Chapter Seventeen
Cole Williams [off-screen]: Has it changed the Sea Lions’ locker room dynamic to have team leaders not only come out as gay but as being together?
Breezy: Nah. I mean, they were gay and dating before they came out, so.
Cole Williams: There have been some takes circling that with the two of them, and Kilian Howard before his trade, the Sea Lions boasted the most LGBTQIA-plus locker room in any professional sport. Would you agree?
Breezy: [laughs] I mean, I guess if you care about counting it out, sure.
There’s this statistic I read about in a pamphlet.
It said one-tenth of the population is gay.
Or some version of not straight, I guess.
So, on a hockey team, one-tenth would be two—two and a half—guys. More if you count coaches.
Cole Williams: Are you saying there are two gay men on every NHL team?
Breezy: No, no, probably not. See, the pamphlet also said there are probably a lot more people out there who are LGBTQIA-plus but never get the chance to learn about the whole community and find the place where they fit, and I think that’s us.
When you grow up in men’s hockey, you don’t have a ton of access to this stuff.
But when we started working with Pot of Gold, we got access to all this new information.
Cole Williams: Meaning what, exactly, for the team?
Breezy: I think it opened new doors for us.
When you’re in an environment where you can talk about this stuff, it changes the way you think.
Before, I thought, “Oh, we’re hockey players, and hockey players have to be this one way.
” And now, I know there’s so many ways to be, and it’s all a spectrum.
So, guys who assumed they’d have to be closeted their whole careers, like Tom and Jax, found ways to be more open.
And guys like Howie or me, who had never really thought about it, learned more about themselves.
Cole Williams: I’m sorry. Are you saying you’re also gay?
Breezy: [smiling broadly] I have no idea actually! I’m on the asexual spectrum, so it’s rare for me to experience attraction to anyone. It’s only happened once, and that was with a guy, so who knows?
Cole Williams: Wow, um, thank you for telling me.
Breezy: You’re welcome! And honestly, being able to talk about it now is all thanks to the work we’ve done with the shelter and having team members who are so open about this stuff.
Before, I always thought I was doing it wrong, you know?
Love, sex, dating, all that. That’s an isolating experience.
Like, as far as I knew, I was a straight guy who was really bad at it.
Now I know it’s not my fault. I’m part of this whole different community I never knew existed.
Top comments:
CLions2010: well now they’re just making shit up
calabreezy: this makes me feel bad for all the times I called Breezy dumb BC I have no idea wtf he’s talking about
the_ace_collective: Thank you so much for giving this interview, Chris! Having acespec representation means so much, and hopefully, it can save the next generation of aces from feeling the way you did!
(From “The New Normal: Chris Calabrese on the Recent Revelations from the Sea Lions Locker Room” interview by Cole Williams, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on 12/28/2026)
Damir was going to drive Kilian insane.
Not in the fun way either. Kilian would love for it to be in the fun way, regardless of the fact that they were staying in the same hotel and on the same floor as the remaining team members, and they’d agreed to stop fucking around now the break was over.
They both knew Kilian was gagging for whatever Damir would give him.
What Kilian hadn’t asked for was a massive, hulking bodyguard.
Unfortunately, Damir had decided to be one anyway.
He kept trying to protect Kilian: from standing between Kilian and the rest of the locker room, eyeing their teammates for potential conflict, to participating in a team-wide game of truth or dare—something he very obviously hated every minute of.
It was annoying.
It was also humiliating to have the guy he was in love with act as though Kilian couldn’t take care of himself.
But Kilian tried to keep a positive attitude about the whole thing. The team had been awesome about his sexuality. Crude and clueless, yes, but not bigoted. His family had been amazing. So what if Damir wasn’t into Kilian as more than a project? Kilian would get over it.
Someday.
Not today. As they headed into the LA Monarchs’ arena for their game, Damir glowered at the team photographer as if she were public enemy number one. Kilian found his obvious urge to intervene and protect both charming and infuriating.
“Chill, dude,” Kilian whispered.
Beside him, Damir tensed.
“That is the opposite of chilling.”
“People are going to talk to you about…this, you know.” Damir gestured to Kilian’s outfit.
Kilian shrugged. He’d been aware when he chose the shirt that he would get some comments.
It was far from the neutral, boring menswear he usually favored.
After his impromptu shopping trip with Mom for more expressive game-day outfits, the thought of again wearing the same ill-fitting, off-the-rack blazer and button-up combo repulsed him.
“I thought you liked the lace,” he needled, flattening a nonexistent crease in his blue jacket.
It wasn’t as douchey as straight-up not wearing a shirt under the jacket, which he’d absolutely seen Mike Vanderbilt doing in Jimmy Hayes’s wedding photos last summer.
But Kilian’s clingy black lace shirt with his blue suit definitely flirted with acceptability.
The lace stretched tight across his chest, not transparent but not fully opaque either.
He’d seen some variants with sequins or rhinestones embedded in the pattern, but Kilian thought the dark, delicate flowers were classiest without the added glitter.
Damir rubbed at the back of his neck. “I do like the lace.”
Then act like it, Kilian thought. “Let me handle the dumb questions,” he said.
There weren’t many, all told. He got a weird look from Rocky, but Kilian had expected nothing less from a man who thought wearing a toque he never washed solved his greasy hair problem.
Kilian had tossed him the hat from his locker room stall once and had to wash his hands three times afterward. Wool should not feel so oily.
He also got a heavy-handed tip from Ketchup to be nice to Damir because, apparently, Damir was stressed. What a shocker. Damir being stressed was stressing Kilian out.
Brianna didn’t pull him for pregame media or for an intermission interview, allowing him to focus on the game.
The Monarchs were always a contender, though they never seemed to make it past round one or two of the playoffs.
Having a chill, Californian fanbase and a Cup win in the last decade took out some of the sting.
They were also a clean team, with no notable instigators on the ice.
Except Kilian.
Midway through the second, with the Firecrackers up by two and everyone on the Monarchs insisting on being nice to Kilian, he lost it.
“C’mon, guys,” he called as he skated past the Monarchs’ bench. “We get you’re not homophobes, but you don’t have to make it easy for us.”
On his next shift, the star center of the Monarchs, Kyle Schultz, elbowed him hard in the ribs to strip the puck off him.
“Nice,” Kilian crowed, giving chase.
They won by a goal, not having been in serious danger until the last two minutes or so when the Monarchs pulled their goalie, but it was good to be taken seriously.
Before Kilian could skate off the ice for the locker room, Schultz pulled him into a rough hug and called him a “crazy kid,” but Kilian would take it.
“What did he say to you?” Damir asked as soon as they were in the safety of the visitor’s locker room.
Ugh.
“Nothing important,” Kilian told him and began shrugging out of his gear to avoid Damir’s concerned hovering.
“Kilian…”
“Damir,” Kilian aped.
“Oooh,” Lissy crowed. “Poking the big, Russian bear. Dangerous.”
Kilian promptly choked on air.
“What? What did I say?”
“Howie, media!” Brianna called. Kilian got to his feet, still clad in his compression shirt and leggings.
“What did I say?” Lissy pressed.
“Please enter those words in that order to your porn site of choosing,” Kilian said, then escaped to the much safer grilling by a room full of journalists.
Yesterday, the Chicago beat reporters had already given him a variety of softball questions on how it felt to be out (weird), whether anyone unexpected had reached out to him (probably, but Kilian hadn’t finished sorting through all the messages so he didn’t know), whether he wanted anyone in particular to reach out to him (Chappell Roan, although the guy from Wicked would be pretty cool too).
Brianna said he shouldn’t worry too much about his responses.
He’d be fine as long as he didn’t say something negative about another player in the league or about the team itself.
She hadn’t given him any notes on his media sessions, so he figured he was doing okay.
“Howie, how’s it feel to extend your winning streak?”
“I mean, awesome.”
“What did you shout at the Monarchs’ bench in the second?”
“Oh, um, I think I’d better keep chirps on the ice.”
An LA beat reporter, easily recognizable by her thousand-dollar outfit and beach-blonde wavy hair, raised her hand, and he pointed to her. “What inspired today’s walk-in look?”
Kilian smiled at her. “I think I’ve said this, but a lot of classic menswear isn’t for me. I’ve had the shirt for ages. I just never wanted to wear it in case it looked too…well, gay. So why not?”
“Any reason why tonight?”
“The Monarchs are always best-dressed on the ice. I thought I’d give them some competition off it.”
“Hey!” Petterson called from the locker room. “You do not like our jersey?”