You, man

[comicsguy]

notes on devotion | sidnate - whatever you wanna by annabelle dinda

(intro is a bit long soz i just love that interview)

[puckdoll]

FREE AGENCY: A Rarepair Fic Fest

Free agency means hockey is getting closer, but for some it’s close enough. New faces have been added, and familiar ones have departed, so why not take advantage of all the new possible dynamics that have graced us?

Introducing: Free Agency Fic Fest, a fest purely dedicated to the under appreciated and under utilized ships within the hockey fandom. Whether it be an existing pair or a new one spurred by an acquisition or trade, this is the place for it.

Prompts can be submitted now until September 1st, and the deadline for writers to submit their works will be two or three days before regular season starts (a specific day will be given once regular season schedules are posted). Fics will then go live on the first day of regular season. Writers can submit their entries as early as they’d like, but I’d recommend taking some time to edit and revise, but that’s not strictly necessary.

Don’t see a prompt that’s tripping your trigger? Not to worry! A free space will be provided that allows for any ship, as long as it falls within the rules of the fest. I really want anyone and everyone to participate, so I hope this covers all the bases.

RULES:

1. As stated, this is a rarepair event. The ship must have less than 50 fics in the ship tag to be counted. I will be checking each prompt to see if they fit within these rules; if they don't, they will be removed.

2. Please refrain from requesting athletes who are racist, homophobic, have committed domestic violence or sexual assault. Examples: Carter Hart, Patrick Kane, Evander Kane, Matthew Tkachuk. For now, certain athletes will still be accepted, however do not be surprised if nobody writes for them. Examples: the Hugheses, Auston Matthews. These are players who have participated in an event that may indicate their morals one way or another, but there is no definitive proof, so they will be allowed until proven otherwise.

3. Absolutely no AI. You cannot use AI for anything, whether it be "rephrasing sentences" or brainstorming. If any AI is found, your work will be removed from the collection.

4. At least ONE of the people must be a hockey player or have been a hockey player. Example: Dan Potash/Evgeni Malkin is acceptable, so is Josh Getzoff/Colby Armstrong.

5. PWHL, European leagues, and college leagues are welcome to participate! Literally the only requirements are that they have to play hockey, and that there are less then 50 fics within the AO3 tag.

6. RPF ONLY. Fictional ships are not permitted. Not even if one half of the ship is real.

Please direct any questions to my ask box!

LINK TO THE COLLECTION

[boysonthebench]

sweetheart

[wifegideonnav]

reblog this and tell me your favorite album written and performed by a woman?

[yabagofmilfs]

captain of all time

[pensfan4lfe2]

[mattymartin]

↳ NATHAN MACKINNON PREGAME | COL v. VGK | 11.4.23

[crosbyism]

Thinking about Nate’s video for Sid’s 1000th game. Nate’s never been shy about his love for him so what could possibly be too personal to share publicly?? These are the thoughts that haunt me.

a couple days ago i saw someone post something like “i wonder if nate sent the message over saying that it was private and the pens admin just passed it on or if they watched it and decided it was too private” and i can’t find it right now and i don’t remember who the post was by but by god ive been thinking about it since. like. the amount of moving and personal things his family said!! and NATE was the guy who got censored????

sidnate facts are truly just a collection of sleep paralysis demons to wake up to at 3AM and already be thinking about before you’re fully awake again. and then you have to go “what the fuck was up with that” and then they won’t let you sleep because genuinely. what the fuck was up with that

[hooked-from-behind]

Imagine you’re Nathan MacKinnon, a man who’s been unashamedly praising Sid for years, loudly and publicly, leaving out no opportunity to say how perfect he is and how much you love him, because it’s just never occurred to you to hold back.

Imagine getting asked to make a video for him where you get to say as much as you want about how great he is and how much he means to you as a hockey player and as a man, knowing that he won’t be able to laugh it off or make a joke about it like he usually would because it’s going to be broadcast before the game.

Imagine being told it’s not going to be broadcast because it’s too personal, and being absolutely baffled because what does that even mean?

Dunno why they did that, you text Sid. It’s nothing I haven’t said before.

Nate, you said you were in love with me.

exactly. Old news, man. Great game though

[helenvaughans]

i think the normalization of gambling is one of the most deeply evil things currently happening in american society, and it goes without saying that there is some STIFF competition in that department……..

[jaesawalth]

penguins We really said copy + paste 🤝

ig 26.6.27

[pimpim90]

His role model is Nate 👀

[crosbyism]

Sort of a random question but whats the most insane/feral SidNate moment/fact/comment/anything really tbh in your opinion?

truthfully, everything about them is insane and feral. recently i remembered nate used the same tape job as sid and i blacked out for a minute. i rediscover things regularly that make me crazy-eyed because wdym you think it’s normal to just be this codependent.

i’ve talked about the buddy basket before, and “I <3 Sid”, and those are big ones. so is every mention of sid during the avs’ cup win. currently though, I’m obsessed with sid hanging nate on his Captains Wall of Shame though. I was recently reminded how much Sid is historically a superstitious guy— this is the man who hasn’t talked to his mother or sister on the phone on a game day in fifteen years. Viciously guarded for most of his life, but he let an amazon film crew in his house and let them catch the moment his eyes landed on nate’s picture on the Self-Flagellation Wall of Winning Captains. While he says “I always put the winning captain up”. while both the camera and his eyes drop to the elephant in the room: Nate MacKinnon and the blazing A on his chest, who apparently overrules a law of nature usually so diligently and punishingly followed that calling it a mere neurodivergent stim would be disrespectful towards the religious rigorosity with which Sid usually follows his own superstitious commandments. luck is god and jesus to that man.

And like he’s upset superstitions for Nate before, but it used to be under conditions waved off as one-offs; circumstantial. But here we are, a dozen years down the line, and every time Sid steps into his home, his most prominent sanctuary— every day when he exercises and feels the strain in his muscles like drinking water, like breathing, more often than he falls asleep every day, a ritual so old he doesn’t remember living without it; he looks up and there is the one person he breaks every rule for, right up on the wall, in the most perfect, exceptional way. that man reminds himself of his quiet devotion to nate every time he looks at the wall during a workout.

Anyway, lucky Nathan MacKinnon. I wonder what it’s like to be loved more than religion.

[crosbyism]

no wait actually. the most insane sidnate moment is when they drove two hours during a snowstorm at 6AM because they both wanted to hit the ice to practice during four nations. on an off day. during a SNOWSTORM. AT 6AM. like you gotta think about the logistics of that. you’re not sleeping in different rooms if youre commiting to that. like how are you both waking up to go if youre not in the room to make sure you’re dragging him with you. DURING A TOURNAMENT. BECAUSE YOU FELT OFF THE PREVIOUS DAY. FOR FUN.

freak4freak, no further questions your honour

[youcouldvebeentheone]

HEHEHE I never posted this on here. life hack: go on a hot girl walk which ends up being MUCH farther than you think it is, end up dying in a car and then hallucinate this edit into existence

[loverboyilya]

Its funny seeing people say Nate and Sid would hire Babc*ck too when Sid has literally gone off at teammates for being too hard on someone and Nate has said multiple times Bedsy’s laid back attitude is whats needed for the Avs

People are saying that??

I’ll just leave this here:

[loverboyilya]

i fear we don’t talk enough about gabriel “i raised this kid well” landeskog and nathan “swedish papa” mackinnon. nate was gabe’s rookie and gabe has been his one and only captain, they’ve been on the same team for over a decade, we know from mel that nate spends a lot of time at the landeskog house, nate’s happier about gabe’s goals than any of his own, he always believed in gabe coming back, gabe missed nate the most during the olympic break and recognizes nate’s amazing leadership and “yeah, i can make him laugh plenty”

we don’t talk enough about how instrumental gabe was for nate’s development and the impact he’s had on him. they love each other so much 🥺

something something peter forsberg was gabe’s fave player growing up and had a poster of the 2001 stanley cup avs and nate’s fave was joe sakic and he wrote down that he wanted to be an av—something something they were always meant to be avs and destined to meet

[loverboyilya]

turns out, im not done talking about them.

bc not only did they end up on the same team, but gabe shouldered the pressure of being the youngest captain in nhl history at the time and a few years later, nate came bearing the weight of not only being the franchise savior at 17, but living with comparisons to his idol sid, esp being from the same hometown. not only did gabe have to captain a struggling team so young, but also guide and mentor this franchise savior (while being an amazing player himself)

and they became the cornerstone of the team. experienced the lowest of lows and highest of highs together. they built a stanely cup winning team with blood, sweat and tears. there’s friendship and brotherhood and the bond between a captain and his A.

they’re the beating heart and soul of the colorado avalanche

[sidsthekid]

you and me

[rinkrats]

The best and worst things you can say about Sidney Crosby are the same: He’s boring.

Jeremy Roenick was saying it more than a decade ago. Crosby chooses words carefully, stays off social media and skirts controversy. In The Athletic’s 2020 NHL poll, one player said, “He’s got that perfect media persona, but it’d be cool to get to know what he’s really like.”

But ask former teammates, coaches and teachers about Crosby’s year at Shattuck-St. Mary’s, a prep school in Faribault, Minn., and they throw back their heads and laugh. They talk about buck teeth, bloody noses, baseball brawls, pranks, haymakers and sneaking out of dorm rooms after curfew. And they swear all of it is true.

This is the story of the season Crosby spent at Shattuck-St. Mary’s. He had 162 points in 57 games and led the Sabres to the 2003 Midget AAA national title. He was 15.

Tyler Eaves, forward: Sid and I both had buck teeth. His were a little worse. I grew into mine a little bit and don’t have them too bad anymore. We both wanted to play pro — both assumed we were going to — and we said, “Man, I want to get my teeth knocked out. Then I can get perfect teeth.”

Matthew Ford, forward: But as much as Sid looked like this buck-toothed kid, he had the biggest quads I’ve ever seen. He was already a beast.

Brian Deeth, defenseman: We always talk about Sid’s legs.

Kirk Golden, forward: His legs were tree trunks.

Eric Soltys, assistant coach: One of the things we did during tryouts was to run a timed mile. The kids had to come in under (six minutes). The story goes that the night before that, Sid and Ryan Duncan, his roommate, were nervous about what their time would be.

Kevin Deeth, forward: He’s not built to run. You’d see him and think he was a normal kid. Then he’d turn around, and his legs and his ass were like the size of a fucking truck.

Coach Soltys: They pulled the old tie-the-bedsheet-together trick to sneak out of their third-story window after curfew. And they timed themselves running this test. Here’s Sidney Crosby, the best player in the world, and Ryan Duncan, a Hobey Baker winner. And they are nervous about potentially not making the club if they fail this off-ice mile test. I got the biggest howl about that.

...Kevin Deeth: Those two were like fucking cartoon characters to me. They were so different. Dunc was just a little shit — very social, super funny, big brother-esque — and picked on Sid despite being much smaller than him. Sid was such a good dude. Incredibly nice. Humble. Goofy. … In everyone else’s dorm room, they’d have a poster of their favorite player and some Christmas lights. They just had white walls and a bunch of cookies from Sid’s mom.

Brian Deeth: Let’s just say it wasn’t the cleanest dorm room.

Duncan: We weren’t taking care of our wet towels. They weren’t hung up. We either had something growing in our closet or something crawling around in it.

Sidney Crosby, forward: That might have been Dunc’s side.

Matt Smaby, defenseman: Because Sid is so competitive and so serious, he’s an easy target. It didn’t take much for him to go from 0 to 100 mph.

Golden: Crosby was in Smaby’s room one day, and he fell asleep. He was out. We all grew up watching “Mighty Ducks,” so we decided to do the shaving cream and feather trick. We put the shaving cream in his hand and started to do the feather. I have never seen this work so well. We did it three or four times. He got (shaving cream) all over his face. Finally, the five or six of us in the room were cracking up so loud that he woke up because of all the noise.

Smaby: I hope he doesn’t remember us being mean. But we enjoyed poking fun.

Golden: He took it in stride. He woke up smiling. He thought it was funny. It was nice for us older guys because that was the only time he wasn’t dominating us in practice. That was the one time we had the upper hand on Crosby.

...Eaves: Everyone was so competitive, but especially Sid.

Duncan: We would go play water basketball in the pool.

Eaves: It would end with somebody with a bloody nose, and then me and Smaby wouldn’t talk to Sid and Dunc for like six hours. We hated each other.

Duncan: (Crosby) would not give an inch to you. There’s no playing for fun. He wanted to give it to you. He wanted to rub it in. His competitive juices carried over into everything, whether it was ping-pong or tennis or whatever. At the end of the day, Sidney wanted to be on top. Most of the time, he was.

... Eaves: My first impression was that he was the real deal. He was feisty, too.

Tom Ward, head coach: He didn’t take no shit from anybody — still doesn’t.

Eaves: He and I got into it a little bit, shoving each other up and down the play. My dad, who was a coach there, told me that night, “You don’t have to take that from him just because he’s Sidney Crosby.” I didn’t think I was!

Duncan: My goal was to go down there and outplay Sidney and prove I was better than this kid who was two years younger than me. I quickly found out in tryouts that I probably wasn’t going to achieve that goal.

Smaby: You think this (15)-year-old hotshot may not be all he’s cracked up to be. I remember trying to hit him. That didn’t go well for me. Not only did I not hit him, I didn’t get a piece of him.

Golden: Guys bounced off him.

Eaves: The physics teacher used Sid to describe physics — about the way he lowers his center of gravity and how no one could knock him off the puck.

Coach Ward: The only comparable I had to him was a turtle. It’s like he had a big shell on his back to protect the puck. At the time, I thought he played really similarly to Peter Forsberg. Sidney just had more skill than Peter.

...Coach Ward: I think him being able to come to a place like Faribault, Minn., a little farm town, he could lose himself. Here he wasn’t the savior of hockey Canada. I think he appreciated that. He could just be one of the guys.

Coach Soltys: He had never been on a date before. The girls at school like him. He’s like, “Coach, I’ve never kissed a girl.” And I’m like, “Buddy, this is great! Just be yourself.”

Coach Stafford: I remember him going with a few girls to the mall. He was so impressed by the fact that he could go around and nobody recognized him.

Rowe: One night on campus, I picked Sid up to go somewhere in town. I said, “Sid, have you ever driven a car before?” He said no. I don’t think he had his learner’s permit. I was like, “Do you want to try?” So I had him drive around this parking lot. I think I was the first one to give him a chance to get behind the wheel of the car. That was funny. He did fine. No issues.

Ford: That was probably the only year he got to just be a normal kid.

-Snippets from ‘Is this real?’: Stories of Sidney Crosby’s year at a Minnesota prep school by Stephen J Nesbitt