Heated Rivalry Review: The Viral Series Dividing the Internet — Is It Worth the Hype?

On paper, a Canadian hockey romance sounds like a niche of a niche. In practice, Heated Rivalry is the show everyone suddenly has an opinion about: a buzzy, surprisingly grounded drama about two pro rivals who cannot stop falling for each other, even as the sport (and the era) make that as messy as possible.

The quick pitch

Based on Rachel Reid's best-selling Game Changers novels, Heated Rivalry premiered in November on Crave with a same-day launch on HBO Max. It has already been picked up for a second season before the first one even finishes airing. For a landscape where the U.S. audience has largely caught up on accepting same-sex relationships but Hollywood still drags its feet, Canada stepping up here tracks — see also: Schitt's Creek.

Story, setting, and the hook

The six-episode first season spans roughly a decade starting in 2008. We meet amateur standouts Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), an Ottawa kid, and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), a Russian phenom, at a youth tournament. Their first interaction is frosty, but the spark is obvious. Once they get drafted — Hollander to the Montreal Metros, Rozanov to the Boston Raiders — the rivalry goes pro, and the attraction gets harder to ignore.

Episode 1 sprints through weeks and months of their early careers, showing the two crossing paths in arenas, press scrums, and one very charged gym encounter where Rozanov finally makes a move. No nudity, maximum heat. That is the show in a nutshell: it is not soft-core; the sex is there, sure, but the focus is on the relationship, the secrecy, and the stakes of being closeted in big-league hockey circa late-2000s/early-2010s.

Worth flagging: the series does not have NHL licensing, but it mirrors the league's vibe pretty closely — logos and team names swapped, realism intact.

Why it works

The tension is the point. The first episode alone covers multiple years of near-misses: secret hangouts, stolen time, but no actual consummation. The slow burn pays off. Later episodes widen the world and the fallout — from the locker room to family dining tables — without drowning the core romance.

The people who make it click

• Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams): Coming to terms with his sexuality while worrying about teammates finding out and, maybe even scarier, his mom discovering the truth. She is not just mom; she is also his manager. Williams plays it with a low-key, lived-in vulnerability; he also has a background in short films, both acting and directing.
• Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie): A star from a country where being gay is even more heavily stigmatized. On top of that, he has a brother constantly hitting him up for money and a father who treats every game like a referendum on their homeland. Storrie nails the accent and the swagger; like Williams, he comes out of the short-film trenches, and this feels like a proper breakout.
• Scott Hunter (Francois Arnaud): A veteran whose own relationships complicate the secrecy around Shane and Ilya.
• Yuna and David Hollander (Christina Chang and Dylan Walsh): Parents who see Shane as a role model for Asian-Canadian kids nationwide, which adds another layer to what he risks by coming out.

Behind the bench

All six episodes are written and directed by Jacob Tierney, best known as the co-creator of Letterkenny. He keeps the season to a lean six, which lets the story build momentum without spinning its wheels. The show adapts material from Rachel Reid's Game Changers line — three books' worth exists, and season 1 pulls from the first two.

Episode 5, titled 'I will Believe in Anything', is already getting the big, breathless praise — the kind of midseason hour people call an instant classic. No spoilers, but it drops revelations that reframe the entire season and justifies the slow-burn approach.

Sports vs. romance (and why the balance works)

Despite being a hockey series, it is more locker rooms than long game sequences. That is intentional. The show is most compelling when it is about two guys trying to keep something real alive under impossible conditions. It does not sermonize, but it does not hand-wave the roadblocks either — it just shows them. As a result, even if you are not here for a 'sports romance,' you might still get hooked.

The bottom line

Heated Rivalry is a well-acted, confidently written romance that happens to be set in pro hockey. It is accessible, not preachy, and yes, pretty steamy even while keeping things non-explicit. The early renewal makes sense. Call it a good 7/10, with room to skate even higher in season 2.

Now streaming on HBO Max (Crave in Canada).