The Heated Craze of Hockey Rivalry

After a Christmas break that felt like a collective fugue state (or rather an incredible case of mass psychosis), the internet had a newfound obsession. Somewhere between the Stranger Things “Conformity Gate” fan theories and doomscrolling, the Heated Rivalry craze became a full-on cultural moment. It was everywhere: fan edits, commentaries, analyses of a decade-long situationship of two hockey players.

For those who are unfamiliar, Heated Rivalry is a sports romance adapted from Rachel Reid’s novel of the same name. It follows Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), closeted NHL players whose names are tangled in the notion of archrivalry. So, you know, the kind of story that comfortably stays within a small fandom. And yet, here we are, with this random Canadian show resonating with women especially: “On Dec. 22, four days before the finale streamed, 53 percent of the show’s viewers were female, an HBO spokesman said. By the [first week of January], roughly two-thirds of the viewers were women.”

At first glance, it may seem like another fandom spiral over a compelling enemies-to-lovers romance arc. Yet this low-budget show was never expected to become the hottest topic on social media, especially since it didn’t feature well-known actors. It does more than offer queer representation. What made it popular beyond its own niche is its depiction of intimacy, which leaves out the overused intermediary of women as emotional infrastructure.

Heated Rivalry creates a space where men connect, communicate, and care for each other without relying on a woman’s “emotional labor.” In her book The Managed Heart (1983), Arlie Hochschild defines emotional labor as the management of bodily and emotional expressions to meet social expectations. This is often disproportionately required of women, both in paid work and unpaid domestic life, thus reinforcing cultural expectations that women are naturally caring, patient, and emotionally attentive.

In the show, there is no female love interest to absorb rage, soften trauma, or provide justification for a man’s growth. Even though women (Elena, Rose, and Svetlana) play a crucial role in driving the story forward through their support as friends, they don’t provide the men with emotional labor, and instead encourage them to do the work themselves. Men, who have the social positioning to acknowledge each other as equals, fall in love without outsourcing the vulnerability of intimacy to a female character.

This matters because women’s mainstream cinematic experience has long consisted of representations of desire that are, more often than not, filtered through the male gaze. Women’s bodies adhere to the heterosexual male fantasy while characters are flattened into narrative utility. Perhaps the best example is Megan Fox’s character in Transformers (2007), whose hypersexualised presence in the film is an aesthetic spectacle for both the men in the story and the audience.

In such cases, desire happens to women or through women, rarely something that unfolds without negative consequence. So when Heated Rivalry disrupts this transactional economy, women can observe vulnerability without defaulting to dominance, misogyny, or romantic detachment. It is almost proof that sexuality and love can exist without the perpetual need to demean women.

Of course, there have been other successful attempts at portraying gay romance with Heartstopper (2022), Red, White & Royal Blue (2023), and more, but they haven’t really had the same impact. Heated Rivalry isn’t afraid to use sex as one of its many appeals. When public image, family, queerness, and everything else are complicated, sex becomes a modern language to communicate through. The characters’ private, and deeply isolating, dynamic is addictive precisely because sex enables the audience to track power shifts.

Disciplined and masculine athletes being so impulsive and needy in private is essentially a female fantasy. For women, the show offers an outlet for yearning, especially for masculinity. The audience can engage with masculinity through the male love interests who are both comfortably masculine in their bodies and personalities, without feeling threatened by it. Crucially, masculinity depicted in this show is not dominating, but relational and dependent. That’s why the tension feels safer, and to some extent, more intense.

This displaced appreciation for non-toxic masculinity is a key part of the show’s appeal, especially for its largely queer and female audience. Instead of creating a hierarchy, masculinity is expressed and received on even ground. And the work of building a connection has to be done by two men who are stuck in the queer-phobic sphere of professional male sports.

The story is transgressive because it rejects the premise that emotional growth and caring must be achieved through a woman’s patience and sacrifice. Instead, men become both the subjects and objects of desire, responsible for their own connection.

What emerges is a mutual, consent-based relationship that is notably free of misogyny. In a media landscape saturated by gender wars, the show presents connection as a process rather than conquest.

When traditional romance continues to recycle asymmetry between love interests, Heated Rivalry reads as a corrective fantasy. It lets women reclaim spectatorship and enjoy intimacy without being implicated in it as a symbol of sex.

It’s obvious that there is a hunger for such depictions of intimacy, even though it’s by no means perfect. This is a cultural moment doing what cultural moments always do: exposing what’s been missing, then watching people rush to fill it. Don’t miss out.

Cover Image: Heated Rivalry (2025), Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie). Now TV.