‘Heated Rivalry’ challenges hockey culture

The reason people are so captivated by Heated Rivalry, the new Crave romance adapted from Rachel Reid’s popular novel, isn’t just because the storyline is unprecedented, but because the two main characters find queer joy in impossible circumstances. In doing so, the series creates new possibilities for imagining relationships, masculinity and society.

The show centres on a romance between two professional hockey players, Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), who are rivals in a fictitious professional hockey league.

Queer joy in Heated Rivalry unsettles hockey’s hypermasculine order and makes new ways of relating seem possible. As my research on queer joy articulates, this form of joy holds transformative, collective power for reimagining the world beyond oppressive norms.

It’s no wonder that, far from being limited to the show’s large queer fan base, straight women are also hooked. Men who are emotionally attuned, show vulnerability and express care are rare in a world increasingly dominated by the manosphere and its violent misogyny.

HOCKEY CULTURE AND MASCULINITY

In the fantasy world of Heated Rivalry, Ilya and Shane are constantly confronted with the harsh realities of hockey culture and its expectations for men. Those expectations are not exaggerated, and closely mirror real-life professional hockey.

As veteran player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) says to the media after publicly coming out as gay: “I didn’t want to be that thing that hockey players throw around as an insult.” His statement captures how masculinity in hockey is built around proving that you’re not weak, not soft, not gay.

Within this culture, emotional stoicism, physical dominance and the routine objectification and dehumanization of women function as ways of asserting power over others.

This context helps explain why there’s currently no out gay player in the entire National Hockey League (NHL).

EMOTIONAL REPRESSION

Anger is the only emotion that is permissible for men to express in hockey. Rage-fuelled fights and punishing physical play are rewarded with cheers and highlight reels. That emotional narrowing produces consequences beyond the rink.

It helps normalize a culture where misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism are routinely dismissed as “locker-room talk.”

A 2022 report by Hockey Canada found that of the 512 penalties called for on-ice harassment, 61 per cent involved sexual orientation or gender identity, followed by race (18 per cent) and disability (11 per cent).

This isn’t an environment where gay players, especially racialized or disabled ones, can feel safe, let alone joyful, in their queerness.

Yet Heated Rivalry insists on joy, and that is precisely what makes the series electric. It’s exhilarating to watch Ilya and Shane find deep, passionate connection in a sport designed to keep men emotionally severed. Queer joy emerges despite hockey culture’s cruelty, forging itself inside conditions that were never meant to hold it.

VISIBILITY AND RESISTANCE

Heated Rivalry has sparked an “online frenzy,” leading to public watch parties, group chats and conversations online about what kinds of men — and sex — we’re allowed to imagine. This shared excitement is a reflection of the pleasure of watching something long considered forbidden become visible and celebrated.

Much queer representation remains dominated by pain and suffering, but Heated Rivalry refuses a tragic queer script and centres joy, unsettling the social order that has historically sought to deny queer people access to pleasure and fulfillment.

That disruption is especially powerful when set against the realities of contemporary hockey. In 2024, the NHL briefly banned Pride Tape, seemingly confirming that hockey is not “for everyone.”

Around the same time, some players refused to wear Pride jerseys during themed games, largely citing Christian Biblical commitments or anti-gay Kremlin laws, and the NHL responded by banning these jerseys altogether.

The Pride Tape ban was reversed after public outcry, yet the ban on specialty jerseys remains. These realities help explain why gay players continue to hide, and why the storyline of a Russian player forced into secrecy resonates so deeply. So, too, does the casting of Hudson Williams, who is half-Korean, as Shane Hollander in a sport still dominated by whiteness.

CONSENT AND INTIMACY

Hockey’s hypermasculinity has real consequences. In 2022, it came to light that Hockey Canada had paid $8.9 million since 1989 in sexual abuse settlements, exposing a culture of entitlement, silence and impunity.

Queer joy in Heated Rivalry is transformative because of its ethical eroticism. In my research, I’ve argued that queer sexual joy has the capacity to shift sexual cultures away from rape culture, opening space for reciprocity, greater authenticity and embodied pleasure.

That’s why moments where Ilya pauses to ask for consent while having sex with Shane are so important. They dismantle the idea that men are entitled to other people’s bodies and that consent processes ruin the moment.

What makes Heated Rivalry’s sex scenes feel different is that they don’t rely on the familiar trope of gay men roughhousing during sex as they work through internalized homophobia. What we see instead is tenderness, erotic curiosity and emotional commitment.

Even popular “hockey bros” podcasts Empty Netters and What Chaos have discussed the show seriously, commenting openly on both its emotional impact and eroticism. Such conversations begin to loosen rigid norms around masculinity, desire and permissible pleasure.

Once queer joy is made visible, it becomes harder to accept a sporting culture — and a society — that insists it remain impossible.

» JJ Wright is an assistant professor in Sociology and Gender Studies at MacEwan University. This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.