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This story contains spoilers for the show Heated Rivalry.
Actor François Arnaud, who co-stars in the hit Canadian series Heated Rivalry, says while it seems the NHL has figured out that the steamy hockey romance is a big deal, he’d like to see the league do more to promote actual diversity on the ice, rather than just capitalize on the show’s success for marketing purposes.
Heated Rivalry, a romantic drama about two fictional professional men’s hockey players who fall in love, has become a major hit since it started streaming late last year. The show, which was created for Bell Media’s streaming platform, Crave, and airs on HBO Max in the U.S., has already been renewed for a second season.
Montreal-born Arnaud, who is openly bisexual, plays Scott Hunter, the closeted captain of the New York Admirals in the fictional Major League Hockey, where he plays against Ilya Rozonov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), two players who maintain an intense rivalry on the ice and a passionate relationship off it.
Throughout the first season, Hunter begins a relationship with Kip, an openly gay man, but they break up over Hunter’s need to hide his sexuality, until he comes out very publicly at a pivotal moment.
Throughout the show’s meteoric rise, Arnaud has been getting questions about how hockey fans and the hockey world have responded to it.
CBC’s Emma Weller checks in with Ottawa Pride Hockey to see how the hit show Heated Rivalry is being received by the city’s 2SLGBTQ+ hockey community.
NHL needs to ‘back it up’: Arnaud
“I think they’re actually really good at capitalizing on it,” said Arnaud, referring to the way the NHL has nodded to the show, during a recent interview with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM.
One Dec. 23 post from the Boston Bruins on X featured images of several fights from a game against their longtime rivals the Montreal Canadiens along with the words “Heated rivalry” and fire and flexed muscle emojis.
More recently, the Ottawa Senators began selling jerseys featuring the names of Heated Rivalry‘s main characters.
“If you’re going to use our name,” Arnaud said of the references, the league needs to “back it up,” in real life.
“I’m just hoping that it’s backed up by actual, like, openness to diversity,” said Arnaud.
NHL ‘well aware’ of Heated Rivalry: Bettman
In a statement sent to CBC News on Monday, the NHL said “Heated Rivalry is a phenomenon that is bringing new fans to our great sport and what those new fans will find is a warm welcome.”
The league also pointed to “Pride Nights to celebrate the LGBTQ community” held by teams “across the league,” including a recent game in Washington. And it highlighted its continuing commitment to the Pride Cup, an annual competition between players from local 2SLGBTQ+ leagues, which debuted in Toronto in 2024 and continued last year in Boston. This year’s Pride Cup will be held in Vancouver.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said he binged the entire six-episode first season in one evening.
Separately, he’s said that Heated Rivalry is “a wonderful story” and the league is “well aware” of the program. But he also noted that the show’s content “may be a little spicy” for some, and suggested that had particular implications for how the league interacts with it.
“The content, particularly for young people, may be a little spicy and so you have to balance that out, in terms of how you embrace it,” Bettman told reporters last week.
The NHL has faced criticism, at times, over how far it’s willing to go to support diversity and inclusion.
In June 2023, the league said that its players would no longer wear special jerseys to support causes, including Pride, during pre-game warmups on theme nights.
The Canadian streaming sensation Heated Rivalry — which centres on a gay romance between two professional hockey players — has been a big hit with viewers, who have ranked it among the highest-rated episodes of all time on IMDB.
Series rooted in ‘real-world’ 2SLGBTQ+ issues
Canadian author Rachel Reid, who wrote the Game Changers book series that Heated Rivalry is based on, has said that part of the story her characters face is rooted in real-world reactions to 2SLGBTQ+ issues in the sport.
“If you look at any post about a Pride night in the NHL … if you read the comments underneath, you’re going to see some of the worst things you’ve ever seen in your life,” she told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.
Beyond the world of Heated Rivalry, there are real people playing hockey today who see a sport that needs to do more to welcome everyone who takes to the ice.
“I really hope that people understand how othering and ostracizing it is to be a queer person playing hockey and how few queer people feel safe in, particularly, men’s hockey spaces,” Cedar Osso, a skills coach with Ottawa Pride Hockey, told CBC Ottawa.
