If you’re a fan of hockey, really good TV, or both, I assure you Heated Rivalry is worth the watch. It’s complex, beautiful, heart-wrenching, and oh so Canadian.
The series’ meteoric rise is a testament to how vital representation is in storytelling. The Crave original has become a worldwide phenomenon. It has already earned critical acclaim, with episode five, “I’ll Believe in Anything,” now considered one of the best episodes in TV history.
Heated Rivalry began humbly, adapted from the second book in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers (2018-) series — a story shaped by Reid’s awareness of hockey culture’s exclusionary roots and its history of misogyny, racism, and homophobia.
The series follows Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) just before they are drafted into Major League Hockey. They start as rookie rivals but quickly become much more. Across six episodes, the show spans over a decade of their relationship, tracing how they grow together and navigate their respective identities as gay and bisexual men.
What Heated Rivalry does so well is celebrate authenticity and queer identity, without erasing the reality that homophobia still exists — and that there are moments where it rears its ugly head. The show highlights how each character deals with it, inside and out, in their own unique ways. Heated Rivalry isn’t changing the culture of sport overnight, but it is creating conversation.
Series’ creator Jacob Tierney doesn’t limit the plot to competition; instead, he explores the rawness of human intimacy and sense of self. Heated Rivalry strikes the perfect balance of hockey, homoeroticism, and a whole lot of heart.
Heated Rivalry isn’t a simple unfolding of rivals to lovers. The show doesn’t shy away from how exhausting it can be for queer people to be in spaces that weren’t built with them in mind. Each episode offers thoughtful character exploration and conflicts that meaningfully shape the resolutions still to come.
It’s a story entrenched in harsh truths about the world and the sport, yet it also encompasses love in many forms. Romantic relationships, family dynamics, and the navigation of friendship all give the series a rich sense of nuance as it continually ties back to hockey.
We get glimpses of many characters throughout the series, but Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) and Christopher “Kip” Grady (Robbie G.K.) stand out, with their own relationship explored alongside Shane and Ilya’s.
A quick note: Heated Rivalry does get sexually explicit, but the intimacy is handled with respect and intention. For years, Shane and Ilya’s relationship is primarily physical, and that’s where their closeness first takes shape — through sex we see them learn each other’s vulnerabilities and build the foundations for something deeper.
Although some viewers complained there wasn’t enough hockey, it’s worth remembering how rare it still is for a queer couple to take a much-deserved centre stage in a series like this. Heated Rivalry gives us just enough on-ice action to leave us wanting more — almost as much as its delicious slow burn does. Without which, of course, we wouldn’t have the now-iconic club scene featuring the 2000s banger “All The Things She Said” by t.A.T.u. (thank you, Scotty Taylor).
As a hockey fan, I’m thankful for how the series is genuinely growing the game. Heated Rivalry is slowly, but steadily making impactful changes to the world of hockey — so much so that players from different leagues, including the NHL and PWHL, have emphasized the story’s importance.
Season two is expected sometime in 2027, but in the meantime Reid is working on Unrivaled, the seventh installment of the Game Changers series set for Sept. 29 of this year. I guess we’ll just have to keep rewatching the first season until then.
