‘Heated Rivalry’ Is Bringing New Fans to Hockey. Does the Sport Deserve Them?

From “big air” to curling, the Olympics are all about people banding together to fixate on sports they barely knew existed a month ago.

Hockey is different. While it’s among the least popular pro sports in the US, it’s a downright national obsession in Canada and has a sizable number of fans year-round. For the 2026 Winter Olympics it has a whole lot more thanks to Heated Rivalry.

The Crave show, which follows closeted pro hockey rivals-turned-lovers Shane Hollander (played by Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), has seemingly sent the entire world into “mass psychosis.” HBO, which acquired the show for US distribution, is now playing it in well over a dozen countries and says viewership has more than doubled since the finale. In short, it’s broken a bunch of records.

But from fan edits to increased sales of National Hockey League tickets to the Ottawa Senators selling character-themed jerseys (proceeds go to the city’s LGBTQ+ rec league), the show’s celebrity has had huge knock-on effects for the actual sport.

Almost cinematically, the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics just happen to be taking place in the midst of this fervor. Both Storrie and Williams were torch bearers and many athletes have praised the show. Warner Bros. Discovery has seen its strongest Olympics streaming numbers to date in Europe, according to Variety, with Heated Rivalry being one of the most-watched shows among Milano Cortina viewers. According to marketing firm Zeta Global, female interest in hockey is up 20 percent in the past 60 days and now sits 30 percent higher than the early-2022 levels coinciding with the Beijing Olympic Games.

But hockey, like most pro sports, does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to LGBTQ+ acceptance. There are no openly gay NHL players—an outlier within pro sports, according to OutSports. In June 2023, the NHL banned players from wearing specialty-themed jerseys, such as Pride sweaters and tape; it later reversed the decision on tape after Arizona Coyotes defenseman Travis Dermott flouted the ban. NHL spokesperson Jon Weinstein told WIRED the ban on themed jerseys did not single out Pride and that the league still offers Pride-themed apparel.

Harrison Browne was the first openly trans pro hockey player. He was a Buffalo Beauts and Metropolitan Riveters centre for the Premier Hockey Federation—a professional women’s team that was previously known as the NWHL—and came out via an ESPN article in October 2016. Now an actor and filmmaker, he also stars in Heated Rivalry as one of Rozanov’s teammates.

Recently Browne called out USA Hockey’s decision to reverse its inclusive 2019 policy for trans players and limit trans players’ ability to participate in programs that are designated by sex, which includes rec teams. The new policy, which will go into effect April 1, means that in any program “where participation is restricted by sex, athletes are only permitted to participate in such programs based on their sex assigned at birth.” It also states that trans men can’t play in games, even so-called “beer” league games, for women players if they have “undergone male hormone therapy.”

Browne explains it more plainly. “I personally can’t play in a USA Hockey recreational adult league with my friends that I played my entire career with, just because I have testosterone in my system,” he says. “Like, we’re just adults having fun.”

As for why the change is taking place, Browne, who is Canadian, says, “we can’t really overlook the fact that the current [President Trump] administration is really putting a lot of pressure on sports leagues, withholding funding, other types of threats if they don’t come up with policies that exclude trans people.”

USA Hockey, the governing body for the sport in the US and its Olympic teams, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Trump campaigned against policies that supported gender diversity in 2024 and signed several anti-trans executive orders early in his second term.

After coming out, Browne played for two more seasons but decided to retire at 24 so he could physically transition. “I really wanted to start living my life, being seen as who I was,” he says.

Browne also says he was “embraced” by both the NHL and its fans; he was an ambassador for its Hockey Is For Everyone initiative, spoke at a panel for an all-star game in Tampa, and dropped a puck at a New York Rangers Game at Madison Square Garden—an experience he describes as “pretty epic.”

He says the year before the NHL ban on Pride jerseys “every single team had a Pride night, and I think that that is something that should be talked about as well … so I do see progress.” He also stresses that women’s hockey was “such a safe environment for LGBTQ+ individuals because there’s a lot of gay and bisexual representation in those spaces.”

But after he retired from women’s hockey, he didn’t explore playing for the men’s league.

“I was afraid of the men’s side because of the homophobic, transphobic, misogynist language that I heard in dressing rooms, and you see in the media as well,” Browne says. “I didn’t feel like that was a safe space for me as a trans man that has top surgery scars and things like that, and it really put a lot of shame on me.” Recently, Outsports reported that Dan Powers, cohost of hockey podcast Empty Netters, which has been praised for its coverage of Heated Rivalry, privately texted about how the show makes “blue haired Twitter happy.” Browne takes issue with the statement, saying it’s the kind of language often used to stereotype and denigrate trans people. The podcast did not respond to a request for comment.

Playing a cis character in a men’s league in Heated Rivalry was “healing” for Browne, who explores this very question in his film Pink Light, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.

François Arnaud, who plays pro hockey player Scott Hunter in Heated Rivalry, has also called out the NHL for “capitalizing” on the show’s popularity. “I’m just hoping that it’s backed up by actual, like, openness to diversity,” Arnaud told Andy Cohen during an interview on SiriusXM.

Rachel Reid, who authored the Game Changers books that inspired the show, told WIRED in December she felt hockey was a great backdrop to her series “because of all the toxic masculinity there.”

In a statement, Kim Davis, senior executive vice president of social impact, growth initiatives, and legislative affairs for the NHL said the league “continues to be intentional in fostering a game and a culture where LGBTQ+ individuals are not only welcomed, but truly valued. This commitment shows up in many ways, yet it is grounded in one enduring belief: Hockey is for everyone. These words are more than a slogan—they reflect the values that guide our work. With humility and accountability, we remain dedicated to creating environments where everyone is welcome in our game.”

The NHL also pointed WIRED to its partnerships with Pride organizations around the US, Canada, and Australia, as well as pro-inclusivity organization You Can Play, which it’s been working with since 2013. The league said it will be hosting its third annual Pride Cup in 2026.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said he “binged” Heated Rivalry in one night and told reporters that all NHL teams do a Pride night. However, as the New York Times reported, that is no longer the case, with a couple of teams opting for more general inclusivity events.

Teresa Fowler, an associate professor at Concordia University of Edmonton and Tim Skuce, an associate professor at Brandon University, have both been researching hockey culture in Canada for years. Fowler is candid when she speaks about the league’s embrace of Heated Rivalry, which she feels is performative.

“Where’s your gay friend on your team? You know what I mean?” she says. “It just seems so hypocritical when people are saying, ‘Yeah, we would welcome them,’ and yet, the person who they call their brother, you know, that they would do anything for, is too afraid to bare their soul.”

Fowler and Skuce published a study on hockey culture in 2023, interviewing 21 elite players from the junior A level and higher, many of whom they say were current or former NHL players. Fowler says she’s also worked with younger players, including U18 players and youth hockey. One of the main issues they pointed to that fosters a toxic culture in sport was hazing.

“They would make players dress up like women, and then go into a shopping mall and sing ‘My Little Teapot.’ They would have notches in their belts for sexual conquest. But then, of course, there’s the more physical [hazing rituals]: drag your testicles across the rink naked, get in bathrooms naked,” Fowler says. “It’s just gross. It makes no sense to me how this is team bonding, none whatsoever. Those rituals are sexism rituals, misogynistic rituals, where you’re constantly demeaning women.”

In 2022, a Globe and Mail investigation revealed that Hockey Canada, the sport’s national governing body, had in part used players’ registration fees to cover uninsurable liabilities, such as sexual assault settlements; last July, five former Canadian Junior Hockey players were acquitted of sexually assaulting a woman at a hotel room in London, Ontario.

Hockey Canada did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Skuce, who played university and AAA hockey, says a lot of the men he’s interviewed said they “felt uncomfortable” with the hazing but “they didn’t want to say anything about it.” Team belonging is predicated on going along with what’s happening.

Skuce says he wants to see a shift away from humiliation-based hazing rituals to ones that are more “inclusive.”

With the Olympics taking center stage, there’s once again the potential for a spotlight on trans people in sports—a culture war issue Browne says has created a “moral panic.” He coauthored the 2025 book Let Us Play about the issue.

He says he’d love to see USA Hockey players “stand up against excluding trans people from sports.”

He points to two rounds of the 2017 NCAA March Madness tournament being relocated from North Carolina due to the state’s law forcing trans people to use bathrooms that coincided with their assigned sex at birth.

“You just saw the power of sports and the power of saying ‘no’ to these things,” Browne says. “And I’d really love to see sports really take that power back.”