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There's a video Shane Hollander loved when he was a child. It's only about a minute long, but he must have begged his parents to play it for him at least 20 times a day.
It's grainy footage, the whites all yellowed and the blues smeared to black, from a 1970s exhibition game that was played in Chicago. The Hawks versus Sesame Street. It was on some compilation tape his mother had, hockey moments she remembered from her childhood that she wanted to share with him. He doesn't know how she got it. He never asked. But there it was, in smudged light.
Shane watched it over and over as a little boy, memorizing the way Cookie Monster looked in the net, the way Ernie moved when he handled the puck. It was everything he loved at 4 years old; muppets and hockey. He remembers cheering every time Big Bird got the assist to Grover. He remembers feeling like his best friends had just won the cup.
So when his mother comes to him in the summer after he wins his second Cup with a new partnership proposal from the fucking Sesame Workshop, Shane can't say yes fast enough.
He's not an actor, but Shane has done enough commercials that he thought that getting a 3-minute clip of himself talking to Elmo was going to be pretty damn easy.
What he wasn't expecting, what he never could have expected, was that the first time he stepped onto the set, Shane Hollander would cry like a baby.
"Shane," his mother is there, of course she is. Slipping an arm around his shoulders and giving him a squeeze. "Are you okay?"
His voice cracks on the reply, emotions hot in his chest. "Yeah," he gasps, and someone is handing him a bottle of water while his mother steers him to the tall, canvas-backed chair that has his name on it like he's some kind of star.
"This happens a lot," someone says, and when Shane looks up, his breath leaves his body because he's looking at Elmo.
Fucking Elmo.
The man holding Elmo offers a hand, which Shane takes. "Hi, I'm Ryan," the man says. "And this is my friend Elmo."
Shane knows Elmo is a puppet. He's not stupid, and he's not five years old. But there is absolutely some kind of magic in the world, because even seeing that a human is controlling the felt person in his hands does nothing to dissuade Shane's brain of the conviction that Elmo is alive.
"Hi," Shane replies, shaking Ryan's hand in the way his dad taught him, firm and decisive. "Shane Hollander. This is my mom, Yuna."
In what is becoming an expected series of events, the puppet in Ryan's hand turns his head and his mouth opens.
"Hello, Mister Shane! And Miss Yuna! Thank you for coming to play with Elmo!" it says. And Shane knows it's Ryan speaking. He can see his mouth moving. But Shane can't do anything about the giant dopey grin that's spreading across his face.
His mother is saying something, Shane knows she is. She's controlling the moment like she always does, and shielding Shane while he works through a new situation. But something in the little monster's face is burrowing into Shane's brain, and it feels a lot like meeting his best friend for the first time.
Shane is dressed in his Metros jersey but no pads, sitting on the stoop of 123 Sesame Street like some kind of insane dream.
He stares down the camera, and when they give him his cue, he says his line.
"Hi, my name is Shane and I'm here to tell you about the word perseverance." He watched a thousand of these guest spots leading up to today. From Jack Black to David Beckham. John Legend to Ian McKellen. There's no way Shane belongs alongside those people. But here he is. "Perseverance means not giving up, even when something is really hard," he says.
"Oh, oh! Mister Shane!" Ryan's Elmo voice is a little different from the one Shane grew up with, but it's close enough that Shane gives himself over to the fantasy that this is the same monster who used to teach him things. "Mister Shane," Elmo taps Shane's elbow. Like that's a thing that happens to people. "Will you please teach Elmo how to play hockey?"
Shane smiles, which is what he would have done even if it didn't say to in the script. "You know what, Elmo?" he replies. "I think that would be a great way to show our friends about perseverance."
They have to move to another set, because the second part of this bit is going to be Shane trying to teach a group of puppets to ice skate. It's notably insane. He can't fucking wait.
Not only is Elmo going to learn to ice skate today, Shane is going to get to help him up when he falls, and talk about trying again.
He's sure Rozanov would call it boring, the idea of making TV for children. There will be chirps on the ice about doing this, about how the only way the Metros can get people to watch their games is to court the under-4 market.
But Shane doesn't fucking care.
Part of him is still that little boy, watching Grover score that goal. And that little boy would have been so excited to see the captain of his mom's favorite team on Sesame street. So if there are any other little kids out there who can get something like that out of this? Then it might be more important than winning the cup.
The second part of the shoot is weird - a lot of the actual skating shots of the muppets will be inset from bluescreen footage. They just need Shane to do his parts, which feel disjointed and nonsensical without seeing the rest.
But he sits next to Elmo and puts a bandaid on the monster's hand all the same.
"Elmo is no good at ice skating, Mister Shane," Elmo says.
Shane touches the top of Elmo's head, like he would a real child. "Everyone is bad at first," he says, keeping his voice gentle.
"Even you, Mister Shane?"
Shane nods. "Even me, Elmo. But if you fall down, you get back up and you try again. That's called perseverance."
Elmo looks at him, And despite still being a grown man, Shane smiles at his little felt friend. "Will Elmo ever be good at it?"
"I don't know," Shane says. "But if you give up now, the answer is no. You have to keep trying to get better. You have to keep skating if you want to learn. And if you and your friends are having fun, do you need to be good at it? Can't it just be fun?"
The muppet nods at him, which is so cute Shane thinks he might explode.
"Okay," Elmo says. "Elmo will use his perseverance!"
"Attaboy, Elmo!" Shane says, and they call cut.
It will be months before the segment airs, but Shane still makes sure to get a picture of himself with the muppets, and gets a few bits of swag - both for himself, and for Hayden's kids, who Shane thinks will probably go even more feral than they usually are when they see this.
It's been a good day, and Shane does what he always does on good days, he pulls out his phone and starts to text the only contact he ever wants to talk to.
He considers sending Rozanov the picture of him with the muppets, tries to think of what he might say that would fit in the bounds of their flirting. He comes up blank. There's nothing. There's no way to make the muppets into innuendo that doesn't involve tainting them with a joke about how badly Shane wants Rozanov's hand up his butt, so he closes the message and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
"You know," his mom says, breaking Shane's train of thought. "You're the first hockey player they've had on in over a decade. That's going to mean a lot to a lot of kids."
Shane nods. He always means a lot to a lot of kids who don't know him and never will. But that's the job. That's what he agreed to.
"Yeah," he says. "Cool."
His mother smiles at him as their car pulls up to the curb. "Proud of you," she says, nudging him with her shoulder. "You got real perseverance."
Shane rolls his eyes, but he steps forward to open the car door for his mother. "Okay," he puts on his long-suffering tone. "Get in, momager. We have a flight to catch."
Shane watches the episode with the Pikes, and answers about nine million questions from Ruby and Amber about what Elmo is like in real life.
When he opens his phone later, he has a text waiting.
Shane doesn't even bother to reply, but there's something warm in his chest knowing that Rozanov watched. For him.