Maya’s classmates react with cruelty, showing how the town’s extreme emphasis on loyalty makes people turn on each other instead of offering compassion. Leo explains his actions by saying that they don’t fit in here, anyway, so they don’t have anything to lose—a telling remark from the son of Peter, who’s been enmeshed in Beartown hockey for more or less his whole life. Hockey culture, it seems, makes everyone an outsider sooner or later.