Hockey players hook up in trailer for new series Heated Rivalry
A new Canadian gay rivals-to-lovers romance series starring two hockey players, Heated Rivalry, has dropped its full trailer.
The series comes from a popular novel series by Canadian author Rachel Reid. The adaptation is getting fans of queer lit very excited, and we love to see it.
In Heated Rivalry, pro ice hockey players Shane Hollander (Tracker actor Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Joker: Folie à Deux star Connor Storie) have a secret.
On the ice hockey rink, they’re on on competing teams; Shane plays for the Montreal Meteors, and Russian-born Ilya for the Boston Raiders.
Secretly, the pair are a long-term couple and the series follows their private relationship in a sport that’s not quite ready to accept them.
In the trailer, a tabloid links Shane romantically to a famous actress, who asks him, “Are there any gay hockey players?”
“None that have said it publicly,” he replies, before the trailer cuts to Shane and Ilya all over each other in a dark bedroom, and later in a spicy shower scene.
One scene shows the pair alone in the locker room as Ilya approaches Shane, ready to drop his towel.
Ilya has saved Shane’s number as “Jane” in his phone, and his assistant Svetlana wants to know why he and “Jane” have been texting each other for years.
‘Shameless, funny, epic, sexy, and deeply romantic’
Heated Rivalry is created by Jacob Tierney, who is best known for Canadian comedies Letterkenny and Shoresy.
“I wanted to bring Heated Rivalry to life and share its shameless, funny, epic, sexy, and deeply romantic journey with the world,” Tierney said.
“When I first spoke to Rachel Reid, I told her I wanted to approach this book with the care and seriousness it deserves, because it truly does.
“Shane and Ilya deserve that. And so does the queer community. [It’s] a love story complete with the kind of happy ending gay people almost never get in media.”
From the looks of it, fans of the recent Prime Video film adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, a somewhat similar forbidden queer love story, probably won’t be disappointed.
Heated Rivalry will premiere over in Canada on November 28.
