AAbout halfway through the first episode of Heated Rivalry, just after Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—one Canadian, the other Russian, both top hockey prospects—have gone on their first date, Hollander sits down next to his hotel bed and says, “So, you won’t tell anyone about this, will you?” Rozanov, lying naked next to him, replies sarcastically: “Me? Yes, Hollander, I'll tell everyone.” Hollander confirms this idea: “Because no one can know,” he says. Rozanov says something under his breath in Russian, then: “Hollander. Listen, I won’t tell anyone, okay?” Hollander replies, “OK.”
Nobody can know. If hockey had an unofficial slogan, this could be it. “Heated Rivalry”, a 2025 surprise series from Crave and HBOis a multi-layered drama that raises timely questions about the barriers to acceptance that persist in sport even as they are lowered in other parts of society. But it's possible that hockey's existential battle with its culture of silence is the show's deepest purpose.
Hockey culture is a paradox, at once welcoming and exclusive. When NHL Since launching the Hockey for All initiative in 2017, the league has emphasized the importance of attracting new fans from groups that don't typically see themselves reflected on the ice, including members of the LGBTQ+ community. It was a shrewd business move to say the least. “Diverse representation in an inclusive environment is proven to foster innovation, creativity and decision-making—all of which are important to the growth of the sport and our business,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wrote in his foreword to the league’s first Diversity and Inclusion Report in 2022. Inclusion, as Bettman wrote, is “the driving force of productivity…individuals and organizations become stronger by coming together across differences.” Times have changed, lessons have been learned. Anyway, in short. The 2022 “annual” report has since been removed from the NHL website (it remains available elsewhere). And while the league continues to work on inclusive initiatives and says it is attracting more female fans, there have been no reports since then.
Just a few months after the release of the diversity report, in January 2023, Ivan Provorov, then defenseman of the Philadelphia Flyers, refused to wear a Pride-themed T-shirt during pre-game warm-ups, saying it was against his religious beliefs. The jerseys were introduced as part of the “Hockey for All” initiative and were subsequently usually auctioned off to raise money for local charities. In the following weeks, more players refused to wear their team's Pride jersey. Instead of eliminating the jerseys or making them a requirement like every other part of a team's uniform, the NHL officially scrapped the whole thing by eliminating the jerseys. It all “just became a distraction from the purpose of these nights,” Bettman said that summer.
In hockey, no one wants to be a distraction. “[The players told me] It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, you have a concussion, you’ve been sexually assaulted or you have mental health issues, it’s all unacceptable because you’re a distraction,” said Cheryl McDonald, former co-chair of the Western Canadian You Can Play board, about her interviews with a handful of gay hockey players in 2019. it feels like your place will be taken by someone who is just as good at your job but is not gay,” she said at the time. It’s better not to say anything at all.”
In the penultimate episode of Heated Rivalry, another gay player unexpectedly invites his boyfriend to the ice to celebrate winning the championship. They kiss in front of tens of thousands of fans and presumably millions of viewers at home. This is a public outing. The show immediately turns to how this will affect Hollander and Rozanov and gives very little insight into how the kiss was received in a broader sense, but the backdrop of the hug on the ice makes the crowd look delighted rather than shocked. The television announcer simply says, “You don’t see something like this every day.” Well, no. What if we did this?
In the same 2019 study, McDonald also found that once gay players did come out, their teammates tended to react positively, and the typical homophobic taunts that persist in hockey locker rooms were muted. Moreover, the banter eventually included their orientation: heterosexual players were more respectful of gay players' sexual orientation. “Gay players said the acceptance felt good…there seems to be room for consensual humor,” MacDonald said. Few people in the hockey world will probably find this surprising either; just part of the frustrating paradox at the heart of its culture.
The popularity of “Heated Rivalry” has led to much speculation about whether it will attract new fans to hockey and the NHL. But they are already here – watching, spending, supporting. I'm playing. And learning, often from a young age, what parts of themselves they should keep quiet about because, you know, no one can know. As for the NHL, a spokesman told the Hollywood Reporter in December that “there are so many ways to get excited about hockey, and in the NHL's 108-year history, this may be the most unique incentive to attract new fans. See you at the rink.” The line is cheerful, harmless and, as usual, empty. Even when a conversation is inevitable, the NHL still has little to say. It doesn't seem to be about hockey for the league. It's still just a distraction.
