Sexy, Viral Hit Heated Rivalry Shows the Power of the Closet

At first it doesn’t appear that HBO Max’s viral hit Heated Rivalry has anything serious to say, which is just fine. Just watching the hot, off-the-ice man-sex between young hockey pros Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov is enough of a hook to make showrunner Jacob Tierney’s adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Game Changer novels addictive. There is little time for reflection when every time Shane and Ilya are alone they are ripping off each other’s clothes.

That is largely the dynamic of the first two episodes that unfold in brisk scenes over six years (2008 – 2014), which has them move from draft prospects to team captains of major pro hockey franchises on the show’s fictional Major Hockey League. They are cast in the media as rivals, but whenever possible meet in secret for sex scenes that inform as well as titillate: the pair discuss the sex and set boundaries with condoms present. The sex is great; everything around it? Not so much.

Both actors, Hudson Williams (Shane) and Connor Storrie (Ilya), have joked that the sex scenes were much easier to shoot than the hockey ones. And one reason these scenes play so well has much to do with their chemistry, as well as the careful manner in which the scenes were shot. Both Williams (who is Canadian) and Storrie (who is American) were guided by intimacy coach Chala Hunter who treated the delicately staged moments as choreography. That the two become friends, spending time off-set, helped with their physical ease; and humor played a role, notably when they were uneasy during the shoot. Curiously in the moment of prosthetic-driven frontal nudity on cable networks, there is none. Tierney says he “can’t watch sex scenes where men are supposed to be having sex and they don’t have erections and then you’re in porn.” The network pressured him on this point, but he didn’t relent; instead finds ways of shooting the scenes with long, lingering shots and clever blocking that convey intimacy without being the least bit tame.

Their sexual relationship is unexpected, disruptive, and dangerous, and must be kept on the down low. The stakes are high – both are top players with large media followings; their rivalry has been a successful hook for marketing; the socially-awkward Shane fears that he would lose everything if exposed, and keeps his personal feelings extremely private, even with his manager/parents with whom he shares (most) everything. Ilya is more cocky, though is even more vulnerable being a Russian citizen and subject to Putin’s antigay rhetoric. No way does he want to be poster boy for queer Russians. To text, the pair devise female alias (‘Lily’ for Ilya; ‘Jane’ for Shane), which largely succeeds, though Shane is rided by his co-players for being so secretive about this hot affair he is having, and Ilya is asked about ‘Jane’ by his open-minded girl pal Svetlana (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova).

Former professional hockey player Brock McGillis, who came out in 2016 after retiring, told Pink News that the show’s first episode gave him a panic attack because it reminded him of his own years spent hiding a relationship, even using a code name for his boyfriend in his phone. “I was scared. I dated a guy for three years, not a soul in my life knowing. We had an alias for [me in his phone] in case [his friends] ever saw.” He goes on to say that hockey culture is deeply homophobic, saying that “everyone will despise you and that you’ll jeopardize your career.”

McGillis’s comments point to the elephant in Heated Rivalry’s locker rooms, that is the hold of the closet on the life of these professional hockey players. Though always present, it was barely referred to in the first two episodes. When Shane sets up his hook-up with Ilya on Episode One, he fears they might be caught because his team player Scott Hunter (François Arnaud) is in the next room, and what Scott may know only fuels Shane’s paranoia. But what becomes clear on Episode Three is that Scott sits in the same boat. A conversation at the Sochi Olympics triggers a memory that makes up the show’s third episode (called Hunter). It also slows down the pace and brings to the forefront its subtext: the effect of the closet on these players lives by introducing a character who is out.

That’s Kip (Robbie G.K.), the barista at a smoothie’s shop, who flirts with the willing Hunter when the hunk takes a break from jogging. Hunter expresses his interest by leaving Kip big tip, then returns a few times, which cements their meet-cute relationship that finally evolves into a date, a sleepover, and all but a proposal from Hunter. The catch is that the hockey pro is in the closet and adamant to remain so; the relationship must stay secret. Scott’s rules are the familiar ones: no photos, no public dates, no saying “boyfriend,” no acknowledging the relationship to teammates who joke about his pretty boy face and assume every woman in the arena is fair game. Infatuated and overwhelmed by Hunter’s luxe lifestyle, Kip agrees to fold himself back into the shadows so Scott can keep living inside the league’s big heterosexual lie. He becomes tired of lying to his family and friends, and put out when he must hide his feelings in public. It hollows him out and they break-up.​

At first the episode is jarring – like where the fuck are Shane and Illya? But Tierney moves to another story line entirely from Rachel Reid’s six-volume series Game Changers, taking the plot of its first book Game Changer and capsulizing it in this episode. At first, the producers were wary. They wanted to know why the story moved away its main narrative for a stand-alone that could easily be the basis for a series itself. But Tierney was adamant, feeling that it showed the cost of the living in the closet has on a professional hockey player’s life. Scott is so embedded in the sport’s machinery that he cannot imagine a future if he opens the closet door, which Tierney sees as essential to the stakes in Shane and Illya’s romance should it go public. These players are prisoners to a system that demands they stay in the closet.

Emblematic of their relationship is a pair of yellow crew socks emblazoned with cartoon bananas that Kip gives Scott. It is a humorous reminder of the bananas that he added to Scott’s smoothies when they first met. At first, Scott is delighted and wears them, but late in the episode he is seen stashing the socks to the back of his drawer, as if pushing away any reminder of Kip. The closet in professional sports is built just as much out of what you pretend not to own as it is out of what you’re not allowed to say or be seen with. By the time Scott hides the banana socks, the series has quietly walked you through the emotional economics of homophobia in hockey: everyone insists things are getting better, and yet the closeted guy still hides the socks.​

While the hook for the show is the sexual play, what lies beneath is a critique of the closet as an institutionalized component whose victims trade successful careers and financial well-being for personal happiness. Professional sports, especially hockey, rely on their participants be macho; teens who want to be part of the sports are told not to be soft or weak. The industry reinforces the idea that a real hockey man is straight, stoic, and willing to take a hit without complaint.

For this particular flavor of masculinity—white, northern, meat-and-potatoes, with an accepted component of violence —homophobia is its glue. Slurs in the locker room, jokes about figure skaters, the mockery of anything femme become a way for players to prove they belong. Even as the NHL rolls out inclusion initiatives and Pride nights, studies show a disconnect: athletes perceive their environments as mostly accepting, while simultaneously admitting they and their teammates regularly use homophobic language. The rules of the game say you can’t be queer.

This wouldn’t be all that pertinent if the show had just aired and become another cable show fighting for a second season; but it is a viral sensation, made even more so by the fact it was picked up by HBO in mid-November, dropped on the network with little fanfare at the end of the month; and quickly became one of highest rated series. Why did it catch on so quickly?

Showrunner Tierney told the Washington Post the attention his series is getting is “the kind of thing that you don’t allow yourself to dream about.” And romance novelist Rachel Reid, who wrote the Game Changer series of novels of which Heated Rivalry is the second, added how unlikely “that the show everyone’s talking about is this sexually explicit queer hockey show.” After the premiere episode, the novel jumped to #1 on the Kindle best seller list.

One reason the show’s a hit is how keenly Tierney understood Reid’s novels when he approached her in 2023 about the series. “Everything he said was amazing and I knew right away that he was going to, you know, take it seriously, that he really got the books, got the characters,” Reid told the Post. Tierney credited the network Crave’s parent company, Bell Media, for funding the series and allowing him to stick to his vision. But his smartest move came in casting his leads — Hudson Williams as the reserved Shane and Connor Storrie as the braggadocios Ilya. He fully expected to be turned down once he sent the actors the scripts. But miraculously, both actors accepted and became good friends. “Williams and Storrie are revelatory,” the Post writes. “Their faces capture a complex cocktail of feelings, their chemistry is bonkers and Storrie, a Texan, pulls off an impressive Russian accent.” Both actors quickly saw their IG followers jump from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands as interest in their personal lives have surged.

For their part, HBO Max did little to promote the show, which they only picked up a few weeks before airing it. Unlike the projects they develop, the network had little to lose if it failed; and would have found promoting it difficult. Instead they let Reid’s mostly female fanbase do the work, which they did with enthusiasm on social media and let to its strong initial showing. Media watchdogs reported on that success with some fanfare; additionally, strong reviews (95% on Rotten Tomatoes) gave the show the prestige factor of other HBO shows. The show’s viewership grew 400% between the first and second episode, making it a viral sensation. To no one’s surprise, it has been renewed for a second season, and HBO Max has a new hit without really trying.

Will the show’s success lead to more queer visibility in the sport? Ex-New York Ranger Sean Avery told Rolling Stone that while he didn’t know of any queer hockey players during his career, he did think he “must have had a gay closeted teammate at some point in my career.” And feels the show’s success “ should open the door for the first gay NHL player, if there is one,” (Long a queer ally, Avery was an advocate for same sex marriage in 2011 for the Human Rights Campaign.) But queer ex-hockey star McGillis feels differently saying that Avery, who is out promoting his own sex-charged hockey novel, “is just looking for press.”