Montrealers

The Montreal Voyageurs are the storied NHL franchise that drafts Shane Hollander and becomes the home stage for his rise and his rivalry with Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Bears. The team is presented through the pressures of its games, the intensity of its supporters, and the way a single draft decision ties its young star to a rival across a near century-old team feud. Its importance in the story is both institutional and personal: Montreal gives Shane a fitting professional home, while its competition with Boston turns his private connection to Ilya into a public spectacle.

Identity and Setting

The Voyageurs are described as one of the league’s most legendary franchises. For Shane, the club is also a practical fit: it is only a two-hour drive from his hometown of Ottawa, and he speaks both French and English. Although he grew up supporting Ottawa, he has long respected the Voyageurs. The combination makes his selection feel like a strong match even as coming second in the draft stings after a lifetime of finishing first in hockey.

The team’s home is a demanding place for opponents to play. Montreal’s supporters are exceptionally devoted, and the arena is difficult not only because the Voyageurs are among the league’s best teams but because their fans are among its loudest. That devotion does not mean unconditional encouragement: supporters let their own players know when they are disappointed. The crowd’s response can change with the game. After a particularly devastating loss, the fans fall almost silent, and that silence is worse for Shane than their vocal criticism.

Draft and Rivalry with Boston

Shane’s arrival in Montreal immediately connects the Voyageurs to the Boston Bears through the draft. Ilya is selected by Boston, the Voyageurs’ archrivals. Shane recognizes that their careers will now be inescapably linked: had one of them joined a Western Conference team, the rivalry might never have taken hold in the same way. Their team assignments make the contrast unavoidable, turning two young players into the faces of a much older contest.

Over the following six seasons, the longstanding rivalry between Montreal and Boston becomes personified by Shane and Ilya. Their animosity is legible to fans throughout the arena, even those in its cheapest and most distant seats. The teams’ opposition supplies a ready-made public frame for their confrontations: whenever the Voyageurs meet Boston, the game is also another installment in the contest attached to their two stars. That public hostility is real as a sporting spectacle, even while it conceals the private relationship Shane and Ilya are trying to keep from view.

Games and Supporters

A Montreal home game against Boston shows how the team’s setting magnifies both defeat and rivalry. In October 2016, the Voyageurs trail 4–1 with less than eight minutes remaining after two periods and twelve minutes of play. Shane has had at least five clear scoring chances and missed them; Boston has taken advantage of Montreal’s mistakes. Ilya has capitalized most conspicuously, scoring twice. As the referee prepares to drop the puck at a face-off, Shane is bent toward him in the circle, the personal antagonism concentrated in the familiar scene of the two rivals facing one another across the game.

The result matters beyond the scoreboard because the loss comes at home, where the crowd’s loyalty makes its disappointment especially palpable. When the fans are devastated, their near-silence replaces the noise that usually makes the arena so difficult for visitors. Shane experiences that response as its own kind of pressure. The Voyageurs’ home atmosphere is therefore not simply a backdrop to his performance: it makes the team’s fortunes publicly audible, and even a quiet crowd tells him how much the night has gone wrong.

Shane’s Professional Home

The Voyageurs offer Shane a base for the career that began under intense attention. Before he has played an NHL game, he signs a lucrative endorsement deal with CCM, a major hockey-equipment company; the company also signs Ilya and plans an advertising campaign featuring both players. Their commercial pairing extends the public association between the Montreal star and his Boston rival beyond the rink, showing how quickly their professional identities become linked.

The club’s schedule and competitive demands also shape the circumstances around the relationship. Shane lives alone in an apartment near the Voyageurs’ practice rink in Brossard, preferring private space after years of intense scrutiny and wary of the tension that might come from sharing a home with teammates. On a Boston road trip, Montreal has a short practice after arriving in the morning, with the game set for the following afternoon. The free evening permits Shane to visit Ilya, but the next day’s game remains close at hand. His private choices unfold inside the team’s working calendar, not outside it.

Narrative Significance

The Voyageurs embody a double bind for Shane: they are a respected franchise near home, where his language skills and hockey history make him a natural fit, yet their rivalry with Boston binds his career to the person he cannot openly acknowledge as a partner. The draft creates that public pairing; the games sustain it; the supporters give it an audience. Montreal’s identity in the story is thus inseparable from the contrast between what the crowd can see—two fierce opponents—and what the rivalry helps keep concealed.