i love how shane has zero awareness of how cool he actually is and how much people are dying to talk to him but they keep a Respectful Distance because he's such a mythic bitch
shane gets semi tipsy at one team event and starts talking about some strategy he saw or hockey history book he read and everyone is focused immediately hanging onto every word - until he abruptly stops himself because he thinks he's being Unbearable Only Hockey Guy again when in reality the entire league looks at shane like he's holding some hockey secret fountain of talent that will make them talented too
and when he DOES end up relaxed enough to share something personal everyone is even MORE invested and trying not to spook him and trying to keep him talking and making jokes because Oh My God Shane Hollander is talking to them, Shane Hollander is Cooler and Funnier than originally anticipated (and everyone already thought he was a legend)
this is also SO frustrating for ilya especially when they're out and people are openly flirting with shane and eating up every word that comes out of his mouth (he also opens up a lot more when he's with ilya because duh but this makes everyone MORE infatuated with him) and ilya just watches everyone fall in love with his husband while he shifts between possessively glaring at anyone who looks a little Too adoring and being full of his own admiration for shane and rubbing his thigh under the table
but then they go home and shane's like shit i probably talked too much about hockey right? or wait did i interrupt the rookies too much? we should've tipped the bartender more he was so nice all evening
and ilya is seeing red both because this man can't see how incredible he is while everyone else can AND because this man is in fact his
As an addition to the goalie!Shane AU, might I submit this delightful situation to the people?
So, imagine we have Shane “The Wall” Hollander who is a freaky good goalie, and not a brawler. He is a certified polite Canadian boy. He is also The Best at his job, as Shane Hollander would be.
Hockey players are feral about their goalies. You hit the goalie, it’s like crawling into your casket, because you’re going to get buried.
With this in mind, this goalie does not fight often, and if the goalie does not really want to fight on top of this, perhaps the goalie gets some leeway when there is a scrum.
Perhaps the goalie sees a guy who perhaps should not be getting into a fight.
Perhaps the goalie is a powerhouse, which it could be argued that every goalie must be in order to do goalie things, and doubly so if the goalie is the best goalie to be had.
So, minding all these things, I posit that Shane Wallander has the privilege of an indeterminate number of “yankings” of players from scrums that he spends carefully throughout his career.
💬 0 🔁 41 ❤️ 94 · Anthony Stolarz pulls Trevor Zegras from the scrum. Leafs @ Flyers 11/1/25
It starts as a small, somewhat silly thing with his own teammates. He’s strong and quiet and possess a sense of authority that he does not exert often (one might imagine he could have been a captain in some other world). So when The Wall rips you outta’ a fight, you sit outta’ the fight.
It’s funny, it doesn’t happen super often, and nobody gets mad about it because he doesn’t abuse it. The first time he does it, it’s a brand new rookie who’s trying to carve out his place with the Voyagers, but he’s also not prepared to scrap with the seasoned NHL’er’s piled up behind behind the net… so as the most chill spectator on the ice, Shane pulls him out and they watch the linesmen sort everything out.
The day he pulls Boiziau out, a guy utterly unafraid of fighting, and he just goes with him without any real protest, is the day it sort of unspokenly becomes An Officially Understood Thing among the team that Hollander has pulling privileges with fights, and the Voyagers respect it. He usually has reasons, and they’re good ones, and everyone gets it once everyone chills out again. Like, someone with a pesky injury who probably shouldn’t be fighting, someone with some kind of “has to look nice” event coming up, or someone with a pregnant wife who really should not be unnecessarily stressed… the point is, Hollander keeps a very cool head, makes good life choices and all that, and if he pulls you out of a fight, you can bet there’s a good reason you forgot about and he’s remembered it for you.
Except, one day it’s a guy on another team. I’m going to borrow the “former teammates” situation from Stolarz and Zegras. It’s a guy who played with the Voyagers, he was nice, he got traded, and he has no business being in this scuffle. So, the “Wallander Yank” (I’m workshopping the name for this as I go here) is executed, and the sportscasters love it!
Hollander is known for doing this to his teammates, but now apparently he’s doing it to former teammates! The pool has widened!
And so it goes, the pool slowly, reasonably, calmly expands, and Hollander has proved himself to be such an elite caliber of goalie and hockey player, most submit to being pulled. And if you’re chill, you might even get treated to some dryly hilarious comment about what’s going on, the players involved, linesmen’s actions… goalies are weird, but they can also be funny, and it’s not so bad.
And pretty much everyone knows that if the Voyagers goalie grabs the back of a player, he’s not fighting, so nobody tries to smash him about it. Most of the time. There have been exceptions though, but he also doesn’t do this horribly often anyway.
Ilya probably thinks it’s hilarious, and I don’t know if he hopes it happens to him, if he tries to get into scrums that happen by the net so there’s probable cause to be yanked by The Wall. I dunno. He’s probably not super successful with that avenue.
Shane probably knows this and only does it in very special circumstances, maybe when Ilya doesn’t actually want to be yanked, because that’s probably the best time to do it.
