Boston Red Sox

The Boston Bears are the Montreal Voyageurs’ archrivals and the team that drafts Ilya Rozanov, binding the clubs’ longstanding competition to the public careers of Ilya and Shane Hollander. In the novel, the Bears are seen chiefly through this rivalry: their wins and matchups sharpen the antagonism between the teams, while the players’ conspicuous opposition gives cover to a private relationship that neither can safely acknowledge.

Identity and Rivalry

The Bears are an NHL team whose rivalry with the Montreal Voyageurs is described as nearly a century old. By the time Shane and Ilya enter the league, the long-running contest has taken on two recognizable faces: over six seasons, the teams’ animosity has become personified by the players. Their hostility is so legible that even fans in the cheapest, farthest seats can see it. The rivalry therefore functions both as a sporting history and as a public story organized around two individuals.

That antagonism has immediate consequences for Shane’s career. He is selected by Montreal, while Ilya is drafted by the Bears. Because the clubs are already archrivals, Shane understands that their professional lives will be closely linked; he imagines that a different team placement, with one of them in the Western Conference, might have prevented the rivalry from taking shape in the same way. Instead, the draft makes their competition a durable part of their public identities.

Games and Competitive Standing

The Bears’ place in the rivalry is established through specific results. In one early Montreal home game, Boston leads 4–1 with fewer than eight minutes remaining. Shane has missed five scoring chances, while the Bears have capitalized on Montreal’s mistakes. Ilya has been especially effective, scoring twice; his success intensifies the humiliation of a defeat that Montreal had expected to win at home. The scene makes the Bears’ advantage tangible through the scoreboard and through the frustration it produces in their chief rival.

A later season brings another measure of Boston’s competitive edge. Montreal travels to Boston for its season opener, and the Bears win in overtime. The result follows Ilya into a subsequent private meeting with Shane: Shane arrives angry after the loss, and Ilya anticipates that anger as part of their charged encounters. The game’s outcome thus carries beyond the rink, joining the Bears’ on-ice success to the private dynamic between the opposing players.

The rivalry also appears in the staging of a face-off. A coach sends Ilya onto the ice to take the draw against Shane, making it the first time they meet on the ice in an NHL game. What might otherwise be a routine matchup is framed as an opportunity to give spectators the contest they expect. The Bears’ opposition to Montreal is consequently not just a background fact; it shapes how the players’ encounters are presented and watched.

Players, Publicity, and Secrecy

The Bears’ significance extends beyond game results into the commercial visibility of their star. In Toronto in July 2010, before either player has played an NHL game, Shane signs a lucrative endorsement deal with CCM. He then learns that Ilya has also signed with the equipment company and that CCM intends to launch a campaign featuring both players together. Their rivalry is already valuable as a public pairing, even outside the league schedule: the same opposition that makes them competitors can be used to market them side by side.

Their public antagonism also sits within a league culture that Shane considers dangerous for a queer player. He believes the NHL’s claims of inclusiveness do not match what he has encountered on the ice and in the dressing room, where homophobic slurs are common and coming out would require exceptional courage. He is certain that Ilya will keep their encounters private because Ilya has as much to lose. The Bears are not identified as the cause of this league-wide pressure, but Ilya’s place on Boston’s roster makes him one half of a relationship formed inside it.

Shane later describes being attracted to his archrival at eighteen as frightening, and says that he and Ilya have kept their relationship secret for almost ten years. Their public status as opponents helps explain the particular force of that concealment: to others, the rivalry is a sporting conflict; privately, it coexists with a lasting bond. The Bears’ narrative importance rests in that contrast. They are a competitor to Montreal, a source of meaningful victories and defeats, and the institutional setting of Ilya’s career, while the rivalry they share with Montreal supplies the public frame through which Shane and Ilya’s hidden relationship can remain unseen.