Itâs amazing to me that Coach Theriault and the Montreal GM let Shane go. I mean, a lot of professional athletes are egotistical. Most of the rest of the locker room wouldnât want to believe that Shane was the vital secret ingredient in all those Stanley Cup wins. Especially not once they find out heâs an f-slur.
But for Theriault and the general manager, being objective about the talents of individual players is their entire job! They shouldâve traded the homophobes and rebuilt Montrealâs locker room around people who could handle a gay captain. Not because it was the right thing to do morally, but because it was the only sensible business decision.
Well, I suspect Theriault and the GM will be out of work soon enough. After they discard their f-slur captain, the whole team will fall apart. And it will become glaringly obvious to the owner that Shane was not the problem. Shane was the goose that laid the golden eggs. So Theriault and the GM will finally take the blame for letting emotion (yikes, that icky gay stuff) take precedence over business.
Also, apparently the GM and their PR people had no plan in the event of Shane being outed. Which, again, is bad business. You know your biggest star (and the engine behind you winning all those Stanley Cups) is a closeted gay man. Him telling you about his sexuality went SO poorly that heâs terrified to tell you he has a longterm boyfriend heâs exclusive with.
So as far as you know, heâs single and probably sexually active. Heâs in his late twenties, athletic, and conventionally attractive, so he probably doesnât have a lot of trouble finding sexual partners. You should have a plan for in case a bar hookup or a Grindr hookup goes to TMZ!
It seems Montrealâs GM did not have a plan. Or the plan was always just to bully Shane into denying it, and enlist Roger Crowell to help with forcing him back into the closet. If he comes out after heâs retired, thatâs not your problem. But your plan is to keep him in the closet until that day. It never occurs to you that he may fight back against this plan. Even though heâs a superstar and in high demand from other teams.
Also, this is Shane. A very conscientious guy who would not want to be troublesome to his employers. If he had received any support from his coach and management when he came out, you know he wouldâve given them a heads up in January 2021. âHey, my longterm boyfriend and I just got engaged and planning to get married in the summer. Iâm coming out of the closet to the public after playoffs end. Just in case you want to plan around that.â
But Shane knew from bitter experience that if he told Theriault and the GM that, they would try very hard to stop him. They would likely leak the news of his engagement to Crowell (just like theyâd leaked his sexuality to Crowell) so Crowell could help them keep Shane in the closet. They would probably also leak the news of the engagement to his teammates in hopes they would join management in pressuring him not to get married and not to come out publicly until after retirement.
So Shane, good boy conscientous Shane, was too (justifiably) scared of their reaction to warn them. And they thought they could push him around. It doesnât say much for their people management skills that they knew him for that long and still fundamentally misread his character.
Most people who donât know Shane very well just see the surface image he projects. The polite, self-contained, self-conscious hockey robot. The autistic Asian guy who has no life outside of hockey. The goal machine. They donât see the bitchy, funny, neurotic, loving, incredibly passionate man underneath. The man whoâs been taking incredible risks ever since he was 19 to keep Ilya Rozanov in his life.
And they donât want to know him better, so they donât see it coming when Shane has finally had enough and loses his temper about being pushed around. Even though management have probably known him since he was a rookie and have no excuse for not understanding his character. Heâd just a convenient cog in the machine, a hockey robot with no feelings they have to worry about.
They also assume gay men are all about sex. It never occurs to them that Shane could be deeply in love with another man. Or that heâd be willing to risk his hockey career and his future with Montreal for that man. When Roger Crowell gives Shane an ultimatum (probably with at least the tacit encouragement of Montrealâs owner and GM) nobody is expecting Shane to say, âI choose him. Come on Ilya.â They think hockey is the only thing Shane has, and threatening to take it away will get him back in line. Issuing a public statement that he and his platonic buddy Rozanov were just playing a prank on a teammate.
Theriault, Montreal management and Crowell find Shaneâs sexual orientation icky, so they assume he doesnât have a romantic orientation as well. Note how dumbfounded Crowell is when they say theyâre getting married in the summer. They were expecting a sex scandal, not an engaged couple. Even though none of these men are stupid, and theyâre all involved in hockey for a living.
They all know Ilya leaving Boston for Ottawa in 2018 was inexplicable from a hockey POV. Youâd think theyâd have enough imagination to at least think about the possibility that Ilya moved to Ottawa to be closer to Shane. In which case itâs been going on since at least 2018 (probably earlier) and itâs serious as a heart attack for both of them.
There were plenty of hints. They just had a whole bunch of prejudices about queer men that they didnât want to examine. So they didnât see the obvious. That Ilya had been willing to light his career on fire to be a two hour drive from Shane. And therefore Shane is likely also willing to light his career on fire if they try to make him give Ilya up.
Itâs just a bunch of people who are very highly paid to manage temperamental professional athletes repeatedly failing to understand anything about the temperament of their most valuable asset. Because heâs gay and thatâs icky. Because they looked at his hockey robot surface image and never bothered to look any deeper. Brcause they looked at him and saw stereotypes about Asian men instead of seeing the complex human being he is.
Because they thought him being anxious and eager to please in general meant they could always control him. When in fact they fundamentally misunderstood a man theyâd worked alongside on a daily basis for years. So they fumbled him. And they were probably dumbfounded when he walked away.
It was arrogance. Theyâd gotten used to him always being there, as he had been since he was 19. Always arriving early and leaving late, always setting a good example, always working his ass off, always politely persevering if a teammate didnât seem to like him at first. They failed to realize that Shane was by far the most vital, irreplaceable cog in their hockey machine. They convinced themselves all those cups were mostly their handiwork. Good coaching by Theriault, good negotiations by the GM.
Hollander on the ice, of course, but theyâd had him so long theyâd forgotten what the team was like before he came along. Same thing as the locker room, really. No pro athlete wants to admit that the secret sauce in their cup rings is that quiet guy whoâs always there. They want to believe they wouldâve won those cups even without Shaneâs individual brilliance. And unfortunately management and the coaching staff were no more clearheaded about Shaneâs contribution than his teammates. Even though thatâs literally their jobs.
Well, as of the 2021-2022 season, theyâll all remember life in Montreal before Hollander. And it wonât be pleasant. Heâs furious with them, feels betrayed (rightly so). And them failing to understand his character means theyâll be surprised when they discover his vindictive streak. His desire to win at all costs will no longer be a net benefit to them, it will be turned against them.
Couldnât happen to a nicer bunch of bigoted morons.
