Work Text:
OUT OF THE SHADOWS, AND ONTO THE ICE: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are finally ready to introduce themselves.
Written by Maya Reeves.
There are a great many things I don’t expect to happen on the day I am to spend with two of the NHL’s most famous faces, and it begins with Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa’s notoriously boisterous captain, answering the door in an apron.
“You are Maya, yes?” he starts, thwarting my well-rehearsed introduction, before ushering me into the lakeshore cottage he shares with Hollander with one oven-mittened hand.
When Farah Jalali—agent and friend to both Rozanov and Hollander—sent confirmation that I would meet them at the cottage where they often spent their summers in seclusion, I had been expecting something a little more befitting of the name. Instead, I am met with a five-thousand-square-foot monolith to the Canadian dream. Rozanov leads me through the entryway, which is lined wall-to-wall with photographs of him, Hollander, and their rescue dog. It is as if they have been placed there, the very first thing any guest would see upon entering, as a clear message: this is their home, be nice.
“Shane is not back yet,” Rozanov informs me as we enter the kitchen, which is absolutely pristine, except for the light dusting of flour on the countertop. “I am making pancakes.”
The mostly-stale croissant I’d eaten on the drive weighs heavily in my stomach, but there was no reality in which I would turn down Ilya Rozanov’s pancakes. It makes me wonder, given how disciplined professional athletes were with their lifestyles, how often Rozanov gets to indulge in these sorts of delicacies. When I ask, he merely shrugs. “Is summer. If not now, when?”
The bowl of batter remains beside the stove, ready to be poured upon Hollander’s return. Rozanov explains that cooking is something he’s come to enjoy over the years, which surprises me, considering how many athletes hire personal chefs to cook and nutritionists to plan each and every meal. “Is different in the season.” He shrugs again. “Off-season is for us. Why would I want someone coming and taking over our home?”
This stumps me, as someone who has arrived that morning to spend the day taking over their home. Rozanov was known for his sharp tongue on the ice, often at the centre of any mid-game drama, but seeing him here in his home, wrapped in an apron that I now realise reads ‘kiss the chef’, makes it hard to connect him to the man I’d just spent the last week researching.
I wonder if this Rozanov, who wears novelty socks and makes pancakes, is simply someone else.
Flour still litters the countertop, but when I offer to help clean it (he is, after all, so generously making pancakes), he shakes his head. “Leave it for Shane,” he tells me. “He is very…nervous about today. The run will help, but he is still going to need something to do with his hands.”
A smile plays on his face as he says it, one that is impossible not to mirror. I’d known, because Farah Jalali is as prepared as she is protective when it comes to her clients, that between the two of them, Hollander was going to require the most easing. Despite the very public and unfortunate circumstances in which their relationship came to light and the fact that they now played together for the Ottawa Centaurs, the pair have since managed to maintain a remarkable level of privacy. There was the odd post, usually to Rozanov’s Instagram page (most famously of all was the video announcing their engagement, which has now amassed over twelve million likes), but for the most part, they could easily pass as colleagues.
At least, that’s what I thought. Then Hollander arrives home.
Rozanov’s eyes light up at the sound of the door opening, then he is on his knees, arms wide and ready to receive the wriggling body of a small brown dog who seems intent on licking his face. Still, he manages to greet the man, now untying his running shoes in the entryway, with a swift, “Did she beat you?”
To which Hollander confirms, “Every fucking time.”
The dog, whose name I later learn is Anya, turns her attention to me. As an entertainment journalist specialising in profiles, it is an unspoken rule that any time I am afforded to conduct one of these interviews, my role is to be as unseen and unheard as possible. Regrettably, a lifelong fear of dogs is not so easy to disguise. Thus, I flinch.
Rozanov calls Anya over with a short burst of Russian, and to his credit, does not comment on the redness of my face. Hollander, however, seems somewhat soothed by it. “I would shake your hand,” he tells me, making no effort to do so, “but…”
But he was rather sweaty, still fresh from his run and pulling in deep lungfuls of air. Upon first glance, he looked every bit as young as he had during his first few seasons in Montreal. It was only after looking for a minute longer—possibly a minute too long, if the nervous taps of his fingers against his thighs were anything to go by—that I notice how time had changed him. His hair was longer, though currently pulled back from his eyes, and he carried that battle-hardened frame that most seasoned Hockey players possessed. That wasn’t it, though. It was much, much subtler. The way he squared his shoulders, maybe, with a confidence I hadn’t seen in any footage during my many nights of research. The way he bent down to kiss Rozanov on the cheek, quick enough to shock the Russian, quick enough to shock me, quick enough that he couldn’t convince himself not to do it.
“Go shower, krasivyy. I am making pancakes for us,” was the only response Rozanov gave. Hollander leaves then, offering a silent nod my way, with the dog nipping at his heels. Rozanov, who is more observant than I’d been prepared for, sets about making coffee. “You are scared of dogs,” he notes, and I cannot deny it. “Her name is Anya. She is very friendly.” I believe him, but my body does not. Rozanov frowns into the empty coffee mugs, waiting for the fancy espresso machine to wake up. “I should have asked if you were comfortable with dogs before today. We do not have new guests often.”
It makes me wonder why they were allowing one now, why they had requested such an intimate profile of their lives, why they had requested it during the off-season, why they had requested me by name. Rozanov smiles. “We read the article you wrote for Saul Mcree,” he explains. “It was...very tasteful.” Saul Mcree is a name as familiar to me as my own. A retired Hollywood legend who, after his Alzheimer's diagnosis, allowed me to document the last few months of his life. It is no surprise to me that of all the profiles that could have caught his eye, it was that one. “My father had it,” he tells me, without any of the wobble one might expect, “we weren’t close.”
I want to ask why, but the man has not had breakfast yet, and the milk steamer cuts off any further questions. Hollander arrives back a few minutes later and does indeed shake my hand. His palm is clammy, but so is mine. “Thanks for coming,” he tells me, as though I would have ever turned them down. “Ilya makes good coffee, doesn’t he?” He does, it’s undeniable.
Hollander is in an obvious and constant state of unease. He fidgets, hands clenching and unclenching, eyes darting around the room for something to focus on—he finds it. “Ilya, there’s flour all over the counter.” Rozanov throws a conspiratorial glance my way. “Oops,” he says, not looking sorry at all. Hollander—or Shane, as Rozanov softly calls him—is already cleaning the counters, muttering something under his breath about Rozanov that is categorically unpublishable, but there is a distinct ease to his shoulders that wasn’t there before.
Rozanov makes pancakes, Hollander prepares the toppings, Anya the dog stares at me with too-big eyes, and I get a front row seat to the strange domesticity of their routine. Strange only to me, because I still think of them as Rozanov and Hollander, multi Stanley Cup champions and NHL stars, instead of Shane and Ilya, husbands at home. Hollander asks me if I like berries on my pancakes, which I do, and I ask him what else they like to cook.
“A bit of everything,” Hollander tells me, casting shy glances towards Rozanov. “It’s something we started doing together during our first few summers here. It was nice to finally have enough time to be able to do something without rushing.” I tell him it must have been difficult, though it is immediately apparent that difficult is a profound understatement. There is a tremulous edge to Hollander’s voice when he replies, “Yes, it was. We always made it work, but missing Ilya was…unbearable. I hated that I couldn’t call him until I was alone, or drive him to the airport—” Rozanov steps closer, leaning against Hollander, and I watch both of them exhale.
They move around the kitchen with a synchronicity usually reserved for dancing. Sometimes, Rozanov will grab something out of the fridge and hold it out to Hollander, who names it in Russian, then bats it away. Rozanov hands me a serving of pancakes and asks about living in New York. “I like playing there,” he tells me. “He loves how much they hate him,” Hollander clarifies. They find their own places at the kitchen island, taking every opportunity to brush against each other. Perhaps they think it is subtle; it is not, but it is lovely.
Hollander doesn’t eat straight away; instead, he waits for us to start first. When he finally does take a bite, Rozanov looks so beyond pleased that I feel, for the first time in my professional career, the sudden urge to look away. Hollander has been outspoken in recent years about the impact of restrictive meal plans that athletes often adhere to, and the Irina Foundation, a charity that the two of them set up together under Rozanov’s late mother’s name, has branched out to organisations centred around disordered eating.
Over breakfast does not seem like the right time to bring it up, so instead I ask about the camps. Hollander comes alive. “We just wrapped up this year’s,” he tells me, tapping Rozanov’s thigh. “We had our highest ever turnout, it was incredible.” Rozanov nods along, one arm slung over the back of Hollander’s chair. “Some really great players came to coach, too. They made up for Hayden,” Rozanov says, which earns him a sharp glare from Hollander.
Hayden Pike? The Montreal Voyageur, whose FanMail video famously outed them?
“Was not his fault,” Rozanov is quick to correct me. “A simple mistake. He kept our secret for a very long time.” Then, with all the sharpness of a butter-knife, he adds, “I have plenty of other reasons to dislike him.” This, I gather from Hollander’s eye-roll, is a frequent bit. “Ignore him. They play Call of Duty together every Wednesday night,” Hollander tells me. When I ask which one, Hollander’s eyes glaze over.
So Hayden Pike is still close with them; he and J.J. Boiziau were the only two Montreal players in attendance at their wedding, certainly the only two who had been pictured with them off-ice since. But Hollander had spent most of his career in Montreal, right from the draft. He’d won cups with that team, moulded and shaped them into formidable contenders (at the time of writing, the Montreal Voyageurs have not made the playoffs since Hollander’s departure), so what about the others? What happened there?
Hollander grows tense, yet Rozanov grows tenser. They share a look, one full of words even the most perceptive of journalists would never be able to translate, and seem to come to an agreement. “Not everybody was supportive, after the news broke about Ilya and me,” Hollander begins. His hands drop to his lap, and Rozanov reaches over to cover them with his own. “They already knew I was gay, and I think they didn’t mind, as long as they didn’t have to think about it.” Being in love with one’s career-long rival left little room not to think about it, I presume. “Then the trip happened.”
The trip. It is said with such weight that we all feel it land. It could have rattled the plates. Rozanov is quick to snarl, “Is ridiculous. We had been competing against each other for our whole careers, and they think he tripped on purpose?” He does not clarify if the ‘they’ in question are the Montreal fans, who have all but banished Hollander from the city, or the team, who may well have done the same. One look at the way Rozanov has curled his arm around Hollander tells me all I need to know.
Hollander moved to Ottawa soon after that game, playing alongside Rozanov for the first time in his career. Since then, they have gone on to win two Stanley Cups, producing what might be the greatest partnership the sport has ever seen. “It’s not just us,” Hollander corrects me, though there is a distinct flush to his cheeks. “The whole team is incredible, we really couldn’t be luckier.” Is that what it is, then? Luck? My question is met with a pair of sharp scoffs. “No,” Rozanov tells me, “we work hard, we get along, and we want it more than anyone else.”
Plates are cleared (they really were delicious pancakes) and placed into the dishwasher, Anya is fed, and I am offered a tour of the house. I ask Hollander if they would object to me taking a few photographs, and they both laugh. “Isn’t it a bit formal to call me by my surname?” he asks, the earlier nervousness a bygone thing, which means that yes, it likely is. “Take as many pictures as you like,” Shane tells me. “We’ve hidden all the sex toys,” Ilya adds.
The house (it cannot justifiably be called a cottage, I tell them) is warm in every one of its vast corners. The ceilings are high, but Ilya is tall, and it means he can stretch his arms above his head and declare that we will tour the trophy room first. Shane, upon hearing this, turns an alarming shade of beetroot red. Along the way, Rozanov calls to Anya in Russian, and she trots happily after him. She is obviously well-trained, though I remain wary. “I wasn’t so good with animals either,” Shane tells me as we pass by an enviable collection of houseplants, “but, like Ilya, she’s grown on me.” At this, Rozanov laughs, throwing an over-the-shoulder smile to his husband. “Do not lie,” he says. “You wanted me from the start.”
As I follow them past closed doors and over plush rugs, I can’t help but wonder when the start was. After Hayden Pike’s FanMail video went viral, they released a joint statement that had shaken the sporting world. It read as follows: ‘Although having the decision to disclose our relationship made for us isn’t ideal, we would like to announce, officially, that we are in a committed, romantic relationship, and have been for several years.’ Once the shock wore off, speculation began—exactly how long was ‘several years’? They had never disclosed, and perhaps they never would. Or, as I stopped before a wall filled with even more photographs, mostly of their illustrious hockey careers, I question if that is exactly what they’d called me here to do.
“It’s not such a simple answer,” Shane tells me when I can no longer refrain from asking. He tilts his head towards the wall, where a photograph of them sits central to all others. Young Hollander and Rozanov, sporting the colours of their countries, crouched down to face off. I know the picture, everybody knows the picture; it’s the 2008 Junior Hockey Championships in Regina. The first time they’d met. Surely, it hadn’t been since then? “No,” Shane laughs, looking at the picture as one might look at the Northern Lights, “not quite.”
There are so many pictures spanning such a range of time, I ponder how long they will allow me to stand here and stare at them. A long while, it turns out. There is Shane, aged 5, his little arms wrapped around a hockey stick that is hilariously too large for him. There is Ilya, age 10, sitting on the lap of a beautiful blonde woman. “My mother,” he tells me, voice thick with emotion. Ilya taps the gold crucifix attached to the chain on his neck, and Shane drops a kiss on his shoulder. I turn back to the photographs, most of which are of the two of them. The NHL draft (Shane groans when I point it out, Ilya does not), a shot of Shane crushing Ilya against the boards in one of their early games, the photographs Ilya had taken in that famously scripted presentation at the NHL awards (“I wasn’t actually supposed to take them,” Ilya tells me, “but I had to.”).
Two lives are documented on this one wall, in this one ‘cottage’, in this one city. Years and years of growth, loss, fortune and misfortune. How much of it overlapped? How much time had they spent orbiting each other? When did it all begin? “Do you want to say it, moya lyubov?” Ilya asks. It takes a moment for Shane to respond, but in the end, he does, “There, that was the first time I…knew.” He points to the picture taken at the NHL draft, and I cannot help but laugh. It is perhaps the only picture on the wall that Shane doesn’t look happy in. “He wasn’t,” Ilya confirms, clearly enjoying himself, “he was so mad, is adorable. How could I resist?”
It is astonishing to realise they have been with each other, in some capacity, for almost half of their lives. It is equally brutal to realise how much of that time had been spent in secret. “We were so young when it all started, I hadn’t even come to terms with my own sexuality yet, and Ilya was still returning to Russia every summer,” Shane tells me. “Keeping it a secret protected us both for a long time.” But it must have hurt, right? It must have been painful to deny themselves for so long, to spend so much time apart for fear of being seen? “Agony,” Shane confirms, and the downward twist of Ilya’s mouth does just the same.
We have lingered in the hall for too long, and Ilya grows restless. I follow them to the trophy room, which certainly puts the box of participation medals I keep in the back of my dresser to shame. Every wall is covered with shelves, and every shelf is lined with trophies. It is one thing to read their combined list of accomplishments; it is another altogether to see them. “That is my favourite,” Shane says, pointing to the 2011 NHL Rookie of the Year award. Ilya grunts something in Russian, and I watch Shane and Ilya become Hollander and Rozanov once more.
It is a remarkable line to tread, and somehow, they do it so well. I wonder how they know. I wonder when it begins and ends. I wonder at what point on the drive to the rink for morning practice do they become teammates, and at what point on the drive home do they become husbands again? “Is simple,” Ilya shrugs, “even before I knew I loved Shane, I knew I loved playing him.” And when he says it like that, when I look around the room and see all they have managed laid out in gold, silver and bronze, it really does seem simple.
The office is next: a wall-spanning whiteboard with this year’s camp itinerary and two large oak desks that face away from each other. “I’ll get nothing done if I’m facing him,” Shane admits, and Ilya wiggles his brows. It is, quite possibly, more impressive than the trophy room. The Irina Foundation is an achievement of its own, facilitated by hockey, but built by them. When they had first announced its formation in that now-picked-over press conference all those years ago, the question on everyone’s lips had been why?
“Is not as complicated as people made out,” Ilya rolls his eyes, “the world thought we hated each other, and we wanted to change that.” It makes sense, of course, now that I know they’d been together since their rookie year (“Eh, on and off,” Ilya says, a glint in his eye). “We wanted to give something back to the cities, and this let us kill two birds with one stone,” Shane informs me, and it had worked out well for them. “It also trapped us more, I think,” Shane scratches his head, looking at Ilya. “Once we were friends, we couldn’t come out, otherwise people would…assume.”
And people did. It only takes ten minutes of internet sleuthing to find the forums, the fanfiction, the accounts dedicated to uncovering the truth of their relationship that long predate the FanMail video. It would be fair to assume such an invasion of their carefully cultivated privacy would bother them, but it doesn’t seem to—not anymore. “I love it,” says Ilya, pulling out his phone to show me his Twitter saves (20% hockey highlights, 10% dogs, 70% edits of him and Shane to songs Shane seems unable to name). Ilya is considerably more active on social media than Shane, which is to say Shane is not active at all. “It’s not for me,” he explains. “I get too anxious about what I’m going to find, or what someone is going to say. It’s not worth it. I’ve thought about deleting Instagram so many times.” But, despite his four most recent posts being tagged by Ilya, his account is still there. “Yeah, well,” Shane swallows hard, “there are things on there I don’t want to lose.”
There is something in that. Something that makes Shane inch closer to Ilya. Something that makes Ilya grasp Shane’s hand and squeeze it. Professionally, it is my job to ask, but personally…I like them, and the day is young; they’ll tell me if they want to, when they want to.
They have a small practice rink in the basement, and I cannot help but laugh now. This was supposed to be a cottage? “I said the same,” Ilya teases, poking Shane in the ribs. “He acts all modest about it, but it is a mansion.” Shane, instead of rising to the bait, looks me dead in the eye and asks if I skate. I do not, and yet, ten minutes later, I have been wrapped in padding and bundled into inline skates. “We keep skates of all sizes here, for friends and family,” Shane explains, as though I am to feel anything but horrified by this.
Ilya stands in the goal, which seems far too small. “Is not like your European goalposts,” he says as I shuffle (very slowly) past him on the ‘ice’. It brings up a new line of curiosity, one that blessedly gives me a reason to stop moving. Ilya’s English has improved to the point of complete fluency over the years, though it had never truly been bad at all. Today, it hadn’t gone without notice how easily Shane seemed to understand the Russian Ilya had used throughout the morning. Was he learning?
“As often as I can,” Shane called from the other end of the rink, now on skates of his own and indulging in a bit of showboating. Not a pad in sight. “I am not nearly as fluent as I’d like to be.” How fluent does he want to be? “Enough that when Ilya wants to talk, he doesn’t have to think about which words to choose.”
Ilya, with what can only be described as a melted expression, only replies with, “Ty ideal'nyj, lyubimyj.” I don’t ask what it means; it wasn’t for me to know.
Shane puts a hockey stick in my hand and tries to teach me how to shoot a puck. He is an accomplished athlete, an Olympian, at the very top of his league, but to say he is a good teacher would be an absolute falsehood. I somehow manage to shoot the puck backwards twice before Ilya calmly switches places with Shane, kissing his temple in apology along the way. “Is like this every year at camp,” he whispers to me once Shane is in place. “You are also terrible, though.”
I leave them to it at the earliest opportunity, taking my place along the safety of the boards while they skate circles around each other. On more than one occasion, I think they are on the verge of fighting. On several more, I think they are on the verge of kissing. By the end, it’s difficult to parse the options apart. Ilya makes fun of Shane’s backhand, Shane shoots a puck dangerously close to Ilya’s shins, Ilya challenges him to a race, which they tie, and then bicker about for almost fifteen uninterrupted minutes. “You saw me win, yes, Maya?” Ilya calls, and I am struck with sudden, overwhelming empathy for their teammates.
By the time we leave the basement, the afternoon is in full swing. My day with them is finite, and feels more precious by the minute. “Do you miss England?” Ilya asks, and usually I would redirect the question—after all, this is not my profile—but Ilya is also far from home, so I tell him that yes, sometimes I am so homesick I can’t think straight. His smile is tight, and I can see Shane watching from the corner of his eye. “I don’t think of Russia as home, haven’t for a long time,” Ilya says, “but I miss it. I wish I could show Shane where I grew up.” Shane, who is no longer pretending not to listen, reaches across to brush a curl from Ilya’s eyes and says, “I wish I could see it too.”
Silently, I find myself wishing for the same. It’s no secret that Ilya Rozanov is no longer welcome in his motherland. He is an openly bisexual man now, married to an openly gay man, one who had been a national rival. Not only has Ilya broken the laws of his country, but he has also disgraced them…if you are to listen to the Russian media, which he does not. “They don’t know shit,” he says, waving away my obvious concern. I suppose, in the end, it all boils down to that; those who know them get it, and those who don’t…don’t matter.
The tour concludes where it began, in their open-plan living space. Shane apologises for not allowing me to see their bedroom, and I don’t even get the chance to assure him that it wasn’t on the agenda before Ilya laughs, “Not everyone is as perverted as you, Hollander.” It’s not the first time I have heard them refer to each other by their individual surnames, and though changing your name is not a requirement of marriage, I wonder what made them decide to keep their own. “Work, mostly,” Shane tells me. “It would be wrong to have any other name on my back.” Ilya, in a move I am coming to expect, smirks brazenly. “Unless we are alone, then Hollander has no problem wearing my name on—”
Shane covers Ilya’s mouth with his palm, and I hide a laugh behind mine.
It is a blue-bird sky outside, so Ilya opens the patio doors and leads us to the dock. I’ve seen it once before in a mini-documentary ESPN ran during the 2016 season. Shane had stretched his body into impressive shapes on this very dock, had meditated under these very trees, and yet…nothing about this view could be compared to what I’d seen. This dock was at the edge of a garden, in which Anya was currently rolling around. This dock housed two chairs and a large, pillow-stuffed hammock. Two jet skis were bobbing rhythmically on the lake, two pairs of swim shorts drying on the panelling, and an array of dog toys scattered across the ground. ESPN had filmed a set piece, but I was being shown a home.
Ilya pulls Shane into his chest, bending down to rest his chin on Shane’s shoulder, while they tell me about the surrounding banks where they like to spend their summer days. The sun shines down on us, but the warmth seems to be coming directly from the ground, like it has been woven into the very foundations of the building. “I had this place built as soon as I felt settled in the league,” Shane tells me, and I can’t help but ask if he’d built it with this very scenario in mind; to share it one day with the man wrapped around him. He laughs, and he is right to, it is a fanciful question. Then, he sobers, lifts his hands to hold onto Ilya’s forearms, and says, “Maybe I did.”
We sit on the dock for most of the afternoon, long enough that I have to reapply sunscreen twice and still burn anyway. Ilya takes a swim in the lake when it gets too hot, but I stay on the dock with Shane. He is quiet, contemplative, and I am hesitant to disturb his peace. Eventually, he turns to tell me, rather plainly, that he is glad we are doing this. “It’s been a long time coming,” he explains, “with everything that happened, we wanted to wait for things to calm down before putting any more out there. But I’ve waited a long time to love him this loudly.”
It occurs to me that while they had not been given the chance to come out together, they had at least planned to. I wonder how differently it would have gone if revealed in their own words. I wonder what changed that made them want to step out of the shadows after so long. “I might cry if I talk about it,” Shane tells me, but he talks about it anyway. “You researched us before today, right?” Yes, of course. For hours upon hours, days upon days. “Then you know about the time the Centaur's plane had to make an emergency landing?”
I do know. It wasn’t so long ago, only the season prior to Shane leaving Montreal to join Ottawa. What should have been a routine flight from Carolina to Tampa Bay turned into a nightmare when the right engine failed and caught fire. It had ended well, fortunately for all, but those players who had been on the flight all confirmed the same thing: for a brief moment in time, they all thought they were going to die.
“Ilya could have…I…” Shane has to clear his throat. “There were so many things that scared me into secrecy, but all of them paled to the fear I felt when I heard the news. Every second spent pretending I didn’t love him was a fucking waste.” Ilya has pulled himself out of the lake now, as though sensing the heaviness in Shane’s voice even from under the water. He comes over, a boyish grin on his face, and shakes his hair out. My clothes are wet, my sunscreen needs to be re-re-reapplied, but Ilya and Shane are smiling at each other on the dock of their shared ‘cottage’, the sun is shining, and none of it feels wasted.
“Yuna taught me how to make focaccia,” Ilya says as he leads me back into the kitchen. He pulls out a ginger ale from the fridge, which is stocked full of them, and holds it up to Shane. “Imbirnyy el’,” Shane says, which earns him the drink. I am not required to work for mine, thankfully.
Yuna Hollander is Shane’s mother, a quick Google search could tell you that, but she is also the director and treasurer of the Irina Foundation. If you wanted to look, you could find countless images of Shane and Ilya out with the Hollanders, each of them a magnetic display of familial affection. Still, it is nothing compared to the way Ilya beams while explaining her recipe. “Family secret, so don’t print it,” he tells me, and I won’t. It is clear that he adores them. “Yes,” he wants to be clear about it, “I love them very much, and they love me. Maybe more than they love Shane, is yet to be decided.” Shane, however, disagrees, “It was decided a long time ago. There is no question, he is the favourite.”
It must be nice for someone like Ilya, who lost his mother at such a young age, in such tragic circumstances, who did not have a good relationship with his father, who could not even call his birth country his home, to have found such good people. “I am lucky,” he says. “I have everything, all here.” I wonder if his relationship with Shane’s parents was immediately positive, and he snorts. “Pretty much, maybe fifteen minutes before they took me in.” He kneads the bread slower now, and Shane notices before I do, suddenly on high alert. “I got sick once, while Shane was on a long road trip. She took care of me. It was…nice.”
Focaccia is made, olives are dispensed into serving bowls, Anya the dog bumps her head against my leg, and I drop my glass of ginger ale. Shane cleans it up while we apologise profusely over each other, and Ilya rolls his eyes. In the end, dinner is served without further commotion. They ask if I want to eat in the garden or on the sofa, but I have already seen them in the garden; I want to see them in the lounge. I want to know if they have designated spots on the sofa, if they bicker over the TV remote, if they use coasters on their coffee table.
They do.
The focaccia is better than the pancakes, but Shane only eats a few bites before returning to the salad options. It has been a few hours now, they have opened up, he has told me about the greatest fear of his life, so I am not all that surprised when he offers me a shrug and says, “Every day is a step forward.” He leaves it there, and so do I.
It is July, right in the heart of summer, which means they have less than two whole months before the NHL opens their training camps for the upcoming season. How are they feeling about it? “Excited,” Shane says at the same time Ilya says, “Good.” It is impressive, so far into their careers, that they can keep up such a consistent momentum. When will it be enough? “We’ll let you know when we find out,” Ilya tells me.
Surely, the future must play on their minds. After so long, they are finally able to make plans, finally able to pursue them, so what comes next? Have they given any thought to what happens after hockey? “It’s hard not to think about it,” Shane begins, “there’s a whole life waiting for us, when we are ready for it.” And what is that life? Is it here, at the ‘cottage’ in Ottawa, or somewhere else? Does it involve furthering their charitable ventures? Do they tackle the NHL with the likes of Scott Hunter and wrestle it into something a little less— “Painfully homophobic?” Ilya supplies. “Well, that all sounds nice. Maybe. We don’t know yet. Is nice to have options.”
Yes, it must be. I don’t ask them if they want to start a family of their own, but I don’t need to. “Ilya is so good with kids,” Shane can hardly contain his grin as he says it, “and we both want them, after we retire.” One look at Ilya confirms he is very much on the same page, perhaps even more so. I smile into my focaccia.
The day is coming to a close, and there is a sense of peace in the house, like a fresh breeze has brought about a new lightness to the room. Ilya and Shane have shared more today than they have through their entire careers, and to be a custodian of those relinquished secrets is an honour unlike any other. I offer, then demand, to clean the dishes; it will give them time to decide how to end this day, to choose what final slice of their life they wish to serve up. Anya curls up on the sofa between them, and the sink is full of warm water.
It must be odd, after so many years of secrecy, to now share their affections with the world, even if it was something they vied for. After all, secrets are intimate; I cannot help but wonder if somewhere deep down, they ever miss having something that only existed between them. “No,” Ilya tells me when I return to ask, finding them sprawled on the sofa, “we still have it, we always will.”
And isn’t that just the point? They’ve had it this whole time, and they will continue to have it long after this profile is published. The only difference is that they are no longer scared of it. So, in the end, when Anya bumps her nose against the side of my knee, it doesn’t seem so terrifying to bend down and pat the top of her head. In fact, it feels a little bit like victory.
“She helps me,” Ilya says, smiling at the dog in question, “when I have bad days. She is a very good listener.” Shane is already reaching out to wrap his fingers around Ilya’s wrist, but he doesn’t stop Ilya from speaking, and neither do I. “Some days are harder than others, but today was good, and tomorrow might be, too.”
Mental health has been a topic that Ilya has been vocal about for years, from sharing that he was on medication for depression, to encouraging hockey fans and players alike to seek therapy if they experienced destructive thoughts. The details of his own experiences are still his own, much like everything else I had been shown today; the home, the photographs, the trophies, the foundation, the complete and utter adoration between them—it is all theirs, I am only here as a witness.
Ilya and Shane are generous hosts. They do not ask me to leave, despite the emotional exhaustion weighing down both of their bodies. Fortunately, this is not my first rodeo; I know when to call it a day. Yet, when I go to thank them for lending me so much of their time, as any professional should, the words do not feel enough. They had not just offered their time, they had—if you are to believe in the existence of such things—offered a glimpse of their souls. So, all I can do is promise to treat them with care.
“Next time we play New York, I’ll get you tickets,” Shane offers as we walk to the front door. Twenty-four hours ago, the thought of sitting in a cold arena to watch a sport I do not follow would not have thrilled me. Now, it did. I may not understand hockey, but I was beginning to understand them, and that was enough.
On a lakeshore deep in the Canadian capital, I watch two men wave goodbye from the entrance of their home, which cannot be called a cottage, while their dog sits between their legs, staring at them almost as adoringly as they stare at each other. When I arrived, merely hours earlier, I hadn’t known quite what to expect, what they had wanted, or who they would be. As I leave, there is only one conclusion I can draw: they are hockey players, they are competitors, and they are deeply in love. There are multitudes within their history that only they can understand, and only they will ever need to; after all, they have nothing left to prove.
For almost two decades, the world has known Rozanov and Hollander. Their stats, their scores, their career highs and lows. Perhaps, finally, it is time for the world to know Ilya and Shane.
(You can find a link to the Irina Foundation embedded at the bottom of the page. It is with the utmost encouragement that I request you check it out.)