Heated Rivalry

• 1. Introduction

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  Heated Rivalry, a Canadian television series about two hockey stars who fall in love in secret, drew only 30 million streaming minutes in its first week. That was too few to place among the top 50 streaming programs. By the week of its season finale, weekly viewing had grown more than tenfold, to 324 million minutes.

  Jacob Tierney created, wrote and directed the show for the Canadian service Crave. Its heroes are Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, who play for the fictional Montreal Metros and Boston Raiders in Major League Hockey. Media coverage and public perception inflate their rivalry on the ice. Off the ice, the two keep a private relationship that begins casually and continues, on and off, across several years of their careers.

  How did a story this intimate get financed, cast and shot? Why did viewers keep returning to it? And what did it mean for the sport it was set in?

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• 2. From Novels To Screen

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  On the 7th of August 2023, Jacob Tierney reached out to the author Rachel Reid. The day before, The Washington Post had published an article about hockey romance novels. Tierney had listened to Reid's Game Changers series as audiobooks and wondered whether it could become a limited television series.

  The show takes its title from the second Game Changers book, published in 2019. Reid built her story around the real rivalry between Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. She named Jaromír Jágr, Teemu Selänne and Ilya Kovalchuk as further inspirations for Ilya Rozanov. For Shane Hollander, she cited Wayne Gretzky and Paul Kariya.

  Tierney's chief doubt was the sex. The books are sexually explicit, and he questioned whether that could survive on screen. Queer romances such as the young adult adaptation Heartstopper had grown popular, but he saw a basic difference. In his view, "Sex is character development; it's not just a random sex scene in every episode." The leads, he said, learn about each other and about themselves through it.

  Financiers proved a harder audience. Tierney and his co-producer Brendan Brady said the studio notes they received wanted to fundamentally change either the story or the tone.

  In January 2025, Crave was announced as having picked up the show from a spec script by Tierney, and Reid confirmed it on her blog. In March 2025, a month before production began, the UK distributor Sphere Abacus joined Crave and Bell Media as a financier. That kept Tierney's vision intact. He is an executive producer alongside Brady through their company Accent Aigu Entertainment. Lori Fischburg is a producer, and Reid is a consulting producer.

  In a podcast interview with Kara Swisher, Brady revealed the budget: just under 3 million Canadian dollars per episode, or 2.2 million US dollars.

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• 3. Casting Chemistry

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  Before they were cast, both Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie were working as restaurant waiters. Tierney wanted two actors with the "physicality of hockey players" who were also comfortable with nudity and intimacy. He also wanted to find them as a pair, because "the show lives and dies on their relationship". Casting directors Jenny Lewis and Sara Kay ran the search.

  Storrie auditioned shirtless, though nobody had required it. Williams was the third actor Storrie read with, while Williams had read with only one other candidate. Asked for his impression, Storrie recommended Williams. Williams, for his part, sensed an "inexplicable X-factor" in Storrie. Tierney said their chemistry was obvious from the first read, even though it took place over Zoom. Both actors signed on for three seasons.

  In a December 2025 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Williams said he played Shane as autistic. Reid had confirmed to him that the character is on the autism spectrum. Williams cited his own father, who is on the spectrum, as an inspiration.

  Nadine Bhabha, who plays Elena, was the first person cast. A friend of Tierney's, she was offered the part with no audition. Another longtime friend, François Arnaud, got a personal call from the director. Tierney told him: "I didn't write this for you, but I cannot hear anyone else's voice in my head when I read it".

  Arnaud's first impression of the script was that it read as soft pornography. Christina Chang, who plays Shane's mother Yuna, had the same reaction at first. Both changed their minds once they saw how the sex scenes push the story forward.

  Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova plays Svetlana, a role substantially redefined for the television version. She set out to challenge stereotypical portrayals of Russians in Western media. Russia, she noted, has "around 200 different ethnic groups". She said she was "very happy to show a different side".

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• 4. Ontario Plays Moscow

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  Principal photography began in April 2025 and lasted 36 days, spread across Ontario and Quebec. The very first day covered the Las Vegas hotel room encounter between Shane and Ilya. The Tampa hotel conversation in the episode "I'll Believe in Anything" was also shot that day, and it had served as one of Williams and Storrie's audition scenes.

  Hamilton, Ontario, did much of the disguising. Dundurn Castle stood in for Moscow in a jogging scene for Ilya in the episode "Olympians". The outdoor area of the McMaster Burridge Gym became the setting where Ilya and Shane first meet, in the opening of "Rookies". The FirstOntario Concert Hall played host to the Los Angeles party during the league draft.

  Every hockey sequence was filmed at the Sleeman Centre in Guelph, including locker rooms, ice surface and stands. Real-life hockey players filled out the teams. Jonah De Simone doubled for Williams in close shots on the ice, and Ralph Taggart doubled for Storrie. The rink scenes took a week of filming, near the end of the shoot.

  The season finale was filmed in Muskoka. Montreal appears through establishing shots of Windsor Station, St. George's Anglican Church, the Montreal Biosphere and Parc Jean-Drapeau. Shane's high-rise apartment looks out on the city skyline. In the episode "Rose", a framed picture of Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal hangs on the bathroom wall of Ilya's Montreal hotel room. References to Mile End, McGill University and a St-Viateur Bagel shirt worn by Rose Landry add local flavour.

  Studio work took place in Toronto at Dark Slope, on a practical soundstage and on an LED volume stage using virtual production. Cinematographer Jackson Parrell shot with two ALEXA 35 cameras and Panavision T Series anamorphic lenses. The LED walls produced backgrounds for a scene set in Russia, a Florida sunset and the Las Vegas skyline.

  The production shot out of order, which Tierney described as "one giant five-hour movie". Intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter oversaw the sex scenes. The absence of frontal nudity was a decision made entirely by Tierney. The scenes were heavily choreographed, yet Hunter allowed what she called "artistic interpretation". Williams chose to skip protective padding for the Las Vegas scene and ended up with stomach pain.

  In "I'll Believe in Anything", Storrie delivers a four-page monologue in Russian. After one especially strong take, Tierney asked dialect coach Kate Yablunovsky how much of it he could use. Her answer was: "All of it. He humbles me."

  The episode "The Cottage" was shot in the final two days. In one partly improvised scene, Ilya is intimate with Shane while Shane is on the phone with Hayden. Hunter said Storrie improvised a beat so unexpected that she had to step away from the monitors. The last scene filmed for the whole production shows Ilya telling Shane about his late mother while lying in Shane's lap.

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• 5. Score And Songs

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  In mid-2024, the musician Peter Peter received an Instagram message from Tierney asking whether he would like to score a television show. Peter Peter read early versions of the scripts and wrote music inspired by them. Then footage arrived, and he discarded those songs. He rewrote the music to the images over about seven weeks.

  On the 9th of January 2026, he released "Rivalry" and "It's You" as a double single. "Rivalry" is the series' theme song. "It's You" accompanies the scene in "Olympians" showing Shane and Ilya's first penetrative sex. Milan Records released the full soundtrack digitally on the 16th of January 2026, with CD and LP editions planned for later that year. On the 12th of February 2026, the label released "MLH Anthem", the league's official theme, composed by Anthony William Wallace.

  The soundtrack also leans on existing songs. Needle drops include Dilly Dally's "I Feel Free", Feist's "Sealion" and "My Moon My Man", and Wet Leg's "Mangetout". Others are Wolf Parade's "I'll Believe in Anything", Baxter Dury's "Lips" and Satine's "C'est toi". Cailin Russo's "Bad Things" appears too. So does t.A.T.u.'s "All the Things She Said", along with a cover by the UK producer Harrison.

  Billboard reported that the series lifted official on-demand streaming of these songs. The Hollywood Reporter found that Spotify streams for the t.A.T.u. track more than doubled after the fourth episode. Classical pieces appear as well. Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 plays in "Olympians", and Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata plays in "I'll Believe in Anything".

  On the What Chaos! podcast, Tierney said he had meant to ask Carly Rae Jepsen for an original song in season one. Budget limits stopped him from even trying. He added that he would "definitely be asking" in future. Miley Cyrus has also expressed interest in contributing music to the second season.

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• 6. Release And Surge

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  On the 19th of November 2025, nine days before the Crave premiere, HBO Max announced that it had acquired US and Australian rights for a day-and-date global release. Executives Casey Bloys and Jason Butler spearheaded the deal. It was attributed partly to online buzz from the Game Changers fanbase, who campaigned for worldwide distribution.

  The schedule changed late. The series had been planned for February 2026, after the Winter Olympics. In late September, Tierney and the executives pulled it forward to catch audience interest in new series over the holidays. The first episode screened at the Image+Nation LGBTQ+ Film Festival in Montreal on the 23rd of November 2025. Crave premiered two episodes on the 28th of November, then ran weekly episodes until the finale on the 26th of December.

  Marketing stayed modest. The trailer arrived on the 9th of October 2025, and Caitlin Cronenberg photographed the posters. On the 10th of December, François Arnaud promoted the show at a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning, which fell on the league's Pride Night. The trailer played for the crowd. In January 2026, HBO Max and the Winter Olympics organizing committee named Storrie and Williams torchbearers. They carried the torch on the 25th of January in Feltre, Italy.

  In December 2025, after the renewal, HBO Max bought further rights covering Latin America, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Macau, Sri Lanka, Nepal and most of Europe. It reached the Philippines on HBO Max on the 19th of December. Sky began streaming it in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the 10th of January 2026. Lionsgate Play carried it in India from the 20th of February 2026. Neon in New Zealand and Movistar Plus+ in Spain also streamed it.

  Deadline Hollywood reported that the show had become Crave's most-watched original series to date. Viewership rose nearly 400 percent over its first seven days. Crave's own figures showed unusual stickiness. About a third of viewers, 33 percent, watched the whole season more than once, and 15 percent finished it five or more times. Episode five was the most rewatched of the six.

  HBO Max said the series was the number two driver of first-time viewers on the platform. Growth was described as unusual, given a minimal marketing campaign and a low licensing fee of approximately 600,000 US dollars per episode. FlixPatrol put it second on the HBO Max chart in the United States on the 29th of November, behind It: Welcome to Derry. Nielsen ranked it below the top ten. That chart treated the show as an acquired series, which meant it competed against long-running comfort shows such as Grey's Anatomy and NCIS.

  During the week of the 2nd of January 2026, the show was viewed for over 254 million minutes, so interest had hardly slowed. By the 21st of January 2026, episodes averaged 8 million viewers. Just over a week later, the average reached 9 million.

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• 7. Critics And Awards

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  In The Washington Post, Rachel Kurzius wrote that the leads' faces "capture a complex cocktail of feelings" and that their chemistry was "bonkers". She also credited Storrie with an impressive Russian accent. TVLine named both actors "Performers of the Week" for the season finale. /Film called them the strongest break-out performances of the year.

  Time praised Williams for a nuanced, non-stereotypical portrayal of an autistic character grounded in real understanding. The Autism Research Institute endorsed that review. Arnaud's performance as Scott Hunter drew widespread acclaim as well. Dominic Baez of The Seattle Times compared the "Hunter" episode to "Long, Long Time" from The Last of Us. He called it "a genius, moving inclusion" anchored by Arnaud's "devastating performance".

  David Caballero of Collider gave the show 8 out of 10 and liked how well it develops its characters, singly and as a couple. J. Kelly Nestruck of The Globe and Mail praised Tierney for exploring homophobia in hockey, and the cultural gap between being closeted in Canada and in Russia, without drifting into social-issue drama. Mikhail Zygar wrote in Vanity Fair that Ilya's story likely resonated with the Russian queer community.

  Lucy Mangan of The Guardian gave three stars out of five. She argued that the show spends too much time on explicit, idealized depictions of gay sex at the expense of character development. The series also set off debate about LGBT visibility in sport, and about media portrayals of gay and bisexual men and their link to boys' love media and its largely female fandom.

  After only two episodes, Harper's Bazaar listed it among the best queer television series of all time. By the end of 2025, it appeared on best-of-the-year lists from Cosmopolitan, the New York Post, Refinery29, The Seattle Times and the Toronto Star. Vogue Adria and InsideHook singled out the Empty Netters podcast, hosted by former hockey players, as an example of what they called non-toxic masculinity in the sport.

  The fifth episode drew the loudest praise. Vulture's Tom Smyth and Mads Misasi of Tell-Tale TV each gave it five stars. Cody Schultz of Show Snob called it "a masterclass in storytelling". On IMDb it earned a perfect 10 out of 10. From the 20th of December 2025, it tied with the Breaking Bad episode "Ozymandias" (2013) as the only television episodes with that rating. The series then entered the site's Top 250 TV shows.

  Viewers abroad responded too. Though not legally streamable in Russia because of anti-LGBTQ laws, the series earned an 8.3 user rating on Kinopoisk. In China it was a pirated hit and scored 8.8 on Douban.

  Awards eligibility was complicated. The series could not enter the Primetime Emmy Awards because it was not originally developed as a US co-production. It did receive the Television Academy Honors Award for advancing positive social change. Storrie was ineligible for the Canadian Screen Awards because of citizenship rules. The show premiered after the cutoff for the 14th ceremony, but a successful appeal let it compete early. It won every category it was nominated in, including Best Drama Series. It also won a Peabody and a GLAAD Award.

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• 8. Beyond The Rink

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  On Radio Andy, Hudson Williams said that he and Rachel Reid had received private messages from active players in the NHL, NFL and NBA. They described concealing their sexual orientation. Williams called the show "celebratory", yet said its portrayal of the challenges facing LGBTQ athletes "hits people right in the nerves". An NHL representative called the series a "unique driver" for bringing new fans to the sport.

  Former Minnesota league hockey player Jesse Kortuem came out as gay publicly, saying the show inspired him. He had left the sport earlier out of fear of reconciling his sexuality with his athletic career. The Argentine field hockey player Nicolás Keenan compared the "Hunter" episode to his own experience before confirming his relationship with the Dutch politician Rob Jetten.

  Some voices urged caution. Adam Davies, a gender and sexuality studies professor at the University of Guelph, said visibility does not remove structural barriers in hockey. He pointed to the historical marginalization of Black Canadians and ongoing abuse scandals. Brock McGillis, the first openly gay professional men's hockey player, admired the show. He doubted it would persuade players to come out, and suggested that stories of secret relationships could reinforce fears about the consequences of being out.

  The cast reflects some of this reality. Arnaud, who plays Scott Hunter, is openly bisexual. Harrison Browne, a transgender actor and former professional hockey player, has a supporting role. A 2025 study of more than 1,700 athletes found that about 39.4 percent of female athletes and 36.5 percent of male athletes conceal their sexual orientation in sports settings. Team culture and hypermasculine norms were the reasons. Shane and Ilya's concealment mirrors those numbers.

  On the 12th of December 2025, Crave renewed the series, with HBO Max returning as a key distribution partner. Season two will adapt The Long Game, the sixth Game Changers book, published in 2022. Tierney's creative executive at Crave, Rachel Goldstein, had discouraged him from adapting the epilogue of Heated Rivalry earlier, since it might have implied an unconfirmed second season. Tierney told Variety the new season would not arrive at the same time next year, because the scripts were progressing slowly. He told The Hollywood Reporter he will direct every episode, though other writers may help him. On CBS Mornings in February 2026, he said filming was expected to begin in August 2026, with a premiere expected in April 2027.

  One scene is already promised. In the novel, Shane's coming out to his team happens off the page. Tierney has said he plans to write that scene for the screen.

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