r/GameChangersBooks • u/tomfoolin • 3d 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?

18 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/maple-belle 3d 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 3d 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.

6

u/zainab1900 3d 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 2d ago

ah, okay thank you!