Written by: Celia Selzner

Edited by: Orli Adamski

Introduction

In the summer of 2023, the National Hockey League (NHL) announced their decision to remove special jerseys from theme nights. Going forwards, on pride nights dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ+ community, teams were to forgo their pride themed jerseys, as well as similar symbols such as rainbow tape. Several professional hockey players had already been opting out of the theme night, citing religious beliefs, or laws in their countries of origin preventing the promotion of homosexuality. Due to the discourse amongst players, the NHL deemed pride night to be a “distraction to the work its teams were doing in the community,” and thus sought to remove it from the limelight altogether. The policy was revoked a few weeks later due to the backlash from both fans and players, but the attempt speaks to the tenuous tolerance of the queer community in professional men’s hockey.

Two years later, in November 2025, the first episode of Heated Rivalry aired on television. Originally a novel later adapted into a television series, Heated Rivalry is a sports romance following the relationship of two rival hockey players over the course of several years. Although the show is purely fiction, following hockey teams that don’t exist in reality, the league is presented as a stand-in for the NHL. The queer hockey love story quickly rose to popularity, averaging nine million views per episode in the US, launching its way into HBO Max’s global top ten list, and earning itself a renewal for future seasons. For a sport infamous for its homophobia, misogyny, and toxic masculinity culture, this degree of success was seemingly unexpected for the production. The show’s achievements present two main possibilities: either an indicator of a shift away from homophobia amongst hockey culture, drawing in fans of the sport, or an explosion in popularity entirely unrelated to the real world environment Heated Rivalry draws upon. 

What is Hockey Culture? 

Sports have long acted as “a place in which hegemonic masculinity is reproduced and defined.” Athletes are often elevated as an ideal for masculinity, particularly in a violent, contact sport such as hockey. Not only is physicality an accepted part of hockey culture, but is it in fact normalized, with one fifth of all NHL games involving fights. Many young men engage with sports to “prove their masculinity,” a notion often entangled with degrading any perceived threats to this social order. Sociologist Eric Anderson suggests that gay male athletes “violate […] masculine script through the existence of same-sex desires” and thus become labeled as outsiders. Homophobia consequently becomes a mechanism to maintain the dominance of conventional masculinity by suppressing all other forms. 

Heated Rivalry’s Target Audience

As a show focused entirely on portraying queer relationships, one might assume Heated Rivalry’s target audience would be those who identify with the leading characters, thus primarily composed of members of the LGBTQ+ community, hockey fans, and those who overlap between the two. However, an article by the New York Times clarifies that more than half of the show’s audience are women, and more specifically according to BBC, straight women. 

Queer media being predominantly consumed by women isn’t a phenomenon limited to Heated Rivalry. In fact, this trend precedes the show by decades, documented since the 1960s with Star Trek, indicating a larger structural unifying cause than simply being considered attractive or a trendy aesthetic. This could perhaps be linked to the historic oppression and erasure of female sexuality, in which sex is often portrayed as “something that was done to women, as opposed to something they actively participated in themselves.” However, in a love story between two men, gender differences cease to be a barrier between characters, and allow for “readers to experience both masculinity and femininity outside the framework of a difference in sex.” 

If the appeal in sports such as hockey is the opportunity for men to prove or assert masculinity, then the draw to queer media appears to be the opposite, meaning to escape the gendered dynamics of society altogether. In theory, Heated Rivalry exists in the median of these two conflicting ideologies, following men in a queer relationship who also thrive in a highly competitive and masculine environment. The stark difference between the show’s content and its audience raises the question of whether it truly serves as proof for growing acceptance of queer identities in hockey culture. After all, the data pulled from the demographics suggests success due to its largely cisgender female fanbase, an example of an overall trend of this type of content being attracted to this genre rather than a shift in culture. 

Fetishization or Progress? 

Author Ava Laure Parsemain uses the term “gaystreaming” to describe the manner in which the 21st century’s mainstream culture began to integrate gay and lesbian communities into mainstream culture. In her book The Pedagogy of Queer TV, Parsemain argues that although gaystreaming is progress, replacing marginalization and demonisation with acceptance and assimilation, it also creates rhetoric that ignores the reality of many LGBTQ+ people. After all, producers are ultimately capitalist entities who seek to make a profit, in this case “commodif[ying] gayness,” transforming and even minimizing queer experiences to make it palatable for a widespread audience. 

Heated Rivalry portrays a very specific type of queer relationship, one “bounded by whiteness, cisnormativity and masculinity.” As some critics have pointed out, despite the protagonist’s biraciality, it “ultimately remains peripheral to the show’s exploration of queerness […] nor does it intersect with his sexuality in ways that challenge the sport’s deeply entrenched whiteness.” Simply placing queer characters in the setting of a sport infamous for its homophobic culture doesn’t necessarily transform or disrupt the status quo. For all that the show gives the appearance of diversity in characters, the plot tends to focus on the romance between the leads rather than commentating on the toxic culture of the sport they exist within. 

Beyond the Show 

It would be remiss to imply the show had no impact at all. Current NHL players such as Nick Suzuki – the captain of the Montreal Canadiens – have acknowledged the show in interviews, a promotion of queer culture by key figures in the hockey world despite the generally conservative beliefs of players. Furthermore, the series has prompted a rise in hockey ticket sales, and the main actors have launched in popularity, becoming torchbearers in the 2026 Olympic Games. Media doesn’t exist separately from reality, and in this case, Heated Rivalry prompted a tangible impact on the world. Regardless of the particular schematics of the representation or what it could indicate for the NHL, the success and celebration of queer media shouldn’t be undermined. Above all, the show represents a possibility for positive and inclusive change going forward, that is ultimately worthy of recognition.