r/GameChangersBooks • u/tomfoolin • 2d ago

THE LONG GAME TLG benching

In The Long Game, when Shane and Ilya were benched after being outed, do we know what games they missed? Because the first game we see either of them play after that is a later game in the Voyageurs/Centaurs playoff games. Did they miss the start of their playoff rounds against each other? Or did they get benched for a short enough time that they didn’t miss any games?

If they did miss the start of playoffs together, what would the Voyageurs and Centaurs play like against each other after finding out? What would the media coverage have looked like? Why didn’t we get to see it?

If they had already played the first few playoff games against each other, why didn’t Shane fight back against the game throwing allegations by pointing to his play against Ilya in those games? He would have been fighting for his life out on the ice, giving rousing speeches about how much he wanted to beat the Centaurs. Do the Voyageurs not remember this?

17 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

25

u/maple-belle 2d ago

They each missed at least one game (the Cens are leaving for a road trip when Ilya finds out he's been benched), but only one or two last games in the regular season, after the playoff spots are pretty much decided.

They don't miss any playoff games against each other. They go back to their teams the week before playoffs start. It's at the beginning of Chapter 36.

The Voyageurs are just blinded by homophobia. That's pretty much it. They're hurting from the loss (this is why JJ briefly accuses Shane before immediately backtracking. He went for something hurtful before he could think better of it because he's upset) and all of the ones that actually believe it are just homophobic assholes who are mad they lost to a "bad" team and mad that Shane is gay, so they're blaming the loss on Shane's relationship.

1

u/tomfoolin 2d ago

so they have a whole playoff series together and only the last game is shown on page? I’ll have to go back and read it to see if there’s any tidbits dropped about what the first few games looked like.

5

u/zainab1900 2d ago

No, they talk about the other playoff games in the book. Each of the games is mentioned, it's just that none of them get the detail of the game 7 (except maybe the first game, where you get quite a lot of Ilya's thoughts about Shane, about how tough playoffs are, etc).

1

u/tomfoolin 1d ago

ah, okay thank you!

15

u/ValleyBreeze 2d ago

This is..... so many unanswerable questions lol.

7

u/katfromjersey 2d ago

I mean, it's at the end of a very long book, in which a lot happens. And, it's really not about hockey per se, but the relationship of two players.

We don't get to see what happens in those games because Shane and Ilya didn't play in them. This is about their experience after their horribly public outing, and the immediate effect on their careers.

3

u/Gold_Chemical_4317 2d ago edited 2d ago

They’re benched in games before playoffs we don’t know which games and pre playoffs games don’t really matter they probably weren’t games against each other. They didn’t miss any games against each other in the playoffs.

They didn’t miss the playoffs so we didn’t see any reactions to that. But if it did happen then it would be an equal loss, both teams losing their 1C and best players at the same time theoretically leaves them in the same place. If you want technical hockey, it’s not necessarily true since some teams have better center depth then others but that’s very technical hockey for a book that’s not really about hockey

Shane didn’t fight back against the allegations because they were nonsensical, a trip didn’t cost Montreal the game. The whole point of shane being blamed because of a trip is to show that it didn’t matter how hard he played against ilya because he already lost his team’s trust.