At the Independent’s last staff meeting, I couldn’t help but chat with everyone about my current favorite show: Heated Rivalry. Six cinematic episodes on HBO Max, a bingeable watch that has consumed all of my social media feeds — I have naturally been recommending it to everyone I know. It quickly occurred to me that many people had no idea what I was talking about.
In short, the show is about two hockey players who are rivals, facing off against each other for a decade. Top of their field, captains of their respective teams, and star players duking it out on the ice and off it, but not in the way you might expect. Canada’s best Shane Hollander (played by Hudson Williams) and Russia’s elite Ilya Rozanov (played by Connor Storrie) are gay and secretly falling in love.
Based on the novel of the same title written by Rachel Reid, it was adapted for a series by Jacob Tiernay. Having read the book, I want to start this off by saying that I consider this show to be a masterclass in book-to-show adaptation: stellar casting of relatively unknown actors who fully committed to their characters and realistic changes necessary to fit a TV rhythm while still including essential dialogue and key moments from the original novel.
Heated Rivalry hauls us back to nostalgic 2008 when Shane and Ilya first meet and sparks fly. Their instant attraction comes before they enter their professional rookie season, and, admittedly, starts out as lustful. Which makes sense considering Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie are perfectly sculpted and look like hockey players you can catch on the ice in real life, known for great bodies and sexy beards. This attraction only heats up after the first time they hook up — and their public rivalry matches that heat when they are chosen to play for long opposing teams, the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders.
The in-show media hypes up this rivalry every chance they get when they face off twice a year, but every time Shane and Ilya meet, the sparks are flying, and they can’t help but find a secret corner to steal a kiss or make plans to meet up after a game. That desire for each other continues to grow, tangling up more secrets and hidden meet-ups — the two men wrestle with their attraction to their arch rival until 2017, when they come to accept and explore the real, deeper feelings beneath the intense, obvious attraction.
Though I would have gladly watched 20 or more episodes of this show, the six-hour-long episodes are expertly crafted by Tiernay, who directed, wrote, and created it. With an impressively small budget and only 37 days to film and create the show, it is a masterpiece that the internet has swept into fame. It’s so well done that for two weeks, Episode 5 (“I’ll Believe Anything”) was the second-best-rated TV episode of all time (though it has since dropped a few spots on the list with a 9.9 rating). The show also has a stellar soundtrack, with each song carefully chosen and placed in each episode to reflect the characters’ mood and the situation.
Actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie also deliver stellar performances worthy of multiple Emmys — alas, since the show is a Canadian production (Crave Original), it doesn’t qualify. Williams plays Shane Hollander to perfection, with simple yet impactful micro-expressions in each scene, adding touches of nerves and anxiety to his face that fit with Hollander’s canonically autistic tendencies. Williams plays a very soft but dedicated Hollander who is always striving for perfection and craves the praise that comes with winning.
In contrast, Storrie brings a dark and brooding Ilya Rozanov to life with a perfect Russian accent — seemingly rough and tough on the outside, but really a soft lover boy on the inside. Storrie is also not Russian or a native speaker and had to learn it for the role; many native speakers on the internet have praised his performance for its accuracy. Storrie approaches Ilya’s struggles with his family and his acceptance of love with carefully crafted depth, bringing strength to a character with a secret softness.
What really sets this show apart is the chemistry Williams and Storrie have — whether you’re queer or straight, you can’t help but feel their love and passion as human beings coming through on the screen, and the two actors melt away completely into their characters. It makes the love story feel realistic, and the yearning and longing to be together are what make it so compelling. Not only that, there are other smaller stories woven into the season that explore the real-life hardships and highs that everyone experiences, regardless of their sexuality.
The other beauty of this show, specifically as queer media, is its treatment of the story and the characters. There are no deaths or hate crimes, no drugs or abuse problems, no life-altering climatic events — I’m still traumatized from Brokeback Mountain — just pure love for another person and trying to see it through until they can be together. So often, it seems, queer characters are given archetypes of suffering simply to add conflict, but Heated Rivalry offers a fresh, true-to-life take on queer love and life struggles.
To date, there hasn’t been an openly gay hockey player from the NHL, though star Hudson Williams has noted being reached out to by multiple closeted athletes. The show is being promoted by HBO at hockey rinks, though — or “Boy Aquariums” as TikTok likes to call them. Admittedly, there is very little actual hockey in the show, but the beauty is that you don’t need to understand it to root for Shane and Ilya to fall in love.
Heated Rivalry has been greenlit for a season 2 already, though it likely won’t be released until 2027. If you’re like me, it just means more time to read the second book and potentially dive into the rest of the Game Changers series by Reid and get in some rewatches in the meantime. But if you’re just looking to fill up your time with a good new show, Heated Rivalry is the way to go.
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