#hockey in russia

[sovietpostcards]

Goalkeeper Vladimir Myshkin at play. Photo by Dmitry Donskoy (Moscow, 1979).

[rimouskis]

"Gold," Mary Soon Lee, Elemental Haiku

"...you can tell how much Team Russia is animated by history. They talk constantly of the 1980 Miracle on Ice upset, when they were beaten by Team USA. And their loss four years ago in Vancouver."

part of the periodic table poetry series

[malk1ns]

1st sentence ask - "It's gameday so you better not knot me"

Zhenya blushes when he says it, but with the way Sid's been following him around all morning, from the weights room to video review and even into the trainer's despite Zhenya's protests, he thinks it needs to be said.

The team is already on tenterhooks, watching them like hawks—with Zhenya's heat approaching like a freight train and the way Sid's been haunting his footsteps, they're ready to pull the plug on the whole experiment if it looks like it's going to negatively impact the on-ice product, and Zhenya thinks both of them missing a game because Sid pinned him down and tied them together would definitely qualify.

"Hmm," Sid says, crowding into Zhenya's space; he's shorter, but the width of his body makes Zhenya feel small, even younger than he is, like he wants to curl up in the protective crush of Sid's arms and let Sid do whatever he wants.

Omega instincts are a real bitch, but Zhenya's made it to the NHL on nothing more than will and grit, and he's determined that he won't be.

Sid's voice is hypnotic when he puts his lips to Zhenya's year and murmurs, "I think you don't mean a word of that," and Zhenya shivers, because it's true.

first line ask game!

[pyotrkochetkov]

i’m reading this book and the author based this mmc on andrei svechnikov i swear

[beggingwolf]

2 - sidgeno

things you said through your teeth

"I can't allow this," said Jameson.

"Yes you can," said Babcock.

"He's one good hit away from heat. I just ran his levels. They're astronomical. It's incredible he's even lucid. He isn't fit to play."

"Yes I am," Sid lied.

He could smell Babcock from where he sat on the medical table. He didn't particularly care for what he wanted to do with an alpha so close. He didn't think Babcock was attractive at all. Yet, he wanted to part his legs and slouch back onto his palms, like Babcock could see the fleshy thickness of his thighs through his warmup sweats.

"You're not," Jameson said.

Sid's eyes flicked to the doorway, where Steve Yzerman had been standing for the last four minutes, summoned into the middle of the debate. He hadn't said a single word yet, and had just listened as Babcock and Team Canada's doctor went at each other.

"Sid wants to play," Steve finally said, "so Sid's playing. That's the end of it, Carl."

Jameson looked like he'd bit his tongue clean off. He stared at Steve, and then at Sid, clearly at a loss.

"If you get claimed out there, there isn't shit I can do," he finally said. "There isn't shit the nation of Canada can do. We're in Russia right now. We're playing by their rules. If a single one of them decides to put you down on the ice and—"

"We get the picture," Steve said dryly.

Jamesone threw up his hands and blew out of the room. Steve didn't move for him, forcing the doctor to shuffle past. He raised his eyebrows at Babcock, who shook his head wryly.

"Always the hero, Stevie," he muttered. He didn't look at Sid again before he left, which Sid knew was good and also felt instinctively displeased by. Sid was, after all, by far the most interesting thing in the room.

When it was just Sid and Steve, the older omega looked over the younger with a brutal, unimpressed scan.

"You said you were good to go."

"I am," Sid said.

"Then prove it. Get back in the locker room. They dosed you up?"

"Scent suppressors. The, ah, suppository one."

"It's not doing much," Steve told him. "You've got to put the scent collar on too. Don't fucking argue, Sidney, you're already pushing it."

Sid shut his mouth, peeved.

"We're winning that fucking medal. But you need to make sure you're a help on the ice, not a hindrance."

"I won't be."

"You need to make sure," Steve insisted, and he pinned Sid with a stare that was heavier than any look Steve had ever given him. Steve was an intense guy, but he was funny. He liked cracking a joke, and he liked being two steps ahead of you in a conversation, and he was very good at making things uncomfortable, fast, when it served his purposes. Sid had never had it directed at him.

Steve had been an omega in the league long before Sid. It had been worse then, even if it wasn't quite good now. The weight of those years was in his gaze now.

"I'll make sure," Sid said. "I'm not going to be a liability."

"Good," Steve said, abruptly breezy. "Because if you become one, I'm letting whichever Russian picks you off the ice take you. Like a can of beans off the shelf at Loblaw's."

Sid frowned at him. Steve looked back with an expression that held no mockery or frustration or anger. This was just the black-and-white of it all: Sid would either play or he wouldn't. That didn't matter as much to Steve as winning for Canada did.

"Harsh," he finally settled on, trying to make it sound like a joke even though it wasn't. Steve saw through him immediately.

"That was much kinder than I got when I was your age," Steve told him, finally moving out of the door in a clear invitation. Sid slid off the medical table and left a wet patch behind. "I don't say that to be an ass. It just was what it was, and is what it is. I want you play if you can play."

"I want that gold," Sid told him as they headed down the hallway.

"Good," Steve said. "Now keep your pants on and get it done."

-

Steve was one of the first omegas to do it. He was, by far, the most successful omega to ever do it. He'd been Sid's blueprint all the way through childhood, juniors, his rookie year: he kept himself in line, he kept it professional, and he focused on hockey. His meds were carefully doled out to him, and he was a functional hockey player. Steve hadn't even gotten married until he'd hung up his skates. He popped out a few kids for his wife and did the coaching thing, the GM thing, and now he was managing Team Canada. Respected, clean-cut, textbook.

Sid had all that going for him until a gangly alpha tripped over the runner in Nathalie Lemieux's foyer and sent it all to hell.

He and Geno had needed to be separated physically. Sid's collarbone and ear were mauled, bloody from Geno's bite attempt. Sid, in turn, had gouged out such a long strip from Geno's forearm that it had almost needed stitches.

They were taken to the hospital separately. They had been dosed, and then dosed again. Sid was fairly certain they'd given him a horse tranquilizer to stop the heat he'd been triggered into. The next time they'd met, it had been through a glass door at the arena. It had taken the team the better part of a year to be convinced that their new suppressant routines were trustworthy.

The problem, as it turned out, was that Sid wanted to fuck Geno very, very badly even when he wasn't being puppeted by his hormones.

The suppressants had been bad enough. With the language barrier, and the cloying, careful watch the team kept over Sid regarding alphas, it had been death by a thousand cuts. He got to see Malkin, and smell his sweaty, earthy scent, and he needed to pretend like his reaction was normal. He'd been unwilling to compromise his image and his standing with the team.

Then they'd won a Cup, and Geno had slowly come out of his shell, and his English improved by miles, and—most important of all—he kept inching closer to Sid, kept meeting his gaze across the locker room.

They'd finally fucked about it last season. It had been incredible, even outside of heat. It was real, though they hadn't had the discussion about bond marks or mates or what kind of future they envisioned. For now, Sid was still Sid: hockey player and Geno was his teammate. That Sid had a leaky cunt around Geno was incidental unless they were in bed. Or a couch. Or, memorably, the kitchen island at Sid's apartment.

The problem with it wasn't that they didn't talk about it. The problem was that the effectiveness of Sid's suppressants had slowly been changing, and it had been manageable with Geno around to tug him into a hotel room and fuck it away before it became heat. Sid didn't want more of a dose; he liked smelling what little of Geno he could. They could take care of it anyways, and self-sufficiency was always the route Sid chose to take. Their little tryst was theirs, and secret, and well-kept.

His house of cards had begun to crumble when Geno had been sent to Team Russia and Sid to Team Canada, and fraternizing wasn't punished but it wasn't encouraged. For this brief moment, they were rivals. Geno had the weight of his homeland on him, and he took it seriously. Sid, in turn, gave him the space to make his commitment easier and more obvious.

It had all been going swimmingly until he'd begun waking up sweating in his shitty dorm bed. And then his teammates had started sniffing at him.

The solution was simple in theory: Sid had to keep his pants on, his head down, and douse himself with as many scent blockers as the team had. It felt much more difficult when Sid tugged the thick fabric of the scent collar over his head and onto his neck before the final game of the Olympics. It felt like it was strangling him. The emanating odor of nothingness from it was eerie and deeply wrong.

"You stink," Kuni told him summarily in the locker room.

"Croz always stinks," Getzy said as he passed by. "This does help with the scent of, what, desperation?"

"Stuff it," Sid said. He fussed with the stitched edge of the collar; the fabric was thick, like a knee brace. It was going to restrict movement. He hated it.

But when Benn walked by and the corner of Sid's mouth grew wet with saliva, he accepted he had no other choice.

Geno spotted the protective collar the moment Sid stepped onto the ice. His gaze burned into Sid's helmet, and then his back, and then into the side of his head for the anthems and Sid's standard loop around their side of the ice.

Omitting facts to Geno hadn't been lying, Sid reasoned. It had just been a quick-developing situation. He'd handled weird heat stuff before Geno came into his life. He'd deal with it after.

"Why the fuck you playing?" Ovechkin asked him between whistles. "You smell."

Sid and Geno were rarely on the ice against one another, until the second period began and the Russians grew desperate as the ice tipped in Canada's favor.

Sid refused to bend down over the faceoff dot first. He knew what it looked like on a good day. With the way Geno was looking at him now, he very nearly didn't trust him.

Geno stiffly bent over first. Sid followed.

"Sid," Geno whispered, and it distracted Sid enough that the puck as dropped and gone before he could realize it.

Later, along the boards, Geno's stick pressed into Sid's lower back. It was strange, purposeful, instead of Geno's hips.

"The fuck you doing, Sid?"

"I didn't do anything, eh? Don't worry about it. We'll think about it after the tournament."

"Sid, it's like, different here."

"I know, okay? No one's going to try anything," Sid told him. He felt confident in it, too.

That also hadn't technically been a lie, because Sid had believed it in the moment. He'd been wrong to believe it, and that also technically hadn't been his fault. Heat did fucked-up things to a brain, and while SId had been victim to that a few times in his life, he'd been shielded by military-grade suppressants nine-and-a-half times out of ten. He had, by all accounts, done his best.

It just so happened that his best finally wasn't good enough on the ice in Sochi, where a Russian defenseman lost an edge, took him out on his way down, and landed atop him.

It happened very fast, on a level that was more physical than mental. Sid was upright, then he was down, then he was covered by another body, then there was damp heat on his face. He knew what was happening, but not in a way that meant he could resist it. It was all distant and removed. His limbs were heavy. He slowly realized he'd been leaking into his leggings for the entire game.

He knew when Geno ripped the alpha off of him, though, becuase that familiar scent engulfed him fully.

"G," Sid gasped. The world was very small, narrowed down to Geno's huge, scared eyes as he leaned over Sid's body, his hair wild from where his helmet had been torn off.

Geno disappeared from sight then, tucked away against Sid's protected neck. The fabric got tighter as it was tugged up, pressing hard on his Adam's apple as inch by precious inch of Sid's neck was exposed. He was being strangled. He was getting hard from it. Maybe he'd already been hard. Geno's big hand was on his jaw. His mouth was pressed against Sid's cheek, so close to where Sid wanted it. Geno's words hissed out through his teeth, clenched tight like if he opened his jaw, he'd have it around Sid's neck in a second flat.

"Sid, I have to. It's me or it's someone else. Pick."

"Fuck, yeah," Sid wheezed out, and he turned his neck into those clenched teeth, asking for it, just like the first time they'd met.

[dingsthing]

THE PENALTY OF ROUGHING

I NEED everyone to read this fic - I literally pulled an all nighter binging it it’s so good. Usually I don’t even like Ruscan but the characters are so well written!

[romanov-family-photos]

otma playing tennis in Livadia, 1912

[hab-a-nice-day]

—Ivan Demidov, future Montreal Canadiens 5th Overall pick, explains in his draft interview that he already knows who Slaf is because they played against each other in the Hlinka Gretzky Cup Final, Slovakia vs. Russia, August 7, 2021, when Slaf was 17 and Demidov was 15 (and the youngest on his team).

Slaf wore #8 for Team Slovakia and obtained 9 points (3G, 6A) in 5 games. Demidov wore #18 for Team Russia and ended the tournament with 5 points (2G, 3A). Slaf's childhood friend and current Montreal prospect Filip Mešár also played for Team Slovakia (#10).

Bonus: Here are a few moments of the future Habs teammates' face-off.

Juraj Slafkovský + Ivan Demidov 😛 during the anthems:

Slaf (with his classic minimalist tape job) + Demi on the bench:

Slafkovský + Демидов + Mešar waiting for face-offs:

Slafko struggling a little after a BIG hit (also feat. Meško skating by):

Spoiler Alert! Slaf was okay:

Juraj + Ivan in toddler timeout early in the game for not following the rules:

Demidov + Mešar battle for the puck in the corner before Slafkovský swipes it (and gets a shot on goal off the same play):

Demigod sets up a teammate + Batman + Robin team up to score a filthy goal (after Batman went coast-to-coast):

Classic Slaf dismayed reaction to an end-of-game puck-over-glass penalty. The kid has no poker face:

And while, as Ivan said, "He lose" (7-2, yikes!) thanks in large part to Russia's solid goaltending, Juraj and Filip made some great plays and Slovakia made it to the podium for the first time since their bronze medal victory in 1998, walking away with their first silver medal in this tournament. Slaf's buddy, captain Šimon Nemec (#7 in this tournament + future NJD), brings the team their trophy:

—Future Montreal Canadiens players/prospects Juraj Slafkovský, Ivan Demidov and Filip Mešár in the Hlinka Gretzky Cup Final, Slovakia vs. Russia, August 7, 2021

[chunkletskhl]

One of my favourite things about the 2012-13 NHL lockout -- yes, I have more than one favourite thing about the 2012-13 NHL lockout, what of it? -- anyway, one of my favourite things about the 2012-13 NHL lockout was that Nicklas Bäckström and Alexander Ovechkin still played together during it, for Ovi's boyhood team Dynamo Moscow. It had a "yeah, Nick, why don't you come over to my house and we'll play some hockey until all the unpleasantness gets sorted out" kind of vibe, and it was nice! (Image Source)

[offsidenewsco]

"It has never been more apparent that what the Flyers need is a saviour, and it is equally apparent that they hope that Michkov can be exactly that."

Read more here.

[sovietpostcards]

Goalkeeper. Photo by Vladimir Bogdanov (Leningrad, 1962).

[pensfan4lfe2]

RUSSIAN PANTHERS CUP WINNING GOALIE:

Sergei Bobrovsky

[eriecanal]

Pavel Bure, Sergei Fedorov, and Alexander Mogilny Павел Буре, Сергей Фёдоров и Александр Могильный x

[pikilos]

Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby face off at the World Cup

[x]

[alexaimsworld]

Хоккейное искусство

Omsk, Russia

[freebooter4ever]

ngl i have so many questions