Everybody loves Heated Rivalry — and I mean everybody. When the season one finale came out at Christmas time, the show amassed viewership of 324 million, according to The New York Times. For a show with a budget as low as 600k per episode (most television programs cost a million, or millions, per episode), this was an absurd feat.
Since then, it’s felt like that’s all anybody’s talking about. I could be biased here, but I swear every time I open my social media, all I see are edits of Shane and Ilya, the show’s protagonists, and pictures of Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, their actors. It’s like they’re haunting me, and I can’t even really complain about it because I love seeing all this content.
It’s honestly kind of wild how obsessed with Heated Rivalry I’ve gotten in such a short amount of time. Before the show’s premiere on Nov. 28th, I had been hearing about the so-called “hockey gays” for a while on my Twitter feed, mostly from accounts I followed from the All For The Game fandom (which is Heated Rivalry but crazier, if you’re currently having withdrawals and need a reading recommendation!).
I didn’t think too much of what I was seeing at the time because, quite simply, I am not very interested in sports. I did my fair share of sports rotations when I was younger, but after 9 years of volleyball, I quit all of them. Until Heated Rivalry aired, the only sports game I’d watched was the Olympics, and all I’d tuned in to was the beach volleyball sections. So why on Earth would a show about sports pique my interest?
Some of my friends were watching, and I remember being told to watch it so many times that I started tuning the name Heated Rivalry out. Eventually though, the show started showing up on my TikTok For You Page, and I saw an edit of Shane and Ilya to “Ma Meilleure Ennemie,” a song famous for its appearance in my favorite Netflix series Arcane, and I quickly became entranced by these characters who I did not know.
Unfortunately, this revelation happened the week before I left school for winter break, so I was much too deep in the thick of final assignments to even think about watching it. I remember suggesting to my girlfriend that we should binge it together, and her immediate response was no.
When I got home for break, however, I kept seeing it, and eventually my girlfriend’s sister wanted to watch the show as well. Finally, weeks later than everyone else (I think we started watching around the time episode five came out), I was seeing what all the hype was about. I was so excited when we pressed play, but quickly that excitement turned into confusion, and then ultimately discomfort. The scene where Shane and Ilya sit on the gym floor together, breathing and looking at each other, was genuinely so jarring on that first watch.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me describe what, exactly, Heated Rivalry is about.
Originally a novel published in 2019 by the author Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry follows the hockey players Shane Hollander of the Montreal Metros and Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Raiders. The book spans a timeline of about nine years, starting in 2008 when they met each other at the World Junior Hockey Championships, and ending in 2017 when they are both captains of their respective NHL teams.
The time skips were a bit disconcerting at first since their relationship exists around when and where their hockey matches occur, but those jumps slow down around episodes 4 and 5, and episode 6 follows a singular weekend. It makes sense in theory, and while reading the book (which, yes, I did do—more on that later), it didn’t feel so intense as it did on screen. My point in saying this, though, is that we see Shane and Ilya’s relationship grow rapidly in a time that wasn’t too friendly about queer people, let alone queer people in sports. As much as I joked, “Do they know it’s legal now?”, once the years passed 2015, watching such an intimate relationship have to be confined to hotel room meet-ups once a year sucked.
I want to say I hate the sad gay people trope, but as a writer who writes about sad gay people, I don’t think I can say that authentically. As a sad queer person, I can appreciate the angst of a story for a while as long as the characters I’m rooting for get a happy ending. Obviously, it sucks that there is so much oppression and violence pushed towards the queer community, but it really is something binding. While watching Shane struggle with his sexuality, I was able to think about the time when I, too, was struggling to allow myself to be happy with someone I loved. I understood him, and for that reason I wanted him to end up comfortable with himself and happy with Ilya.
To get one thing straight(ish): this show is not just about sex. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that this intimate queer relationship is being showcased to all extents and I love that it’s not something to shy away from. However, there is a depth to Shane and Ilya’s relationship. There is a depth to their sexualities. Their story is not just an inconsequential friends-with-benefits situation; rather, they are put into this situation because it’s not approved of or well-received for them to be together publicly. So, yeah, their sex life is great, and it’s really amazing that Hudson and Connor don’t shy away from talking about it in interviews. That intimacy is just a part of the larger bond connecting Shane and Ilya.
While I enjoyed episodes 1-3, episode 4 was what really got me hook, line, and sinker. There’s a scene where Shane runs away after realizing his feelings for Ilya are deeper than a hookup that was done so well, and at the end of the episode, there is an iconic scene of the two of them looking at each other across a club while shots cut to them getting with other people. This is the kind of scene that makes you have to stand up and pace the room after watching; I could not stop thinking about it afterward.
Eventually, we finished episodes 5 and 6, which sealed the deal on my obsession.
Episode 5 is so good that it has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 9.9/10 on IMDB. It’s in this episode, titled “I’ll Believe In Anything,” where another NHL player, Scott Hunter, kisses his boyfriend, Kip Grady, live on television after winning the Stanley Cup. Scott and Kip are actually the first couple in Reid’s Gamechangers series, but because Shane and Ilya’s story takes place over so many years, and Scott and Kip’s in a couple of months, the adaptation primarily follows Shane and Ilya. However, Scott and Kip still get their time to shine with instances like their revolutionary kiss as well as episode 3 of the show, titled “Hunter.”
This kiss is so profound that Ilya agrees to come to Shane’s cottage during the upcoming summer, which is something he had been intending to say no to. I can definitely see why this episode is so highly rated because, woah. The joy of Scott and Kip being the catalyst to Shane and Ilya finally committing 100% to this thing that’s been going on between them for nine years was something I don’t have any other words for besides beautiful.
Episode 6 follows the two of them at Shane’s cottage, as well as coming clean to Shane’s parents about their long history as “lovers.” The show ends with them driving back to the cottage, sunlight encasing them with smiles on their faces.
I was left wanting more, so I ended up starting the book the very next day and finished it another day later. It’s safe to say I was a goner for Heated Rivalry. I felt giddy at every edit I saw of them, and then I watched every interview of Hudson and Connor that was out. When I craved more, I rewatched the show again, and then again (in my defense, I was crafting while I watched!), and then I started The Long Game, which is the sixth book of Reid’s Gamechangers, but the second book following Shane and Ilya’s relationship.
I won’t say much about this book, but just know season two is going to be a hard watch! At the end of Heated Rivalry (book), Shane and Ilya open a mental health charity in the name of Ilya’s mother, Irina, as the start of their plan to soft-launch a relationship to the public. I assume the show didn’t put this in because it will be the catalyst for the next season. This establishment of a mental health charity, however, is a bit of subtle foreshadowing of the internal struggles Ilya faces in the next book.
(Warning: the next two paragraphs have minor spoilers!)
In the show, it’s mentioned briefly that Ilya may transfer to the Ottawa Centaurs to be closer to Shane, start their charity, etc., and transfer he does. However, this new place and new team (who are, to put it simply, not as good as his past Boston team) are frustrating for him. He ends up attending therapy sessions for his depression about the move, unresolved grief for his mom, and the resentment he has for having to keep his and Shane’s relationship a secret.
As a fan of Shane Hollander, I am absolutely terrified for season two of the show. It can definitely be easy to paint him as a “villain” for wanting to keep their relationship secret, but there’s so much complexity to both of them. Honestly, the “villain” of The Long Game is the NHL, which I won’t get into, but just know it’s not all lollipops and rainbows for Shane either.
I read the majority of The Long Game on my flight back to school, and it got so bad that I had to stop reading in order to not start crying in public. Though, of course, in the end, Shane and Ilya get their happy ending — at least, for now.
About a week ago, Reid announced another Gamechangers novel titled Unrivaled, where Shane and Ilya will “face their biggest challenge yet” in the hockey world. We know from The Long Game and Unrivaled’s cover that Shane and Ilya are now playing on the same team: the Ottawa Centaurs. I am simultaneously overjoyed and shaking in fear for the novel’s release in September.
With the additional announcement of season two, it’s safe to say fans of Heated Rivalry (myself included) have a lot of Shane and Ilya content coming their way. In my impatience, I’ve started watching actual hockey games and have even asked my friends to go to a Boston Bruins game with me. I don’t know what has overtaken me with this show, but I think I’d be content to never let it stop.