oh ok actually girl rutger offering to marry adam for citizenship
anon this is perhaps the most delicious ask that has ever arrived in my inbox. i got it just as i started a long drive and i immediately turned off my podcast and allowed my brain to simply bask in this premise for an hour straight. here we go…
our story starts three years from now, when the gang’s all reunited at phil’s wedding or something like that. around the table at the reception, everybody’s asking adam about his second contract with anaheim. he’s bitching about how there’s some massive cross-border tax hit he’s taking on his contract value because he’s filing as single. [please suspend your disbelief so we can have a good time here, okay?] the boys tell him he should just get married, he can find a wag easy enough. i don’t want a wag, adam says, she’d expect all kinds of shit. he likes living in anaheim with luca, he likes spending his money how he wants to spend it, he doesn’t want a goldendoodle or the hassle of a wag.
rutger returns from the bar with a tequila soda in hand and slides into her seat. you should marry rutger, someone says, she’s not a wag. “goddamn right,” says rutger. “what are we talking about?” adam explains the tax thing and rutger says sure, she’s up for it. it’s not like she has a boyfriend to get in the way. she wants a cut of the tax windfall, though, since adam’s second contract is poised to be a lot richer than hers.
their families shrug and roll with it. the mcgroartys were going to visit ontario this summer anyway, so the fantillis invite a few extra people over for dinner, drop a couple grand on flowers, and bam, they’ve got an impromptu backyard wedding. because this is my story and i get to have whatever i want, pat brisson and brendan are there. pat's not gonna miss two clients getting married, even if it's just a tax dodge.
it’s important that you know that rutger has an absolutely outstanding casual white wedding dress. slim skirt, tailored sleeveless midriff top, suntanned abs on display, one of those fancy ponytails with a section of hair wrapped around the rubber band and the ends curled just so. also white adidas slides.
adam watches rugter make her way down the aisle on her dad’s arm, a bouquet of peonies tipping sideways in her grasp as she reaches out to give fistbumps to their friends. when she reaches adam and he takes her hand, she gives him a big scrunch-nosed smile, like this is a joke just for the two of them, like this is the most fun she’s ever had in her life. he thought it might feel awkward or weird to fake-marry rutger, but it just feels… easy. maybe because they’ve been friends for so long. probably because it’s just fake.
nolan moyle gets ordained and performs the ceremony, because this is my story and I get to have everything I want. they swap silicone rings (v practical for hockey) and rutger gives adam a kiss on the cheek.
they take a series of wedding photos just in case the IRS asks any questions. after a couple of prom-looking poses, adam tries to scoop rutger up in his arms for a picture, honeymoon style, and she elbows her way right out of there. "don’t fucking do that," rutger says, 'i’m not your wag." she’s a pro hockey player in her own right! Not some wife who gets carried around by her husband. got it, adam says, sorry sorry.
nothing much changes now that they’re nominally married. they still train together part of the summer, go on the same getaways with their friends, have dinner together whenever winnipeg plays anaheim. they definitely indulge a little more on those dinners, get a really nice bottle of wine that rutger makes adam pay for out of his tax savings. all their friends know they’re not seriously married, so it’s not like they even have to keep it a secret when they discreetly hook up with other people. In a weird way, rutger finds she actually feels a lot better about dating now that she’s got a husband. having a shitty first date or a bad hookup doesn’t make her spiral about dying alone and unloved anymore. funny how that works.
the pieces finally start coming together for anaheim, and adam makes the playoffs. the jets don’t. rutger goes to adam’s home games in the first round, because it would look weird if she didn’t, even if she’s still licking her own wounds about another shitty season in winnipeg. adam calls her as she’s packing. he’s really, really sorry, but troy terry’s wife says to bring light-wash jeans and wedges.
rutger has murder in her voice. “please tell me they did not get me a wag jacket.”
"i’m so, so sorry," adam says. "dani got your measurements from the equipment manager. she said it’d be weird if you didn’t have one. they look pretty sick…" he trails off.
rutger asks, dangerously quiet, “does connor have one?” no, adam says, sheepish. they both know connor’s going to be in his usual dark suit, discreetly tucked away in a suite out of view of the cameras, masking his fury about watching mason in the playoffs while the blackhawks continue to suck. exactly what rutger planned to do, with maybe a little less fury and a few more bud lites.
rutger’s voice gets more brittle. “does trevor have one?”
…actually yeah, adam says. it’s not like she can wear it while she’s playing, but she made dani get her one anyway. rutger rolls her eyes. fucking figures. trevor will probably wear it in the dressing room afterwards, just strip off her pads and prance around in a wag jacket with drysdale on the back. fine, rutger says, ungraciously. you fucking owe me so big for this.
it's humiliating, to be shuffled off to the wag box with eighteen other blonde women when rutger’s worked her whole life to be down on that ice. the broad shoulders of her jacket stand out in the row of tiny little identical black leather jackets on the garment rack. even olen zellweger’s figure skater boyfriend looks more at home than she does. she puts on a brave face for the social media photos, though, and once the game starts it’s easy to get swept up with cheering for adam. she wants this for him more than any of these other girls wants it for her man. rutger knows what this means in a way they never will. when adam scores the go-ahead goal, she screams herself hoarse.
at intermission she takes a selfie with her back to the bathroom mirror, holding her phone up to her shoulder so adam’s number is in the frame and tilting her chin so the ends of her ponytail tickle the gold-trimmed fantilli lettering across her shoulder blades. it’s obvious from her profile that she’s smiling. she texts the photo to adam as a peace offering.
the notif is the first thing adam sees when he checks his phone after the game. He opens the photo and immediately hides the screen of his phone flat against his chest, his entire body going tingly like he just got an unexpected sext. he knows better than to tell rutger it’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen in his life. he even waits until she leaves town before he makes it his lockscreen. he can do that. that’s his wife, right?
the ducks only get a taste of the postseason that year. the offseason comes too soon, and this year it feels different. not on the ice – skating with adam’s just as fun and challenging as ever. he doesn’t ever take it easy on rutger, and that's what she likes about him. but off the ice it’s different. they remind each other more often: hey, we’re married, right? like when adam stretches out on the bench seat of the boat and rests his head in rutger’s lap for her to swirl her fingers through his damp hair. or when rutger steals adam’s favorite gray hoodie and snuggles up next to him by the firepit. and finally, quietly, when they’re the only ones left at the end of the dock on a moonlit night, and adam tips up rutger’s chin and kisses her.
as summer comes to an end, they’re making real plans. how adam can stay an extra night in winnipeg when the ducks come through town, where they’ll go for the all star break, whether it’s possible to spend christmas together. but then the last weekend they spend together before training camp, rutger catches a glimpse of adam’s lockscreen and everything comes crashing down. that’s how adam likes her, huh? just another identical blonde with his name on her back? what the hell is she doing here, planning to be adam’s wag? she deserves better. she’s got her own career. she deserves somebody who’ll cheer for her. there’s plenty of girls who’d be happy to be adam fantilli’s wag and he can goddamn go and find one of them.
rutger storms off to winnipeg and channels her righteous fury into a career season. she and adam don’t go out to dinner when they’re in anaheim. She cross-checks him instead.
two weeks later, when the news comes out that adam’s torn his [insert muscle or tendon of your choice] and he’s done for the season, rutger knows she didn’t cause it, but she feels vaguely guilty anyway. especially when team usa comes calling for [insert best on best competition of your choice]. adam should be there for team canada, but he won’t be. even if being married didn't work out, rutger’s always had the most fun competing against him, and they won’t have that this year.
adam shows up anyway. He goes to [insert european country of your choice] with rutger’s family, and he meets her on the concourse after games, and he gives her achingly specific compliments about her play, and he says the right sympathetic but not patronizing things after finland beats team usa in OT to take the top seed in their group.
when team usa wins gold, rutger sees her own red white and blue jersey among the families on the ice before she realizes adam’s the one wearing it. she skates toward him slowly, clutching the flag around her shoulders like a protective shell. “good game,” adam says. His voice is a little hoarse, like he’s been cheering for her.
rutger touches her fingertip to the little American flag temporary tattoo on his cheek. “looks good on you.”
“for today I guess,” adam says. His cheek lifts under her finger when he smiles. without his skates, rutger’s almost as tall as he is. rutger kisses him, and kisses him, and keeps on kissing him even when adam scoops her up off the ice, honeymoon style. she wraps her arms around his neck and kicks one skate into the air, and doesn’t protest one bit.
Why does Bedard smile like he was never allowed to as a kid and now doesn’t know how
it’s not that he wasn’t allowed to smile, he simply didn’t care to. what a waste of time to smile with muscles that could be otherwise devoted to hockey.
hi im fairly new to the umich side of the fandom, what's the backstory behind johnny (john?) and luca！?
last fall umich polled the team about who has the best bromance, and johnny and luca were the clear winners, including by their own shameless admissions. luca is always described as a positive, uplifting, constantly smiling personality, and johnny is generally described as an enforcer, so the contrast is pretty irresistible.
they are both four-year player types. luca's in the shadow of his brother, and johnny's a michigan kid who played high school hockey. the rest of their friends are going to leave and these two are going to be the heart of the team by their senior year. sam stockton ships them too:
johnny brought luca home for thanksgiving so they're pretty much engaged now.
look how proud johnny is of his skinny pale boyfriend
have you read the new luca + adam article!!! so many things to take note off 😵💫 the fact that they’re Very Good Students, Actually. also the unspoken comparison of adam to connor bedard wrt to attention/pressure/habits/emotional maturity. the hobey baker comment at the end. luca leader and adam devoted follower
anon i have so many thoughts about this article. i am no longer a human girl, i am just a collection of thoughts about this article, loosely wrapped in girl-shaped skin.
first of all the poignancy of some of the quotes is absolutely killing me. “it was fourteen years, and then he left”??????? adam sitting quietly on his side of the car on the long lonely drive home to ontario, luca’s seat empty next to him, and saying “i think i made a mistake.”?????? also, luca framing it as “we just got to go down there and just play for our school and for each other”????? also coach talking about how it was good for luca to be able to establish himself at KUA first and that made him feel like a big brother to be able to show adam the ropes? i’m a puddle of ash on the floor.
the overt and unspoken contrasts with connor bedard are so fascinating too. naur’s comment about “online school and practicing hockey six hours a day”… that’s connor bedard, that is his life exactly. i’m interested in the parallels that can be drawn between this article and naur’s comment on the nhl podcast earlier this week that adam’s going 100mph at all times and sometimes you have to slow him down. it seems like adam’s just as driven as connor (e.g. luca’s mention of how much adam was on the ice between classes) and the difference is that adam has people around him who do make him slow down — take vacations, get mullets with his teammates, explore alternatives to the canadian hockey prospect mill — and connor does not.
i like to imagine julia fantilli listening to melanie bedard talk about how connor was only willing to go to hawaii if he could take his hockey gear and spend the whole time rollerblading, and thinking “you let the little brat get away with that?” and i seriously doubt that giuliano’s reaction to adam breaking his mother’s vase would be “it’s fine, you can break the next one too.”
in addition to the internal family values, the fantillis also seem to be very intentional about surrounding themselves with people who will reinforce the message that it’s good for adam to go on vacation sometimes and how he develops as a person is more important than hockey. this post, and the comments from both parents, are very interesting to me in that regard.
the story also reminded me of this old quote from adam:
it’s such a contrast to the bedard family dynamic as portrayed in connor’s tsn feature, which very much makes it look like connor is driving the bus and the rest of the family is there to support him. adam is not driving the bus. he’s one part of a very tight four-person decisionmaking unit (right down to the other three getting on the phone with luca to talk about the possibility of adam going to KUA.) and that unit’s philosophy is oriented toward adam as a person, not a hockey player. it just seems like such a good way to raise your kids.
can you draw a diagram of the housing situations 😂
sure, i guess? black text is confirmed, red is evidence-based speculation. the residence i'm referring to as the senior house can be seen, memorably, here and here, and next door can be seen here. sorry for the typo in jaybone's name, i don't care enough to go back and redo it.
... #nico made it better. god la workingforitallthetime i will give u my first born child to know what this means in detail
in a universe where there's some correlation between a player being being developed enough to be NHL-ready and their dynamic presenting, jack is basically the inverse of mason and connor. he made the jump to the NHL too early (i will die on this hill, he should have played at least a year of NCAA hockey for some east coast asshole school, yes you heard me i said not umich) and consequently didn't present until into his third season.
his first couple of seasons were miserable enough all on their own. nico was kind of in the background and jack didn't pay much attention to him. he was nice and supportive when he was around, but then there was covid, and then nico was injured for a lot of jack's second season, and the two of them didn't really connect until jack's third season. then, just as jack was starting to feel like he was hitting his stride in the NHL and maybe everything didn't completely suck, he dislocated his shoulder.
while he was rehabbing his shoulder, he presented. like just when jack thought everything was getting better it got WAY WORSE. but if there's one thing jack hughes is good at, it is ignoring unpleasant realities. jack decides nope, this isn't happening, and just ignores it. even when he starts to pick up on nico's woodsmoke scent around the team's facilities. (if there is one thing i fictionally know about nico hischier, it is that that man smells like a campfire in the best possible way.)
eventually nico, an absolute model of restraint and politeness, has to sit jack down and have a little talk about how this is not going away. nico is not going away. he will wait patiently while jack works through whatever it is he needs to work through, and he will be here whenever jack is ready to face this.
"whatever," jack says.
there's no big dramatic moment here. just nico steadily sticking up for jack and taking care of jack and refusing to be ruffled when jack acts like a total brat, and jack eventually crashing into nico's arms during a celly and realizing, oh. he's home.
Luke gets to go to the NHL to join his brothers Adam has to leave his brother to go to the NHL
can you imagine how jealous adam is of luke? headed to the same team where his big brother’s signed for eight years with a spare bedroom waiting for him? what a dream.
