Comment on a winner at heart

  1. Slayeralice Sun 08 Feb 2026 10:44PM UTC

    I have so many thoughtsssss about this. It’s so good. It’s so so so good. I love a fleshed out Ilya. A realistic Ilya. I had no idea I was tired of the portrayal of him as being…basically a wet rag, in a lot of fandom.

    The meanness! I adored it. It makes so much sense. Because of course he’s obsessed with Shane and adores him, but like. His life SUCKS now, and Shane is such a big part of that. And Shane’s life is same-as-usual.

    It’s such an untouched part of TLG. Because the whole point is that they’re equal rivals! And now one is constantly losing and basically neutered. And depressed. Ilya might not love hockey as much as Shane does, but he loves *winning* just as much.

    Anyway, you could keep coming back to this series and I would keep eating it up. It’s downright delicious.

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    1. minim00n Wed 18 Feb 2026 05:38PM UTC

      omg exactly!! it makes me so mad everytime the narrative comes up that ilya sacrificed and is basically a shadow of the character he was in HR and yes he’s depressed but he’s rarely mean about it like?? we needed more angst and we needed more for ilya. shane is my baby and i don’t support people blaming him bcs it was a mutual decision for ilya to move to ottawa but it also fucking sucks too right? so i really wished that Rachel Reid didn’t change so much of who ilya was originally, in TLG. i wanted more for him. i’ve a soft spot for him and it feels like he never gets what he deserves. i wanted him to win a cup for ottawa without shane. so much of the narrative of HR was that what brought these two together was the fact they were equals. rivals. always one-upping each other and so it made me really really mad that ilya was reduced to so little. i wanted him to have smth of his own. a win without shane. i wanted them to be equals again before they played on the team. i really dont like the narrative of everyone accepting shane as the sole legend of recent hockey history while for the first ten years of their careers, it was a back and forth for ilya and shane. maybe i even wish that RR chose a better team for ilya. like instead of ottawa being so weak, i wish it
      could’ve been like boston or montreal—teams that were amazing once but hadn’t won a cup in so long and then shane and ilya won cups for them. ilya could’ve done that for ottawa. it just feels so unfair to him. idk i feel too strongly about this—i just wanted them to always be equals.

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      1. Fucking_Loser Fri 20 Feb 2026 01:43PM UTC

        I feel the exact same way!!! Ottawa only winning a cup w Shane on the team bothers me more than it should.

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      2. boogyuyuriiiii Wed 18 Mar 2026 09:50PM UTC

        Ottawa did get a lot better before shane joined. They made the playoffs and knocked montreal off in the first round

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      3. now_that_its_quiet Wed 25 Mar 2026 03:20AM UTC

        I agree with everything you said. I didn’t want to see Ilya reduced - neutered - like that. (And on the other side, I was sickened to see Shane traumatically humiliated with the outing and the fall). I wanted to see what you saw. Winning and equality in rivalry.

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