Rachel Reid didn’t intend for anyone to write a dissertation about her horny little gay hockey series.
Then again, the Nova Scotia author behind the Game Changers series could never have anticipated the level of fanfare that’s accompanied the television adaptation of her books: Heated Rivalry.
The show, commissioned by Canada’s Crave and distributed by HBO Max in the US, debuted in late November and quickly became a massive hit. It’s the number one Crave original series of all time, and it also climbed to number 1 on HBO Max. A second season has already been greenlit.
If you’re not watching it yet, you know someone who is. (Full disclosure: I threw a Heated Rivalry–themed holiday party last week, which just meant playing it on mute in my apartment for the vibes.) From Reddit to BookTok, the show and its source material have also sparked a lot of discourse, ranging from speculation about lead character Shane’s neurodivergence, commentaries about race in hockey, and accusations that Reid favors mischievous Russian Ilya over Shane.
“I didn’t expect this book to be analyzed like The Great Gatsby when I wrote it. It’s really just a hockey romance,” Reid, now a New York Times bestselling author, tells me over Zoom, laughing. Still, she’s flattered at the time people have spent theorizing. “I’m impressed with some of the things that people have really dug into. I feel like some of them make me sound a lot smarter than I am.”
The show also sparked criticism from I Love LA star Jordan Firstman, who told Vulture that the intimacy depicted on the show is “not how gay people fuck.” He went on to say that lead actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie should out themselves if they are gay. The actors, who Williams described as “best friends,” have been posting flirty videos with each other, and even have matching “sex sells” tattoos, but neither has disclosed his sexual orientation. “A gay guy would say it,” Firstman told Vulture. “I don’t respect you because you care too much about your career and what’s going to happen if people think you’re gay.”
The comments prompted fellow Heated Rivalry actor François Arnaud to clap back on Instagram, commenting “Should the sex that closeted hockey players have look like the sex that sceney LA gay guys have?” (Firstman has since apologized and the spat seems to have blown over.)
Here’s what Reid had to say about all the discourse surrounding everyone’s favorite hockey smut and why so many women are obsessed with the genre.