Fancast for Mati Jalo? I feel like it would be impossible to match how he's described in the book. But yes, let's give Maria her background HFN.

I support token straight representation.

But yeah I think Eric and Kyle aren’t really in Long Game, Ryan is mostly in it as seeing them at camp, which could be someone else? So might make sense to have Season 2 be Troy’s story mixed with Long Game? But if there’s the possibility of a season 3, then you’d have to reassess.

I think Ryan's story is important for getting Ilya to the place where he is in The Long Game, where he can see the issues with hockey and the league a lot more clearly than Shane can. Plus, Ryan's conflict isn't about coming out or anything really related to that -- Ryan, plus Troy's part in the Dallas Kent story, are all connected through showing the darker side of the league and of hockey culture.

We got a little Ryan Price easter egg in this season, so I'm hopeful.

Watching the internet discover in real time what "cottage" means in Canadian has been a delight these past two days.

Yeah, from the previous episode I was thinking rustic lodge/bungalow, not Ozymandias' lake palace.

lol it’s toned down from the books, there he has his own ice rink at the cottage!

I kind of wish they could make a Scott/Kip spinoff series -- fill in the stuff we didn't see, continue to Kyle/Eric, have Ilya and other characters sometimes stop in at the bar, and the bar setting leaves a lot of room for new stories and new characters. Then that would leave the original series more focused on the Canadian teams and the storylines more centered on Ilya and Shane. Lots of potential for crossover episodes.

This would require a lot more money than they seem to have, though, and more time than Jacob Tierney probably has available.

I binge listened to the Empty Netters podcast reviews of the episodes on my long drive today and man, that kind of renewed my faith in straight men, hearing them love on it?? Amazing.

The algorithm has been serving me Empty Netters clips, and I am completely charmed by them. (Of course, the algorithm is now also serving me clips from their regular episodes where they talk about real hockey, and while I'm sure those are also very charming, that's not what I logged in here to see.)

They were talking about the show in their regular episodes but then just put out only the show parts, if you search their podcast. I wasn’t willing to dig through two hours of hockey talk for the show recaps but with them pulled out, I listened to like six hours of review on my roadtrip yesterday. It was great.