I should like to join the Shane Hollander defenders club. You can find my defense submission below.
Let’s talk about the ‘would you choose me over hockey? fight’ and how believing it suggests Shane loves Ilya less is ignoring all the things wrong in that pretty Canadian boy’s head.
If you only consider what Ilya has to lose in cutting ties with hockey, it seems pretty obvious that he is risking more.
If Ilya loses his job he is suddenly faced with the threat of deportation. He may have enough clout and wealth to circumvent some of the issues with remaining in a country he is not a citizen of but he also loses, as his therapist points out, his already very meager support network, as his team is essentially the only family he has following the death of his father and his estrangement from his brother.
This to me is often the root of many people’s issues with Shane’s actions.
And don’t get me wrong, Shane is definitely blind to the sacrifices Ilya has already made for him and is, in a lot of ways acting selfish.
But let us consider a few factors in Shane’s motivations.
He is an only child. Not only could this explain the inherent selfishness in is outlook but when coupled with his anxiety it gives a better picture of why Shane considers his possible loses to be more severe than they are from the outside.
As an only child who suffers with anxiety and previously was considered gifted I feel confident in saying the following:
For Shane, his lack of confidence in himself, has led him to tie his self worth to his talent in hockey.
Cutting ties with hockey is equivalent to forfeiting the part of himself he considers to have value. The pressure he puts on himself, the weight of his team and his country feed into his anxiety.
Ilya has largely escaped this sort of thinking due to a combination of his own self confidence, and somewhat ironically, the jaded outlook afforded to him by his depression issues.
I’m not saying Shane is right. Or that his actions are correct. Hell even Shane eventually gets with the program and sees these issues for himself.
I just think it’s important to consider why he reacts the way he does before jumping to a ‘well he has less to lose and is still more reluctant to give it up so he must not love Ilya as much.’
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