Chapter Text
Shane Hollander remembered Ilya Rozanov. It was impossible not to, seeing as they had both been present for one of the most embarrassing singular days of Shane’s life.
Granted, the disaster in Czechoslovakia had not been his fault. It hadn’t directly been either of their faults, though Shane would bet every dollar of his current salary that Rozanov hadn’t been nearly as upset by the whole thing as Shane. Hockey players generally had a reputation as fighters, but that had never been him. Publicly and forever being known as one of the players involved in the biggest brawl in history at the World Juniors was not something he was terribly proud of. Even worse, the bench-clearing fight had led to both the Soviet team and the Canadians being eliminated from medal contention. The Soviets had already been out, but Shane had been devastated that his last World Juniors had ended in such chaos.
He remembered facing off against Rozanov several times over the course of the game, the intensity of his stare and the almost cruel quirk of his mouth. He also clearly remembered Rozanov’s fist coming right at his face before ending up flat on his back on the ice with his ears ringing and his vision spinning. He missed most of the fight after that, but his teammates had continued throwing hands long enough for the officials to turn off the lights in the arena to try and get them to stop. Embarrassing.
That was two years ago now, and Shane hadn’t seen Rozanov since that moment. After the juniors, Shane was drafted to the Montreal Metros (first overall pick, thank you very much). Despite how shameful he personally thought the event to be, being part of the Banská Bystrica Brawl was social capital for him coming into that locker room, something he was aware he needed. If he kept his mouth shut about how involved he actually was in the fight and let people assume, that was no one’s business but Shane’s.
Two years of professional hockey later and here he was, facing down the reality of another international series featuring the Soviets and Ilya Rozanov.
Shane knew he should be flattered, and part of him was. His parents were thrilled, though they had never been as upset about the World Juniors as he had. A very select group of the top players in the league had been chosen to represent Canada in an exhibition series with the Soviet national team. It was far from the first time an event like this had been hosted, but for the first time in over a decade the games wouldn’t just take place in North America. This time it was split - half in Ottawa, and half in Moscow.
Shane wouldn’t claim to be the most political person on earth, but you would have to be willfully ignorant to miss the importance of hockey to the international relationship between Canada and the Soviet Union. And if there was one thing Shane was not ignorant about, it was hockey.
So even though he was only a year out from his rookie season, Shane was going to be representing his country not only at home, but in literal enemy territory. He was trying very hard to not let the weight get to him, despite being by far the youngest on the team. The rest of the team was stacked with veterans and future legends. Maybe they wouldn’t really even need him.
The competitive voice in his head hoped they would need him.
There hadn’t been a doubt in Shane’s mind that Ilya Rozanov would be playing for the Soviets. He was good, one of the best they had, and everyone knew both Shane and Rozanov had been on the ice in Banská Bystrica. As far as Shane could tell, no one knew Rozanov had essentially rung his bell and laid him out. He would have to pray Rozanov would continue to keep that one to himself, though Shane couldn’t imagine why he had so far.
The truth was, Shane was equal parts anxious and excited to face Rozanov again. Montreal wasn’t a bad team, but they hadn’t made it to the playoffs Shane’s rookie year, and then been knocked out in the first round his second season. They were still in somewhat of a rebuild, and Shane had a really good feeling about the upcoming season. Still, sometimes it just felt like he was the only one playing at a certain level. Not all the time, there were players on other teams that could keep up with him, who challenged him. But it wasn’t nearly as often as he’d like, and no one on his own team seemed to be clicking with him just yet. He couldn’t win them a cup alone.
Now he was going to play with the best of the best from the major league against the best of the best from the Soviet Union. Including Ilya Rozanov, who had punched him square in the jaw the last time he had seen him. What could go wrong?
Ilya Rozanov did not want to go to Ottawa.
There was no off season for ice hockey players in the Soviet Union, not really. Ilya himself lived nearly year round in military barracks, officially an officer of the Soviet Army, though this was in name only. He was there to play hockey, specifically to play hockey internationally for the Soviet national team when the opportunity arose. And for the first time since his arrival, an opportunity had arisen.
Ilya did not fear the Canadians on the ice. The Soviet Union had been dominating the international hockey scene for decades, and while things were certainly shifting in some ways, Ilya was still generally unimpressed with what he saw from players in the west. They didn’t know their teammates and played with too much focus on the individual. It was one thing to be the best and know it - it was another to use that knowledge for the team. The relentless training in the USSR was brutal, but the results tended to speak for themselves.
This was what Ilya had been waiting for, of course. He had played for a year for the Soviet Army but had not been chosen for the national team immediately. That had not gone over well with his father, but even he had limits to his reach. And now he had been tapped as the youngest player on the team headed to Ottawa. And he did not want to go.
He loved hockey, truly he did. There was nothing he would rather be doing. His brother Alexei had followed their father into government, which seemed abhorrent to Ilya. He was lucky he was good at hockey, and that hockey was so important to his people. Otherwise he might be in the military for real.
So no, he was not nervous about the Canadians, and it wasn’t that he didn’t want to play hockey. The reason he didn’t want to go to Ottawa was something much more specific.
Shane Hollander, Canadian superstar, had been picked for Team Canada.
Ilya had been expecting and dreading it. Of all the professional players in the west, it made perfect sense to him that Hollander would be chosen. In the face of the issues Ilya saw in the teams in the US and Canada, Hollander stood out as an exception to the rule. He was good, very good, but he tried to use that to lift the team he was playing for rather than stand in the spotlight. It was unfortunate that it rarely worked, but sometimes he’d get lucky. Canada would have won that game at the World Juniors if it hadn’t devolved to a literal bar fight, Ilya could admit that. Maybe even by enough to take the gold. Such a shame.
The last time Ilya had seen Hollander was on the ice at that game. To this day he couldn’t fully explain why he had laid the other player out so quickly and definitively. He could have pulled the punch, gone back and forth a bit with him. For all the intensity of the game and the tournament, he hadn’t felt angry towards Hollander at that moment. Someone else far down the ice from them had thrown the first punch, and then everyone had joined in. Hollander had looked like a deer caught in headlights watching the scrum, and Ilya just… hit him.
And now they were going to be facing off once again, this time on a bigger stage with even more eyes on them. Even if nobody knew that Ilya had been the one to lay Hollander out in Czechoslovakia, it was common knowledge they had both been in the game. In fact, they would both be the only players from each team that had been. Canada would make a big deal of it, even if his own team would not.
A rematch. A revenge game. A battle. And Ilya didn’t want to go.
There had been… a thought. On his mind. Just a thought, since he had played against Hollander in Czechoslovakia. While the game in the west was still messy and unfocused to Ilya’s critical eye, he had been reluctantly impressed with Hollander the whole game. He didn’t play the Soviet way, he simply didn’t know how, but he kept up with Ilya in a way even few of his own teammates were able to. It had been a challenge, a surprise. And the thought had settled in.
Quietly, for years now, Major League Hockey had been trying to get Soviet players to make the jump to the west. The idea existed always in secret, always in the shadows due to the strict government control of hockey in the USSR. But it was a bit of an open secret, one that was becoming more open every day. No one had done it yet, but Ilya could feel something coming.
So no, Ilya did not want to go to Ottawa. He did not want to face off against Shane Hollander again and find out that his memory of how the Canadian played was, in fact, accurate. He did not want to experience the rush, the joy, the fun he had smothered in his chest, and he certainly did not want to have any reason at all to continue to nurse that little thought that maybe, just maybe, the leap could be worth the enormous risk. It didn’t do him any good, having such dangerous thoughts.
It wasn’t up to him anyway. There was no refusing a spot on the national team. He would go to Ottawa, and focus on his own team, his own game. He would bury any dangerous thoughts before they could fully form. What could possibly go wrong?