I have another addition to the Goalie Shane lore in my imagination. It is unhinged. In my defense… I have none.
What if, after the Wallander Yank gets noticed as a standard occurrence, Shane Hollander gets invited to Sesame Street as a novelty?
Imagine this nice goalie, if you will, who has a reputation for calm and collectedness, talking very seriously with muppets. And it’s immediately apparent to all of the adults that he also has a lot of experience talking with small children.
There is a part where he blocks a handful of pucks gently tossed at a little net on the set, and then the Count gets to count all of the ones he stopped (which is all of them).
“Mister Hollander stopped all the pucks! Let us count them! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10! Ten pucks!”
“Yes, and we collected them all for the Count to count them.”
“And Mister Hollander did not miss any of the pucks. That is a good job!”
“No goals; that is correct Count.”
And then he gets to meet Cookie Monster and they discuss the composition of hockey pucks and the structural unsoundness of cookies for a hypothetical game of hockey using cookies as pucks.
The joke for this segment is Shane having to keep Cookie Monster from trying to eat a puck, saying very seriously,
“Cookie Monster, if you try to eat a hockey puck, you’ll get sick and you might hurt your mouth.”
“Hurt his mouth! Cookie Monster does not want to hurt his mouth on rubber cookies!”
“No, we wouldn’t want that. Then you would have to go to the dentist to get it fixed.”
“Has Mister Hollander had to go to the dentist to get his mouth fixed because he tried to eat a hockey cookie?”
“No, I haven’t had to get my mouth fixed from taking a puck yet. I wear a very big mask to protect my face. See?” And he puts on his goalie mask with the dangler.
“Ooh! That’s very big! But you cannot eat cookies with that very big mask on!”
“No, I can’t eat anything with this on, but I can drink water by squirting it through the cage.”
Which he demonstrates, and Cookie Monster oohs and aaahs and says that Shane could absolutely put milk in his squirt bottle and have cookies on his break. And then Shane replies that milk might make him sick in the middle of a game, and that he needs electrolytes and salt during a game to stay hydrated, and that cookies wouldn’t be a good idea in the middle of a game either and that they’re a sometimes food for special occasions.
And then there’s the “healthy food discussion” for the day, and Shane says that athletes have to eat the right kinds of fuel so their bodies can work really hard to have fun and play their games, and it’s a really cute segment.
Shane gets to talk to Elmo and demonstrates how he puts on his gear, the names of the pieces and what they do. Elmo finds it very funny that Shane looks so much bigger when he has all of the pieces on, and ask how he can possibly move in them. Shane demonstrates how his range of motion is still very good because he practices with all his gear and he’s flexible enough to be able to move around.
Shane talks to Big Bird about being brave when lots of very big men are skating at him very fast and aiming pucks at him in goal. But then they talk about how Shane’s friends help keep them away, and they help to take the puck away to try and score points in the other goal, and how the other team helps their goalie out too.
He talks to Bert and Ernie about getting along with friends who are very annoying. He mentions his best friend Hayden, who comes to visit him in the crease from time to time and makes sure he’s okay, and J.J. who also enjoys good jokes, and then tells them the story of the last prank J.J. Had pulled which involved mayonnaise in pudding cups.
Shane helps Grover dish out yogurt, and agrees with him that granola is a little suspect, and might best be left out of the yogurt. It may, by far, be the most stressful part of the day, because Grover accidentally spills a little, pulls out the wrong tub twice, and tries dishing up with a fork and a whisk before they manage to locate a spoon.
He talks to Oscar the Grouch about the nature of keeping people and pucks out of his crease, and how he deals with days when he gets angry or upset, and how grouchy hockey players can be, and how Shane learned how to be nice on grouchy days when people upset him. Oscar the Grouch isn’t totally convinced that it’s possible for Shane to be “happy in the paint” when people are slapping pucks at him, but Shane at least gets him to waver.
Hayden doesn’t understand why he wasn’t invited on Sesame Street, because he has kids, and they love the episode with Shane. Hayden does not realize the curse that is your children not being impressed when you have anything to do with their preferred entertainment/stories.
Ilya can’t believe Boring Shane Hollander got to go on Sesame Street and Star Center Ilya Rozanov didn’t, and he says as much when a reporter finally asks him what he thought.
(Ilya doesn’t actually care about Sesame Street, just the lost opportunity to be around Shane where they have to be nice to each other and maybe throw shade on Shane and annoy him like the ragebaiter he is and Shane has to find other ways to tell him to fuck off.)
