Since storming onto the streaming scene on Nov. 28, Crave and HBO Max ’s steamy gay hockey series Heated Rivalry is the talk of the town. People are obsessing over fictional hockey studs Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, played respectively by series breakout stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie.
Scroll through TikTok, X and Instagram and you’ll probably find yourself buried in a wave of #Hollanov memes, angsty fan edits and passionate — some very NSFW — fan reactions to Shane and Ilya’s sexy love affair. Clips of the pair’s big moments, such as their tension-filled clubbing scene in Episode 4 , and racy screenshots, like Shane’s back arch during a sex scene , have gone viral. Fans are devoting time to analyzing scenes in between episode drops, offering their own theories and interpretations .
“The show has very much become a force to be reckoned with,” B.J. Colangelo , entertainment journalist and media theorist, tells Yahoo.
Adapted by creator Jacob Tierney from Rachel Reid’s Game Changer romance novels, the series follows Shane and Ilya, two rival star players who begin a secret love affair that spans years.
The Canadian series peaked at No. 1 as HBO Max’s top TV show in the U.S. in its third week (Episode 5 drops Friday), and has stayed in the top three since its premiere. In Canada, it is Crave’s No. 1 original series debut ever; streaming viewership grew by almost 400% in its first seven days up north.
The paperback versions of Heated Rivalry , the second book in Reid’s series , and its follow-up, The Long Game , have been flying off shelves (and sometimes out of stock ) for weeks on Amazon. The Kindle versions are currently the No. 1 and No. 4 bestsellers , respectively.
“There’s a clear pent-up appetite for romance,” Myles McNutt, associate professor of media studies at Old Dominion University and editor of Episodic Medium , tells Yahoo. “No one had ever done a serious adaptation of this kind of material. It’s clear there’s an audience for that. It’s an audience who has been underserved, who feel like the thing that they’re connected with isn’t being paid attention to. And to have that validated [and] lifted up [is powerful].”
Colangelo calls it the “perfect storm.”
“ Hockey romance books have this massive baked-in fanbase,” she says. “Audiences, especially in America, are really starved for a show like this. … It’s not only refreshing to see a show that’s unafraid to say sex and sexuality are a major part of the human experience and does influence how we exist in the world, it’s being presented in a way that never feels preachy or educational.”