Pucking Around

“Americans always do that—smile when they don’t mean it. I suppose it’s meant to put people at ease, and it works on most other Americans. To me, it always comes off as disingenuous.”

Ilmari notes a cultural difference between Americans and Finns that highlights one of the forms of disorientation that an immigrant may face when dealing with an unfamiliar cultural norm. Even as he recognizes what the smile is supposed to mean, Ilmari’s first reaction to the faked smile is that of his home culture, which is discomfort.

“She’s got a hot goth girl vibe going, so at odds with the preppy, All-American look of an NHL team.”

The description of an NHL team as “All-American” underscores one of the criticisms of the hockey romance genre, which is its lack of diversity. While Rath’s pairing of “All-American” with “preppy” suggests that the term is used to describe a certain kind of style, the phrase “All-American” has historically connoted whiteness as well as a conservative appeal. This in turn bears connections to racist ideologies of what constitutes “inoffensive” styles. This potential euphemism suggests a possible discomfort on the part of Rath, a white author, when discussing the inequal representation of race that permeates both the sport of hockey and the hockey romance genre.

“I learned quick that most of the guys play endless games of Mario Kart on every flight. It’s adorable, really. You can tell when things are getting heated because they all curse and groan up and down the plane.”

Rachel’s observation illustrates the camaraderie between the Rays players, for the fact that they spend time together outside of the professional setting implies that they are friends as well as coworkers. This friendly dynamic foreshadows the acceptance that the team shows after Jake comes out at the end of the novel, while also adhering to a primary convention of the hockey romance genre: male friendships.

“Peace. The word comes to my mind unbidden. That’s what Ilmari smells like; the peace and quiet of Montana nights, the quiet cool of autumn.”

Rath uses contrasting sensory details to create a sense of atmosphere as she uses Rachel’s perspective to describe Ilmari’s scent in evocative metaphorical terms. The feeling of peace is an emotion, quiet is a quality of volume, Montana is a geographic orientation, cool related to temperature, and autumn a temporal orientation. By comparing the man himself to serene landscapes and seasons, the author creates much more vivid pictures of his temperament.

“It’s not the first time someone has accused me of being too focused on my game. But you don’t get to my level by being complacent. Obsession is a necessity. Drive. Tenacity. They’re almost more important than natural skill on the ice.”

Ilmari’s discussion of what it takes to be a goalie uses several terms to describe the intense focus required for professional athletic play and employs a deliberate shift from negative descriptions to positive ones; thus, phrases such as “too focused,” “complacent,” and “obsession” give way to the positive connotations of “drive” and “tenacity.” This shift in wording suggests that even as Ilmari thinks these words, he is rationalizing and dismissing the criticism leveled against him.

“‘It’s just a game—’

‘You don’t understand.’ I turn away from her.”

Ilmari’s insistence that Rachel “[doesn’t] understand” why he can’t think of hockey as “just a game” emphasizes the symbolic role of sports within the sports romance. The novel suggests that both characters in this exchange are correct; Rachel is right that Ilmari’s life is worth more than his value as a hockey player, while Ilmari correctly asserts that hockey is more than a game to him. The contrast between the emotional investment that each character puts in the sport is a common point of tension between protagonists in the sports romance.

“I mean to say that I uphold an industry that thrives on the decimation of the environment. I spend a third of my life traveling and living as unsustainably as possible. I play in arenas that create mountains of waste. Every day. Every game. For the whole of my life, this has been my life. I do harm, Rachel. Active harm.”

In this quote, Rath uses the character of Ilmari to highlight the problematic elements of the hockey world in which her novel takes place. Specifically, Ilmari’s eco-consciousness highlights the “active harm” of professional sports, which value spectacle and splendor over sustainability. The novel’s proposed balm for this injury is conservation efforts; Ilmari donates vast sums of money to a sea turtle conservation charity.

“The sounds of the arena echo behind us, but we’re alone in this narrow hallway, suspended in the dark between the rink and the locker room.”

This use of juxtaposition between the loud arena and the private hallway emphasizes how the emotional response to sports can serve both public and intimate functions within a sports romance. Rath also explores the hallway as an interstitial space between destinations, paralleling Rachel and Ilmari’s shift from strangers to intimates at this point in the text.

“All my senses are firing. She makes me feel alive. Fuck, she makes me feel loved.”

Caleb’s observation during a group sexual encounter with Rachel and Jake demonstrates how romance novels tie in the experience of physical sensation with that of emotional sensation. Caleb’s feelings are brought about by the physical intensities of sex, which get his “sense [firing.]” This leads him to “feel alive,” which is at once an embodied feeling and an emotional one. The final transition to “[feeling] loved,” completes the shift from wholly physical to wholly emotional.

“What is this perfume she wears? The scent is soft and warm. It makes me think of lichen on rocks warming in the sun on a summer’s day. You put your hand on it and feel a heat that doesn’t burn. But it seeps through your skin, warming you all the same.”

Like Rachel’s description of his scent, Ilmari’s description of her scent depends on senses beyond smell, primarily touch, though his invocation of summer, and the experience of lichen on rocks suggests memory, as well. This amalgamation of sensory details not only reemphasizes that smell, in romance novels, is symbolic rather than literal, but it also reinforces the parallel between the two characters’ modes of describing smell. This understated commonality foreshadows the fact that the two characters are well-suited for one another.

“She’s offering me a taste and nothing more. But what mortal could ever stop at just a mere sip of ambrosia? If I can’t have all of her, I will have none.”

Ilmari here uses the metaphor of ambrosia, the mythic food of the gods, to contextualize how he feels about having a relationship with Rachel while she continues to be in a relationship with Caleb and Jake. This metaphor paradoxically elevates her to a divine status while simultaneously denigrating her by comparing her to something consumable, like a drink.

“‘There are so many facets of Rachel Price,’ I go on. ‘The idea that one person could satisfy them all and be my perfect match…I just don’t think that’s possible. You make me happy, Mars. Caleb makes a different part of me happy. It’s not more or less happiness; it’s just different. By feeling such happiness with all three of you, I get to be the fullest, best version of myself.’”

Rachel here offers a defense for polyamory that is at once based in logic and sentiment. Her logical assessment is that one person could not possibly perfectly match another person because of the multi-faceted complexity of individual personality. Even so, her observation, although sensible, is nevertheless based on an illogical assumption, for it implies that regardless of whether a relationship is monogamous or polyamorous, a romantic partner should be able to “satisfy” the entirety of another person. Her subsequent claim that each partner offers her a different version of being happy presents a much more straightforward argument.

“DLP is a label that used to haunt me. When my last team first teased me with it, I wanted to prove now not gay I was. I screwed bunnies left and right. I made some stupid choices in the name of my bullshit no-homo agenda. I know I hurt some girls. And now the truth is clear to me: I hurt Cay too.”

Even as Jake recognizes the anti-queer implications of having sex with multiple women to resist the “domestic life partner” label that the team jokingly assigns to him and Caleb, he fails to recognize the sexist implications in the term “bunnies” to refer to his past sexual partners. The word is short for the label “puck bunnies,” which refers to women who pursue romantic or sexual relationships with hockey players, often to obtain influence or money. While the term is common in hockey romances, the inherent sexism in such phrases is rarely examined or critiqued, and the same holds true of his particular example. Thus, although Rath’s novel is quite progressive in its determination to challenge and critique the limiting and often denigrating stereotypes that dominate the romance genre, it does fall short of the mark in this example.

“I shrug, unable to come up with the right words to describe what we are. Perfect seems trite, even though it fits. We’re a perfect mess of messy perfection.”

Rachel here uses the contradiction between “perfection” and “mess” to characterize her relationship. By framing her experiences with polyamory in this way, Rachel suggests that “perfection” is an unreasonable standard and that messiness (even if it is technically imperfect) may be preferable.

“If the gossip gets bad enough, the FIHA will pass on you, Mars. They’ll pick a safer option, someone not tied to an unstoppable human storm of bad press.”

In this quote, Rachel confesses her concerns that the potential negative press over the group’s relationship will jeopardize Ilmari’s chances to play for the Finnish Olympic team. While her worry is partially based on fear—her self-description of “an unstoppable human storm of bad press” is based more on trauma than reality—her overall concern is supported by other characters in the novel. The worry about how press will negatively affect a player’s hockey career rejects the notion that the world of professional sports is a strict meritocracy.

“I’ve let my fears become a cage. Fear of failure. Fear of losing control—of myself, of the narrative around me, of my success. Fear of the unknown. Fear of disappointing my family. Fear of always being known as the worthless, talentless Price.”

Rachel’s ability to articulate her fears stands as a turning point for her in the novel. Though she does not instantly overcome her fears merely by being able to state them, her realization of what holds her back allows her to begin to move past these fears and develop the family she longs for with her partners.

“I like to watch horror movies. This is the moment in the film where the audience gets the inkling that the hero may has been possessed by some dark force.”

Through Ilmari’s observation, Rath here evokes a genre-based contrast to build new expectations for what might happen next in the story. By using the unspoken conventions of the horror genre to recontextualize the violence of Jake’s behavior on the ice when the team faces the opponent who injured Caleb, Rath emphasizes that in this moment, Jake behaves less like a hero of a romance novel and more like the antagonist in a horror movie.

“[Avery] told me I needed a better stretching routine. And then he said I was too old. His official recommendation was that I retire.”

Ilmari’s criticism of Avery’s subpar medical care offers a view of the callous, profit-centered care that Rachel’s patient-centered approach challenges throughout the novel. From this quote, it is clear that Ilmari has grown accustomed to such indifferent treatment in his career as a hockey player; thus, he is surprised when Rachel takes a more compassionate approach. Although this excerpt comes when Ilmari is defending Rachel’s decision to continue to care for him after their romantic relationship began, the novel illustrates why the characters may consider their own ethical lapse to be reasonable under the circumstances.

“Luckily, Finns are more amenable to the idea that people can dare to have personal lives. And it is no scandal to be a man in love with a smart, talented woman. It is no scandal for that man to cohabitate with two men he sees as closer than friends. They are family to me. Finns who know my history will be happy that I have a family to call my own.”

Ilmari’s account of how the FIHA scouts’ lack of concern about his relationship evokes a sense of deus ex machina, which is Latin for “god from the machine,” a literary device in which a central conflict is miraculously resolved by an unlikely outside source. Ilmari then describes his relationship as “no scandal,” though he emphasizes the terms of the relationship that are less commonly considered scandalous, including his relationship with a woman and the absence of his sexual relationship with the other men. While this accounting deemphasizes the threat of anti-queer bias against a polyamorous relationship that contains bisexual and queer members, it does represent the LGTBQ+ rights of Finnish people, who are considered among the most progressive in the world.

“‘I know your family carries a lot of weight for you,’ he goes on. ‘Price Family against the world and all that. But this will only work if you make this your family. The Price-Compton-Sanford-Kinnunen Family.’”

Caleb’s act of naming their family as a family reinforces the theme of kinship-building in the novel. Although the four do not opt to use the unwieldy hyphenation, instead choosing to adopt the surname Price, the linguistic joining of their names mimics the format of a marriage and its family-building capacity, prefacing the unofficial vows that the others make soon after.

“Humans are complicated. We’re emotional. Our stories are so rarely linear, our health journeys dynamic.”

Rachel here advocates for the inclusion of sentiment in medical care by returning to the novel’s conceit of making meaning through storytelling. The novel does not make entirely clear which “story” she refers to at this point, whether that of her relationship, that of her career as a doctor, of that of the lives of her patients.

“I’m a firm believer of second chances when they’re earned.”

Here, the General Manager of the Rays, Mark Talbot, offers a somewhat mixed message regarding his perspective on mistakes. While his offering of “second chances” connotes forgiveness, the caveat “when they’re earned” suggests that some fall into a category of “worthiness,” in his opinion, while others do not. The implication that Rachel has earned her chance persuades Talbot to adopt the stance that Rachel’s ethical lapse is permissible.

“On one [poster], PRICE=LOVE is written in all the colors of the rainbow. Another sign covered in glitter reads LOVE AT ANY PRICE.”

The posters of support that fans bring to support the newly public Price family both use puns and invoke symbols of the LGTBQ+ rights movement. The rainbow is a common symbol of the LGTBQ+ community, while glitter invokes the push to frame traditionally feminized imagery as gender-neutral. Additionally, “PRICE=LOVE” bears familiarity to the slogan “love is love,” which asserts that LGTBQ+ relationships have the same validity as straight ones.