I posted a longer thing about it a universe in which Shane and Ilya are both Bears and best friends and Shane decides to pursue Hayden Pike, but I can't stop thinking about it.
Ilya wingmaning for Shane to get him HAYDEN PIKE?
Ilya quietly seething about it but determined. Shane doesn't want him. Maybe if Shane gets someone he does want, Ilya can finally be done mooning over him.
Hayden is TERRIFIED AND TURNED ON AT THE SAME TIME. Rozanov of all people is approaching him in a bar? Looking INTENSE!!
No way Rozanov is seriously trying to hook Hayden up with his hot best friend 👀
And dude, why is he being SO INTENSE ABOUT IT?? (Rozanov is EQUALLY hot, even Hayden has to admit that. He cannot handle this.)
IF THIS IS A PRANK HAYDEN WANTS TO BE DEAD BEFORE THE PUNCHLINE HITS.
And then something something, Hayden eventually helps those two knuckleheads realize they're in love. Then he's the knucklehead, thinking this means he needs to bow out (even if it's fucking killing him - he KNEW he'd get way too attached to Shane, he knew it was gonna hurt like a bitch when it inevitably ended, AND he went and let himself get attached to ILYA ROZANOV too?? Hayden is fucking COOKED.) So Shane and Ilya have to woo him back.
Boston got the top two draft picks their year, so they got Ilya and Shane. Ilya and Shane develop very different reputations from the start - they're the badboys of hockey on the ice and very publicly best friends. Shane is the one everyone thinks has a roster of girls because when he and Ilya hit the clubs, they so often get seen leaving with Svetlana and another girl (everyone believes Ilya and Svetlana are a couple and that Shane sleeps around, but the girl is usually Svetlana's hookup for the night or someone Svetlana and Ilya share.)
Seems like the best set up for hollanov, right? Except something is missing. They're best friends, but they've also fallen in love and neither realizes that about the other. The 'with benefits' part of their relationship is only in the off-season, an arrangement they fell into after an unsuccessful attempt to just stop sleeping together completely and after they'd started spending their summers together. Shane thinks Svetlana is Ilya's endgame once they finally decide to settle down, and he's still working through a lot. Is he just gay, or were his high school fumblings just bad because he was young and the only girls he meets now want Ilya or to be with both him and Ilya at the same time and Shane's jealousy ruins them for him? Could he be having even more sex with Ilya if he could get over his fear of having a threesome like Ilya's proposed several times and revealing too much about himself?
Shane spends a lot of time in Montreal for business ventures etc. and he has run into Hayden again and again outside of games when the two teams partied in the same spots (he and Hayden would be the ones not drinking, not on the dancefloor), hanging around the hotel while their teammates go out at all-star games, out about in Montreal. They've developed a casual phone friendship and have always had chemistry Shane initially wasn't sure about, and then didn't pay any attention to because he was so focused on Ilya and just craving a friend who isn't also Ilya's.
Maybe Hayden and Jacki are both bisexual and Shane tries his first threesome with them? Maybe Hayden is mostly gay and Jacki is mostly lesbian but they're childhood sweethearts who have both always wanted kids and decided they could have that with one another and be one another's cover for their other relationships. And once Shane realizes that, he starts to think about his chemistry with Hayden. It would be messy, but no more messy than being in love with a guy in his team who is both his best friend and also sleeping with women for fun, right?
Or maybe Hayden is/is now single and Shane breaks, and one night in the season, instead of leaving a club with Ilya he says he wants to stay behind with Hayden. He tells Ilya he wants to pursue Hayden. (Partly because he really does, partly because he doesn't think he can stand the status quo with Ilya.) Cue the chaos of Ilya pretending to support Shane's decision wholeheartedly while hating it, maybe even taking it upon himself to wingman for Shane, and Hayden having no idea why the badboys of hockey are suddenly both giving him A LOT of attention, but helpless to go along with it because he has been DOWNBAD for Hollander for years.
And maybe then it becomes a polyamorous situation where Shane develops a relationship with each, one relationship changes into just friendship as the other one evolves, or maybe Ilya gets in on the ground floor like 'So you do want threesome, just not with girl? Why didn't you say that? Come. You want Hayden Pike? We will get Hayden Pike'. And Hayden eventually helps them figure out they're in love, but by that time he's in love with them too and they both love him as well.
