The Long Game
56 pages • 1-hour read
Rachel ReidThe Long Game
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental health, death by suicide, and antigay bias.
The Cottage
The cottage symbolizes the private, domestic life that Shane and Ilya crave so that their relationship can exist freely. It is the antithesis to the public hockey arenas and anonymous hotel rooms that define their professional lives and secret affair. This secluded haven embodies their shared dream of a peaceful, authentic future. The cottage is the only place where their love is not a liability or a secret, connecting directly to the themes of The Corrosive Burden of a Secret Queer Relationship and Professional Success at the Cost of Emotional Authenticity. It is the physical manifestation of the emotional freedom they crave, a space where their identities as rivals are shed, allowing their partnership to flourish.
The cottage’s symbolic weight is articulated through Ilya’s yearning for the simple, safe intimacy it provides. He reflects that their time could have been spent “at the cottage, laughing together in the kitchen, dunking each other underwater in the lake, and enjoying unhurried, indulgent sex in a place where they were safe and alone” (17). This description contrasts the cottage’s relaxed authenticity with the high-stress performance required during their professional lives. It represents a world built on their own terms, free from the NHL’s scrutiny and the demands of their public personas. The cottage is the destination of their emotional journey, a promise that their love, currently forced into hiding, will one day have a permanent, peaceful home where it is the central, celebrated truth of their lives.
Dreams and Nightmares
The recurring motif of Ilya’s dreams about his mother serves as a crucial window into his psychological state, charting his unprocessed grief and depression. These dreams are the primary narrative tool for exploring the theme of Depression as an Isolating Force. In his dreams, Ilya is often trying to connect his idealized, living mother with Shane, an act that represents his deep desire to integrate his past trauma with his present love. However, Shane’s failure to appear in time or the dream’s inevitable collapse into reality reflects Ilya’s deep-seated fears of abandonment and his struggle to trust in the stability of his own happiness. The motif externalizes an internal battle that Ilya otherwise keeps hidden from everyone, including Shane.
The emotional residue of these dreams demonstrates how depression can distort perception and foster isolation. After one dream, Ilya must actively fight the vortex of feelings it produces, including “the frustration of Shane not moving fast enough. Of not caring enough. It was this last emotion that Ilya needed to shake off most of all, because it was ridiculous” (15). This internal conflict reveals how his mental illness manufactures reasons to feel alone and doubt Shane’s love, convincing him that his depression and grief are somehow signs of personal failure. The dream motif thus illustrates of how depression can create a private reality of fear that pushes away the very love needed to overcome it, making Ilya’s eventual decision to seek help an act of profound courage.
Hockey Arenas
Hockey arenas symbolize the public stage where Shane and Ilya’s professional rivalry is performed, forcing the suppression of their private love. These spaces represent the institutional pressure of the NHL and the central conflict between their carefully managed public identities and their authentic private selves. In the arena, they are not partners but adversaries, their on-ice battles fueling a narrative that benefits the league while rendering their real relationship invisible. This constant performance illuminates the theme of achieving Professional Success at the Cost of Emotional Authenticity, as the arena is the primary domain where they must sacrifice their truth for their careers. It is a space of conflict not just between teams, but between the manufactured personas they inhabit and the men they are only allowed to be in secret.
The league’s investment in this public fiction is made clear by Commissioner Crowell, who praises them because they have “always kept your rivalry on the ice. None of this petty social media bullshit” (302). Crowell’s statement reveals that their on-ice rivalry is a valuable, marketable product for the NHL, one that he is determined to protect from the “distraction” of their personal lives. The arena thus represents a system that commodifies their conflict while demanding the erasure of their love. When their relationship is finally outed, the arena becomes the ultimate crucible during their playoff series, a space where their private and public narratives collide, forcing them to confront the consequences of a life lived in two separate, conflicting worlds.
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