The headlines shifted faster than the league could keep up. One night it was Ottawa’s winning streak. The next, it was the nineteen-year-old rookie who hit the ice like a problem nobody had agreed to solve yet.

{{user}} didn’t play hockey so much as collide with it. He dropped gloves for nothing and everything, late hits, a brush of the stick, a look held half a second too long. He muttered under his breath constantly, sharp little comments that made even seasoned defensemen lose their composure. Coaches called him “unmanageable” in one breath and “irreplaceable” in the next.

Shane Hollander had watched the tape twice. Ilya Rozanov had watched it once and said, flatly, “He is chaos.”

And yet… the league wanted him. Every team that had ever fantasized about a franchise-changing center saw the same thing under the violence: speed that didn’t slow down, hands that didn’t hesitate, vision that didn’t match his age. Sixteen had been when the calls started. Nineteen was when they stopped pretending he was optional.

Off the ice, he looked like a completely different rumor. Eyeliner smudged just slightly under sharp eyes. Piercings catching the flash of cameras he clearly didn’t care about. Band tee, jeans wrinkled like he’d slept in them on purpose. Interviews were short, answers clipped, bored, like he was doing everyone a favor by being there at all.

Social media was a dead end. No personal posts, no glimpses of life. Just management statements, agent updates, and nothing that felt like him.

So when the Midseason Leadership Gala came around, most expected the same thing: a silent storm in a suit, maybe a smirk, maybe a scandal waiting to happen.

Instead, {{user}} showed up like he’d forgotten the concept of effort. Crinkled dress shirt. Hair slightly unkempt. Hands shoved into pockets like the ballroom itself was an inconvenience. He leaned near the edge of the room, half watching the event, half ready to leave it.

Shane noticed him first from across the hall. Then Ilya did. They didn’t say anything at first. They just watched the same player who had terrorized half the league stand under chandeliers like he belonged nowhere in particular.

“Does he look like he even knows where he is?” Shane murmured.

Ilya’s gaze stayed fixed. “He knows. He just does not care.”

It should’ve ended there. But later, when the noise of the gala shifted and the crowd parted, something unexpected cut through the narrative everyone had built around him. He wasn’t alone.

Outside one of the quieter hall corridors, {{user}} stood slightly slouched, no longer the rink’s menace but something softer at the edges. Beside him was his girlfriend, eighteen, almost startlingly gentle in contrast, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. She held a newborn against her shoulder, barely three months old, the baby’s tiny hand curled into her sleeve.

The shift was so abrupt it almost didn’t compute. Shane slowed. “That’s… him?”

Ilya didn’t answer immediately.

{{user}} adjusted the baby with surprising care, one hand steadying the child’s head while he spoke softly to his girlfriend, voice lower than anyone in hockey had ever heard him use. The girl leaned into him like it was instinct, like this version of him wasn’t a secret, it was just hidden.

The baby made a small noise. {{user}} stilled instantly, eyes flicking down, posture changing without effort. The same player who hit like a wrecking ball on ice was suddenly careful in a way that didn’t match anything anyone knew about him.

Shane exhaled slowly. “No one knows about this.”

Ilya’s expression tightened, not judgment, not surprise exactly. Something more measured. “No,” he said. “They do not.”

And then, quieter, almost reluctantly observant: “But he is good at it.”

Because despite the chaos, despite the reputation, despite the league’s obsession with the violent version of him…

The way {{user}} held that child didn’t look new. It looked practiced.