The first girl Sid ever falls in love with is named Rachel Forbes. When he first meets her, she’s four weeks old, pink, and squishy-looking. Objectively, she’s kind of ugly, but she’s so tiny when he sees her in the incubator at NICU, and he’s never seen a baby that small.

Sidney Crosby has known a few things for most of his life: he knows that he loves hockey more than anything, he knows that 87 is his lucky number, and he knows that he’s gay.

The first time Sid meets Geno, he isn’t Geno, he’s Evgeni Malkin, and he’s the enemy. Sid is so pumped up for the game he barely notices him. He doesn’t notice anything except hockey, and Malkin’s good, but that’s all he is. He feels a tinge of sadness when Canada wins, but he guesses he just feels bad. Ovechkin’s not the only one crying, and Sid isn’t so unfeeling he doesn’t have some sympathy for how it must suck to lose. He also gets a headache when he flies back home, but he’s just really overtired is all. He doesn’t think anything of it.