CCM

CCM is one of the biggest hockey equipment companies in the story and a sponsor whose commercial work puts Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov before the same cameras. Its role is concrete rather than managerial: it signs both players, commissions a shared campaign, and makes its logo visible on the equipment and clothing used for publicity. That sponsorship becomes an early public setting for a rivalry already taking shape on the ice.

Identity and Endorsement Work

By July 2010, before playing an NHL game, Shane has signed a lucrative endorsement deal with CCM. He is excited by the opportunity, but the arrangement changes when he learns that CCM has also signed Ilya. The company then wants to launch an advertising campaign featuring the two players together. The sequence matters: an individual sponsorship becomes a joint appearance, placing Shane and Ilya in a professional relationship organized around shared promotion even as their developing reputations are defined by competition.

The book identifies CCM as a hockey equipment company, but does not detail its internal structure, product range, or decision-making. Its activity is shown through the work it arranges and the branding it puts in front of audiences. That limited, practical presence links the company to the players’ working lives without making it a principal actor in their private relationship.

The Toronto Campaign

The campaign is filmed in July in a mostly empty rink in Toronto’s suburbs, a little over a month before Shane is due to report to training camp. He has not seen Ilya since the World Juniors at the beginning of January. The rink has been prepared with spotlights, and the day is divided into a still-photo shoot, with the players photographed separately and together, followed by skating and stickhandling for television advertisements. The setup turns an ordinary sports venue into a staged work environment: the players are there not for a game, but to make images and footage for a sponsor.

Shane arrives in head-to-toe CCM gear, including a custom black jersey with a large CCM logo where a team crest would normally appear. His name and number, 24, are printed on the back. The substitute logo makes the commercial purpose legible on the jersey itself: for this shoot, the clothing identifies the sponsor rather than a club. Shane takes a few laps while the crew finishes setting up, then stops and sits on the bench because he is wearing makeup and is not supposed to sweat before the photographs. Cameras, lighting, clothing, and the players’ bodies are all part of the production’s requirements.

Shane experiences the shoot as a bigger production than the photo sessions he has grown accustomed to; its dramatic lighting makes it feel like starring in a movie, with Ilya as his costar. The campaign therefore has a double character. It is paid promotional work under their endorsement arrangements, but it also assembles two players who have largely encountered one another through competition. Their joint presence is not private intimacy: it is a sponsor-organized performance, made for photographs and television.

Branding Beyond the Shoot

CCM’s visibility also appears in the aftermath of a Montreal game against Boston. After the loss, Shane removes his sweat-soaked jersey before facing reporters, revealing a CCM-branded athletic undershirt for the cameras. The book explicitly connects this choice to his endorsement contract. Even in a moment shaped by defeat and frustration, the sponsor remains visible in the press setting; Shane’s postgame appearance is not wholly separate from the commercial obligations attached to his career.

This appearance differs from the Toronto campaign. The July production is planned around CCM, with custom gear, lighting, photography, and television footage. The postgame undershirt enters a press conference focused on hockey, where reporters ask about the game and Ilya’s remarks. In both settings, however, the branded clothing places CCM within the public image-making around Shane: one carefully staged, the other folded into the routine of answering questions after a loss.

Relationship to the Rivalry

CCM’s joint campaign takes place against a rivalry that has become a public story. Montreal and Boston have a long-standing team rivalry, and over the preceding six seasons Shane and Ilya have come to embody it for fans. Reporters repeatedly direct attention to their encounters, while hockey analysts cast them as opposites destined to clash. CCM’s decision to put both players in one campaign brings that already recognizable contrast into advertising, though the evidence does not establish the company’s motives or describe a broader strategy.

The sponsorship thus connects commercial exposure to the rivalry without resolving the difference between the public image and the private relationship. The players can be presented together because their competitive identities are marketable and familiar, while Shane’s later reflection on the climate around professional hockey makes clear that public exposure of sexuality carries a separate risk. The novel gives CCM no role in that private secrecy; its significance lies in the visible, contractual work of producing a shared image. The company’s logo replaces a team crest, and the rivals become costars for a campaign: a brief, carefully arranged collaboration inside a story otherwise organized around their opposition.