. Why am I thinking about it seriously?”

Ilya doesn’t say any more, content with staring intently at a poster across from him detailing the steps to take when doing a breast self-examination. God, Shane could scream right now. Probably no one would even blame him. Is their life not complicated enough? Does he really need to be considering Ilya’s insane proposal?

“The Censplex is falling apart,” he says. He is, of course, considering it. “Probably needs at least twenty million in repairs and upgrades.”

“Foundation’s facility is state of the art. We use it during renovations. Only an hour drive, not terrible. Most guys live outside the city anyway.”

“They’re hemorrhaging sponsors.”

“You’re Shane fucking Hollander. They’ll come back for you. Hell, Canadian Tire might even come back. Wouldn’t need to call it the fucking Giant Tigerdome anymore.”

“Well, the Foundation needs us.”

“The Foundation has a very strong team of very smart people. We get a new contract with them, continue the partnership, encourage other teams to sign on. No need for us anymore if you don’t want.”

“Jesus Christ. You’re crazy,” Shane says again. “We don’t even know what they want for it. Plus Lemieux had something like thirty million in deferred salary he converted to equity. In 1999.”

“Yes, it’s what made me think of it, you know, when we were talking this morning. Then Lemieux sold his shares for nearly two billion, remember that, a few years ago?”

Shane scoffs. “We don’t have two billion fucking dollars.”

“Please, the Centaurs are not worth what the Emperors are worth. Not yet, anyway. Either way we could get, eh, halfway there, do you think? Still probably too much for a bankrupt team. The accountants can run the numbers.”

“You’ve already emailed them, huh,” Shane says. Despite himself he is smiling.

His strange, ambitious, smart husband.

“I may have put out a hypothetical situation. They’ll get back to me in a couple days.”

When he takes a big, filling breath, Shane smells hand sanitizer, the unpleasant sterile air of hospitals everywhere, and Ilya’s cologne. A cocktail he will probably never forget.

“Okay, hypothetically then, who are you putting up as GM?” he asks.

Ilya lifts a shoulder and looks away, picks at some lint on his jeans, and sniffs. Of course. Shane laughs incredulously.

“Okay. Okay. And what do I do?”

“Whatever you want,” Ilya says like this is obvious. He turns back to Shane and his eyes are open and earnest. “You name it. Head coach, operations, anything. You’d be the best. Stay home with Yuriko if you want to take a break. But we’d need you on the MLH’s Board of Governors for sure. Start making real change from the inside.”

“Oh my God. Ilya.”

Two hours ago Shane was ready to leave hockey – and all that comes with it – behind. Still, the anger simmers just under the surface but it feels dulled a little in light of his father’s near-death. To say goodbye to the thing that made him, tore him down and built it back up, gave him a family and friends and a life where he can brush off spending a few thousand dollars on a guy to come patch a tire on his nice family-friendly Lambo — it would be giving up, would it not? It feels like losing, and Shane hates to lose. Only love could break your heart like this, he thinks. Maybe he owes it to the little Milos and Scotts and Maxes and Yurikos and Ilyas and Shanes out there to keep trying to make it, the whole big hungry machine of it, better. And the Centaurs, maybe. Their city, their fans. Their people.

“Think Weibe would come out of retirement?” Ilya asks.

“If I can get Canadian Tire, you can get Weibe.”

“Okay. Yeah.” As if it’s the easiest thing in the world.

A knock on the door startles them and they look up to see Yuna, as frazzled as Shane has ever seen her under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the hallway. It’s been an hour, maybe more. Shane hadn’t noticed the time pass.

“He’s out of surgery,” she says. “It went really well. Want to come see? He’s still asleep but he’ll be fine.”

She holds out her hand and Shane takes it, and they follow her out to see David, to kiss him and tell him they love him even if he can’t hear it in his current state, and they don’t say another word about the Centaurs. At least not yet. Yuna will have many opinions and even more ideas. David will cheer. Svetlana will roll her eyes and say Really? Ottawa again? Bood will probably cry. Scott will laugh. Hayden will support them as best he can. And Ilya and Shane will do what they do best: rebuild a dying team and make something great out of nothing. After all, when one door closes, another door —