Hockey, its fans may tell you, is a sport you have to fall in love with live. The thing that hockey fans tell you if you tell them you don’t like hockey is that you can’t watch it on TV. Heated Rivalry is ineligible for consideration at the Primetime Emmy Awards because it does not meet the Television Academy’s eligibility requirements for the U.S. co-productions. However, by the release of the season finale on December 26, weekly viewership had increased more than tenfold to 324 million minutes. According to data from the research group Luminate, the show debuted with 30 million streaming minutes in its first week, failing to break into the top 50 streaming programs.

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• The story is told, largely, through the performance of Shane and Ilya’s physical chemistry, as well as the loaded moments when that chemistry disappears, freezes up, or transforms into something else.
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• It doesn’t feel like hockey, and it doesn’t feel like anything else on TV right now; it feels a little bit like falling in love.
• Canadian actor, director and screenwriter, Jacob Tierney wrote and directed all six episodes of the series’ first season.
• A hockey player’s high-stakes career collides with love when a chance meeting ig…
• David Caballero of Collider gave the series an 8 out of 10, noting the effective early development of their characters both individually and as a potential couple, and the prominent yet accessible use of hockey in the story.

The six-episode series tells the story of the forbidden queer love affair of two professional hockey players, and it does so by documenting each of its lovers’ dalliances at length and in languorous detail. It was arguably one of the greatest places and times to be alive as a hockey fan in the United States. By January 21, 2026, episodes were averaging 8 million viewers and the show hit a series high for weekly viewership the week prior. Alongside the announcement of https://www.boombetonline.nl/ its second season renewal, Deadline Hollywood reported that the series had become Crave’s most-watched original series to date, with viewership increasing by nearly 400% in its initial seven-day streaming window following its debut on November 28.
Ads served on select live and linear content on Standard and Premium Plans. Ads served on select live & linear content in No Ads plan. I was catching up on Heated Rivalry this January, just as I was also beginning to blitz through new episodes of the second season of HBO Max’s other viral hit, The Pitt. There is a momentary break in this dynamic in the third episode, when we return to an earlier moment at the Sochi Olympics and follow Scott Hunter (François Arnaud), a fellow hockey player who’d mostly only appeared at All-Star games and award ceremonies to this point. I found myself laughing about it as the series began, but, as episodes unfolded, there started to be something almost hypnotic about the constant yada-yada’ing of everything that didn’t involve our two leads.
In its brisk, bustling six episodes, the outlines of a wider world beyond Shane and Ilya are blurry. Between the week of its debut and the week of its season finale, on December 27, viewership grew tenfold—from 30 million to 324 million streaming minutes logged—with a growing and notable majority of viewers being women. This November, though, a little Canadian series called Heated Rivalry figured out how to make hockey work on television.

• Following the episode’s reception, the series itself also entered IMDb Top 250 TV shows chart.
• He also wanted to find them together since “the show lives and dies on their relationship”.
• Each new episode drops on HBO Max at 12 a.m.
• It also achieved strong audience viewership, becoming Crave’s most-watched original series to date and HBO Max’s top debut for an acquired, non-animated title since the platform’s launch in 2019.
• However, by the release of the season finale on December 26, weekly viewership had increased more than tenfold to 324 million minutes.

Shortly after its release, it entered IMDb’s rankings of highest-rated television episodes, attaining a rare perfect 10 out of 10 rating. Vogue Adria and InsideHook highlighted the Empty Netters podcast, hosted by former ice hockey players, for its enthusiastic coverage of the series which they cited as an example of “non-toxic masculinity” within the sport. The series is also streaming on Sky-owned Neon in New Zealand and Movistar Plus+ in Spain.

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Once you click on this new option, you will be able to select from a list of available languages to switch the language of your Reddit interface. Starting today, Android, iOS, and Desktop users will be able to access the first phase of our product translation in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. When hockey rivals Shane and Ilya meet each other as rookies, sparks fly. “Heated Rivalry” was originally created for the Canadian streaming service Crave.
Heated Rivalry is, almost exclusively, the story of Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), two high-level professional hockey prospects who fall in love. It doesn’t feel like hockey, and it doesn’t feel like anything else on TV right now; it feels a little bit like falling in love. While it isn’t ascending to Bluey levels of global streaming dominance, what’s unique about the show has been its growth. To really appreciate what’s going on on the ice, you have to be in that big refrigerator, shoulder to shoulder with the raucous crowd, bodies flying at you left and right.

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It is set to adapt The Long Game (2022), the sixth book of the Game Changers series, which serves as a sequel to Heated Rivalry. The agreement also includes expanded distribution deals, with rights for season two secured across multiple international markets via Warner Bros. In June 2025, it was officially announced at the Bell Media Upfront that the series would be streamed on Crave. Tierney initially had doubts about whether the story could be adapted while retaining the books’ sexually explicit content.

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However, in late September, Tierney and the executives decided to push the release forward to take advantage of increased audience interest in new series during the holiday season. HBO Max’s acquisition of the series, which was spearheaded by the company’s content chairman and CEO Casey Bloys and the SVP content planning and programming Jason Butler, was attributed in part to online social media buzz generated by the Game Changers fanbase who campaigned for global distribution. Miley Cyrus also expressed interest in contributing music for the second season, as did rapper Bbno$.better source needed He eventually disposed of those songs when he received footage from the episodes, and re-wrote the music to the images over about seven weeks. The former serves as the series’ theme song, while the latter accompanies the scene in the episode “Olympians” depicting Shane and Ilya’s first instance of anal intercourse. The episode also features Storrie delivering a four-page monologue in Russian; after a particularly strong take, Tierney asked Storrie’s dialect coach, Kate Yablunovsky, how much of it could be used, to which she replied, “All of it. He humbles me”.
The promotional posters for the series were photographed by Caitlin Cronenberg, daughter of David Cronenberg. Podcast, Tierney stated that he had intended to ask Carly Rae Jepsen to submit an original song for the first season, but “didn’t even try” due to budgetary restrictions, adding that he would “definitely be asking” in the future. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the Spotify streams for the t.A.T.u. track more than doubled following the release of the fourth episode.

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Each new episode drops on HBO Max at 12 a.m. Here’s everything you need to know about “Heated Rivalry” and how to watch the rest of the season. HBO Max’s newest series has viewers buzzing. Learn more about what content you can watch with Streams at the Disney+ Help Center.
For a time, which started on December 20, 2025, it tied with Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias” (2013) as the only television episodes to receive a perfect rating on the platform, and ranked among the highest-rated episodes of all time. Tom Smyth of Vulture and Mads Misasi of Tell-Tale TV both gave the episode perfect five star ratings, while Cody Schultz of Show Snob described it as “a masterclass in storytelling” and one of the greatest television episodes of the year and of all time. David Caballero of Collider gave the series an 8 out of 10, noting the effective early development of their characters both individually and as a potential couple, and the prominent yet accessible use of hockey in the story.
In the terms of film theorist Linda Williams, they are both series within the realm of “body genres”—dramas built around showing the body in moments of distress and/or elation. The Pitt has nearly a dozen series regulars in the main cast, another dozen recurring characters, and many dozens more who filter in and out of the E.R. This is, I might guess, what good hockey is like. Though, for what it’s worth, the moment when that happens, when these two plotlines converge, is one of the most electrifying sequences I’ve seen on TV in the past couple of months. This episode is counterprogramming to the Ilya-Shane romance. In this stand-alone episode, we watch Scott come to terms with his own sexuality, begin secretly dating a barista named Kip, and see that relationship run up against the wall of Scott’s inability to come out.