See, the thing is that even though Ilya loves to rage bait Shane and say cunty things like “Do you want to know how it feels, holding the cup?”, he is never cruel or mean. He never says anything that would actually hurt Shane, he never goes for the jugular. And that’s because the chirping is meant almost as a backwards compliment to Shane. He can say “Do you want to know how it feels, holding the cup?” BECAUSE he knows (and Shane knows, and Shane knows that Ilya knows) that Shane will likely/definitely hold the cup one day himself. Shane even replies “I’ll know for myself soon enough.”
Imagine if Ilya said that to someone who wasn’t Shane, like maybe someone on an AHL team who has pretty much zero chance of ever winning a Stanley Cup. Then Ilya would be a total asshole who is trying to make the AHL player feel shitty. It’s an asshole move because the power dynamics are different: star MLH player taunting AHL player about something they want but will never get.
But no, Ilya’s saying this to Shane, BECAUSE he knows just how good Shane is and knows that Shane will definitely win at least one cup at some point. It’s almost like an in-joke: I know you’re good, you know you’re good, but I’m a chaos gremlin and a competitive little shit so I’m gonna rub it in your face a little that I got there before you did, just to get a reaction out of you. But the joke hinges on the fact that Ilya thinks Shane is amazing, they are equals, and it wouldn’t work otherwise.
Rinse, lather, repeat for all of his other digs at Shane, i.e. “this slow fucking player” only works because Shane is incredibly fast, “with a weak backhand” only works if Ilya has the best backhand in the league and Shane has the best forehand and the second-best backhand, etc. He wouldn’t say this to Shane if Shane was actually kinda slow or had been frustrated with his backhand. They’re both in on the joke, and it’s one way they can bridge the competitive divide between them. It acknowledges “hey, we’re the two best players in the world, and it’s lonely at the top, except now we have these little jokes that acknowledge our competitive sides and the fact that I really want to beat you, but also tie us together, because no one else can make these jokes except us.”
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