The Heated Rivalry craze is probably the closest I’ve felt to world peace in my entire 20 years of life. Not only did it shine a spotlight on one of BookTok’s favorite niche romance genres, it also portrayed a beautiful, relatable, and sexy LGBTQ+ relationship on a mainstream platform. Now, with the release of Off Campus, another page-to-screen hockey romance, ice hockey romance shows have officially become a massive pop culture phenomenon. But as a queer fan of these shows, I have to ask: Where are the lesbian hockey romance stories?
Heated Rivalry was an undeniably huge milestone for the queer community. It brought the beauty of queerness to the forefront with grace, passion, care — and a lot of spiciness. The show swept the Canadian Screen Awards, coming home with 16 wins, as well as the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New TV Series. It even inspired hockey player Jesse Kortuem to come out after having walked away from the sport entirely out of fear of retaliation.
It feels like Heated Rivalry was the perfect gateway or even more queer sports shows — and women’s hockey is a perfect fit. There are tons of openly queer PWHL players with stories to tell, and I can’t imagine a better backdrop for a rivalrous and raunchy, yet intimate and beautiful lesbian love story than women’s hockey. Lest we not forget the incredible story of 2026 Olympians Anna Kjellbin and Ronja Savolainen, who were literally a living, breathing example of what Heated Rivalry is all about — rivals on the ice, fiancées as soon as their skates come off. The shows basically write themselves.
However, I’m not counting on Off Campus to be the series that will bring a WLW hockey show to life. The book universe that the show is based on does feature women’s hockey players, and Season 1 did a great job of portraying women’s desires and sexuality in a positive, empowering way — but the book universe it’s based on doesn’t prominently feature lesbian hockey players, and it doesn’t seem like it will anytime soon. Elle Kennedy, author of the book series, has explicitly said she has no interest in writing women loving women (WLW) relationships. In 2019, a fan mentioned her on Twitter asking, “so when can we expect an f/f college romance book? With WOC as love interests as well.” Kennedy replied, “Unfortunately F/F really isn’t something I’m interested in writing, sorry!”
But there are plenty of other books that do feature WLW hockey romances, and could be considered for future series adaptations just like Heated Rivalry and Off Campus. Eliza Lentzski’s novel, Stick Around, has perfect potential to complete the hockey romance show trifecta: A steamy, second-chance romance between a sports journalist and a hockey team’s golden girl? I need that on my TV screen — like, yesterday. Or maybe Elle Sprinkle’s Like a Power Play, an enemies-to-lovers story that follows a college hockey team captain and a student coach that also represents chronic illness.
Of course, a WLW hockey romance show doesn’t have to be adapted from a book — screenwriters could just, you know, come up with an idea from scratch. Unfortunately, I think the entertainment industry has a lot of work to do before we get a WLW hockey romance show (whether it’s adapted or original). According to GLAAD, there were only 14 lesbian characters in scripted primetime series across five major broadcast networks in 2024-2025, and nine on cable. There were far more lesbian characters on streaming (109 characters across eight streamers, to be exact), but they only made up 29% of the entire pool of LGBTQ+ characters in scripted series across those same platforms.
And when lesbians *are* featured, they aren’t often shown to be exactly thriving. In the Star Wars prequel series Andor, for example, lesbian couple Cinta and Vel were torn apart by a tragic, accidental death that comes right after reconnecting physically and emotionally — and IMO, Cinta’s death was completely meaningless. According to LezWatch.tv’s Dead Lesbians list, there have been 642 queer female characters who have died across 422 shows since 1973, many of which play directly into the “Bury Your Gays” trope — in which LGBTQ+ characters are killed off right after finding love or joy. I believe the reason for the lack of positive lesbian representation comes from an outdated combination of misogyny, the expectations of heterosexuality, and the intense sexualization that women experience daily. And we need to do better.
Because yes, it is that deep; TV shows and movies do matter this much. I know that, personally, if I had the chance to see healthy lesbian love — lesbian joy — as a young girl, coming out would’ve been infinitely easier. Now, as an adult, I’m pushing for the next generation to highlight WLW stories in a way that is human and meaningful — joy, disagreement, communication, intimacy, laughter, tears — as well as sexy, respectful, and with some hockey skates on.