The NHL’s ‘Heated Rivalry’ Offseason Dilemma: Capitalize on Hockey’s Pop Tradition Second

Hockey, effectively, hockey romance, is booming.

Canadian streamer Crave’s breakout hit Heated Rivalry — probably the most talked about exhibits of the final yr — turned a popular culture phenomena. The queer hockey romance drama not solely took social media by storm in late 2025, it made licensed stars out of its at-the-time unknown main actors, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie and the supply materials, a string of novels by Rachel Reid, bestsellers years after launch. The Jacob Tierney-created show turned appointment tv, a rarity within the streaming age.

Romance readers have been probably not shocked — this thought-to-be area of interest sub-genre is definitely a booming sector of the style. Many months after it broke out, Heated Rivalry is including to the underside line of its mother or father firm, as Information Corp CEO Robert Thomson informed analysts on Could 7, “We continue to see feverish interest in Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry in print and digital, and even in countries in which ice hockey is not a mainstream sport.”

In the meantime, Off Campus, the newest hockey-centric present to hit streaming, has additionally become a hit for Prime Video within the month since its launch. The present, based on Elle Kennedy’s book series, had been in improvement for years, and very like Reid’s novels, had a loyal fanbase pre-show. It shortly turned the streamer’s third greatest debut ever.

The rise of hockey romance has given the game one thing that the likes soccer and basketball have lengthy had — an actual popular culture second. That’s to not say hockey’s by no means been in popular culture — The Mighty Geese, in fact, can’t be ignored. However Heated Rivalry’s launch got here on the good second for the game of hockey, and Off Campus went on to cement its place. Now the query is how the Nationwide Hockey League, and the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League, plan to capitalize on the second. NHL execs, nevertheless, ought to take observe that Heated Rivalry will probably be a lot much less form to its fictional league in season two. However extra on that later.

Social media, significantly TikTok, had already began homing in on skilled hockey gamers in each the NHL and the PWHL when Heated Rivalry premiered. There was, and are much more so now, a slew of fandom type TikTok edits the NHL’s younger skills — San Jose Sharks gamers Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith every boast appreciable fanbases of younger girls on social media — making the phrases “boy aquarium” almost unavoidable on the app. The Olympics have been on the horizon and can be fruitful for the U.S. males’s and ladies’s hockey groups, as they each took dwelling gold.

“Sometimes the stars just need to align,” NHL chief communications officer and senior EVP Jon Weinstein tells The Hollywood Reporter on a current Zoom. “Right now, the stars are aligned.”

The chief speaks from Raleigh, North Carolina, on the town for the 2026 Stanley Cups Finals between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Vegas Golden Knights. The Hurricanes would go on to win the collection 4-2 in sport six this previous Sunday.

For these working in hockey, there’s by no means been a doubt that it could breakthrough; it was all the time about discovering the suitable automobile. “We know hockey has the ability to transcend its traditional audience and attract people. It just takes storytelling and personalities and the connection to culture in order to do that,” a consultant for the PWHL tells THR.

“These shows are really helping make the sport feel more familiar and accessible and giving people permission to engage with hockey even if they don’t know every rule or have decades of history with the game,” add the rep.

For some followers, the PWHL felt like a neater entry level new to the game. In contrast to the NHL, the ladies’s skilled league is barely three seasons outdated and nonetheless increasing. The league has added groups in Detroit, Hamilton, Las Vegas and San Jose forward of the upcoming 2026-2027 season. New followers can stand up to hurry on all issues PWHL by way of a YouTube series dubbed “PWHL 101” to get new followers in control. The PHWL has seen immense progress not too long ago, but it surely’s laborious to pin that all the way down to a tv present given its nascent section.

Ladies’s sports activities viewing has been on the rise, and the 2026 Olympics girls’s hockey gold medal sport between the U.S. and Canada set a viewership report to turn into the most-watched girls’s hockey sport ever, in line with Nielsen. It averaged 5.3 million viewers throughout USA Community and Peacock, peaking at 7.7 million viewers throughout the sport’s closing minutes.

The NHL has a number of issues it factors to for its personal current progress — the 2026 Olympics and its 4 Nations Face-Off. The league touts report attendance and scores within the U.S. Recreation six of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals, the place the Hurricanes claimed victory, drew 5.9 million viewers. It was probably the most viewers for any sport six since 2019.

TNT Sports activities famous that its viewing amongst girls, who make up a big a part of each Heated Rivalry’s and Off Campus’ fanbases, grew 63 % yr to yr for its NHL playoff video games. The league appears assured that new followers are coming from these avenues. “Heated Rivalry brought a new fan base to hockey,” NHL president of content material and occasions Steve Mayer says.

The NHL says they’re aiming to get folks to the rink as a result of as soon as they’re there, the league feels assured they’ll “hook them” and create new loyal followers. “You never know what it will take to get somebody to actually come and watch, and Heated Rivalry, no question, got a lot of people talking. [It] got a lot of people curious about hockey,” Mayer continues. “We truly believe that once they saw how great the game was that they stayed.”

There’s no misunderstanding at both of the leagues, nevertheless. Heated Rivalry began this wave on tv due largely to the present, not simply the game. “So much has to do with the quality of the show, and Heated Rivalry is an amazing show. It’s so well done,” says Mayer.

Heated Rivalry’s recognition began to bleed into different aspects of hockey tradition early into its run. Hockey podcasters, of which there are lots, started taking discover, however none earlier than What Chaos! hosts Pete Blackburn and DJ Bean, together with their producer Shawn DePaz, took an early curiosity.

“I think I just caught it on my algorithm,” Bean says. This was earlier than the Canadian collection even had its worldwide distribution in HBO, and it was set simply to air on Bell Media’s streamer Crave. They began a mantra on their present — simply get them to November 28, Heated Rivalry’s premiere date.

It’s to be famous that Tierney himself has appeared on the podcast greater than as soon as, which must be a great indication of how they’re approaching the present. Naturally, this engagement introduced new followers to the Bostonians’ present. “Forget whatever it’s done for our audience. We love that it’s improved the hockey scene,” says Bean.

“It so quickly escaped containment and became something that everyone was watching and everyone was talking about. It had an extreme gravitational pull,” Blackburn provides. “The show itself was one of the best shows that we’ve seen, and it felt like it just fully had a choke hold on the entire world for a month and a half.”

Heated Rivalry’s recognition introduced the world of hockey romance entrance and middle. Very like Tierney, who realized about Reid’s books by way of a Washington Submit article on area of interest subgenre, the NHL first got here to find out about its recognition by way of books. On the earth of romance novels, hockey romance is a booming enterprise, propelled primarily by BookTok, a piece of TikTok devoted to e-book influencing.

These hockey romance books get tailored for the display screen, as Heated Rivalry and Off Campus did, and that leads many productions to have interaction with the skilled leagues throughout the improvement course of. The NHL knew about Off Campus, which makes use of its crew names the Boston Bruins and the New York Rangers all through the collection. Heated Rivalry, nevertheless, opted to go one other path.

Mayer says the crew is now “really close” with Tierney, however famous that he and his producing associate Brendan Brady didn’t strategy the league earlier than the present aired. “They wanted to make an authentic story to the book. Yes, there’s NHL in the book, but they wanted to do their own thing. We respect that. We truly do,” the chief says. In Heated Rivalry, the tv present, the lads’s skilled league was rebranded the MLH.

The chief says they know of one other mission coming from Netflix, seemingly pointing to the not too long ago introduced adaptation of Hannah Grace’s viral novel Icebreaker. “Everybody’s trying to get into the hockey space,” says Mayer. “There’s going to be many more. I’m telling you, we’re getting pitched left and right.”

The NHL is aware of that they’re witnessing a phenomenon unfold in entrance of their eyes, and so they’re welcoming it. “Heated Rivalry started the wave, and the waves just keep going. Off Campus is incredible as well,” says Mayer. He believes this exhibits that the momentum is there.

However as new followers pour in, the highlight strikes away from the best way to get followers in and the fact of retaining these followers, significantly queer followers. In 2023, the NHL banned using delight tape, together with delight jerseys and different speciality jerseys worn throughout video games and warmup. The league later reversed the delight tape determination.

Weinstein pushes again when requested about how the league plans to maintain these followers which are coming from a queer collection given the league’s historical past, asserting the “perception and reality don’t match” on the subject.

Followers of Reid’s books know that season two might pose a difficult place for the NHL, who is able to go “all in” on the brand new season. In The Lengthy Recreation, Shane Hollander (Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Storrie) have lastly leapt from situationship to relationship, and the e-book’s essential pressure shifts to the emotional tole of hiding a severe relationship and the fictional league’s poor response to their relationship as soon as they’re out.

Reid, for all intents and functions, casts the fictional league’s commissioner because the rightful massive dangerous villain of Shane and Ilya’s story. The NHL is conscious of what’s to come back, and Weinstein stays unconcerned for the true NHL and its commissioner. “The book is about a fictional character,” he says. “We want every person to feel like they belong in hockey.”

Mayer does have a thought of that storyline. “There is one burning question that we all had,” he says. “Who will play the commissioner?”