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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘NO ONE CAN KNOW’: HEATED RIVALRY’S GAY LOVE STORY EXPOSES ICE
HOCKEY’S CULTURE OF SILENCE  
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Colin Horgan
January 2, 2026
The Guardian
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_ The surprise hit series has reopened a familiar debate: why, in the
National Hockey League, visibility is still treated as a problem
rather than a possibility _

Heated Rivalry has become a hit for Crave and HBO. , Photograph:
Sabrina Lantos/AP

 

At around the midpoint of the first episode of Heated Rivalry, just
after Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov – one Canadian, the other
Russian, both hockey’s top prospects – have had their first tryst,
Hollander sits at the side of his hotel bed and says: “So. You’re
not going to tell anyone about this, are you?” Rozanov, lying naked
beside him, replies sarcastically: “Me? Yes, Hollander, I’m going
to tell everyone.” Hollander reinforces the point: “Because no one
can know,” he says. Rozanov utters something under his breath in
Russian, then: “Hollander. Look, I’m not going to tell anyone,
OK?” Hollander replies: “OK.”

No one can know. If hockey were to have an unofficial slogan, this
might be it. Heated Rivalry, the surprise 2025 hit series from Crave
and HBO [[link removed]], is layered drama,
prompting timely questions about the barriers to acceptance that
persist within sport even as they are lowered elsewhere across
society. But it may be that hockey’s existential battle with its
culture of silence is the show’s deepest target.

Hockey culture presents a paradox, simultaneously welcoming yet
exclusive. When the NHL [[link removed]]
launched its Hockey Is For Everyone initiative in 2017, the league was
making a point about attracting new fans from groups that did not
typically see themselves reflected on the ice, including members of
the LGBTQ+ community. It was a savvy business move, if nothing else.
“Diverse representation within inclusive environments is proven to
advance innovation, creativity, and decision-making – all of which
are important to the growth of the sport and our business,” NHL
commissioner Gary Bettman wrote in his introduction to the league’s
first report on diversity and inclusion in 2022. Inclusion, Bettman
wrote, is a “driver for performance … individuals and
organizations grow stronger from uniting across differences”. Times
were changing, lessons were being learned. Briefly, anyway. The 2022
“annual” report has since been scrubbed from the NHL’s website
(it remains available elsewhere). And while the league continues to
work on inclusivity initiatives and claims it is attracting more women
fans, there has not been another report since.

Just a few months after that diversity report’s release, in January
2023, Ivan Provorov, then a defenseman for the Philadelphia Flyers,
refused to wear a Pride-themed jersey
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during a pre-game warm-up, saying it conflicted with his religious
beliefs. The jerseys had been introduced as part of the Hockey Is For
Everyone initiative and were typically auctioned afterwards to raise
money for local charities. In the weeks that followed, more players
refused to wear their team’s Pride jersey. Rather than push back or
make the jerseys a requirement like any other aspect of a team’s
uniform, the NHL officially walked away from it all, eliminating the
jerseys. The whole thing had “just become more of a distraction from
really the essence of what the purpose of these nights are,” Bettman
said that summer.

In hockey, nobody wants to be a distraction. “[The players told me]
it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or concussed, or you’ve been
sexually abused or have mental health issues, none of those are OK
because you are a distraction,” Cheryl MacDonald, former co-chair of
the western Canadian board of You Can Play, said of her interviews
with a handful of gay hockey players in 2019. MacDonald had wondered
why more gay players did not choose to come out. “You don’t want
to risk it not being OK, because the perception is someone who is just
as good at your job but isn’t gay is going to take your spot,” she
said at the time. Better to say nothing at all.”

In the penultimate episode of Heated Rivalry, another gay player
unexpectedly invites his boyfriend on to the ice to help celebrate a
championship win. They kiss in front of tens of thousands of fans and,
presumably, millions of viewers at home. It is a public coming out.
The show pivots immediately to how this impacts Hollander and Rozanov
and offers very little sense of how the kiss was received more
broadly, but amid the on-ice embrace, the crowd appears enraptured,
not appalled. The TV announcer simply says: “You don’t see that
every day.” Well, no. But if we did?

In the same 2019 study, MacDonald also found that once gay players did
come out, their teammates generally reacted positively – and the
typical homophobic jibes that persist in hockey locker rooms were
muted. Moreover, the banter eventually incorporated their orientation,
with straight players more respectfully making light of the gay
players’ sexuality. “The gay players said the acknowledgement was
nice … it seems there is room for consensual humor,” MacDonald
noted. Likely, few in the hockey world would find that surprising
either; just part of the frustrating paradox at the heart of its
culture.

Heated Rivalry’s popularity has prompted plenty of speculation about
whether it will attract new fans to hockey and to the NHL. But they
are already here – watching, spending, supporting. Playing. And
learning, often from a young age, what part of themselves they should
keep quiet because, y’know, no one can know. As for the NHL, in
December, a spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter that “there are
so many ways to get hooked on hockey and, in the NHL’s 108-year
history, this might be the most unique driver for creating new fans.
See you at the rink.” The line is cheerful, harmless and, in typical
fashion, empty. Even when the conversation is unavoidable, the NHL
still has little to say. It seems that for the league, this is not
about hockey. It is still just a distraction

* heated rivalry
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* NHL
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* hockey
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* LGBTQ fiction
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* HBO
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