From "big air" to curling, the Olympics are all about people banding together to fixate on sports they barely knew existed a month ago.
Hockey is different. While it’s among the least popular pro sports in the US, it’s a downright national obsession in Canada and has a sizable number of fans year-round. For the 2026 Winter Olympics it has a whole lot more thanks to Heated Rivalry.
The Crave show, which follows closeted pro hockey-rivals-turned-lovers Shane Hollander (played by Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), has seemingly sent the entire world into “mass psychosis.” HBO, which acquired the show for US distribution, is now playing it in well over a dozen countries and says viewership has more than doubled since the finale. In short, it’s broken a bunch of records.
But from fan edits to increased sales of National Hockey League tickets to the Ottawa Senators selling character-themed jerseys (proceeds go to the city’s LGBTQ+ rec league), the show’s celebrity has had huge knock-on effects for the actual sport.
Almost cinematically, the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics just happen to be taking place in the midst of this fervor. Both Storrie and Williams were torch bearers, and many athletes have praised the show. Warner Bros. Discovery has seen its strongest Olympics streaming numbers to date in Europe, according to Variety, with Heated Rivalry being one of the most watched shows among Milano Cortina viewers. According to marketing firm Zeta Global, female interest in hockey is up 20 percent in the past 60 days and now sits 30 percent higher than the early-2022 levels coinciding with the Beijing Olympic Games.
But hockey, like most pro sports, does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to LGBTQ+ acceptance. There are no openly gay NHL players—an outlier within pro sports, according to OutSports. In June 2023, the NHL banned players from wearing specialty-themed jerseys, such as Pride sweaters and tape; it later reversed the decision on tape after Arizona Coyotes defenseman Travis Dermott flouted the ban. NHL spokesperson Jon Weinstein told WIRED the ban on themed jerseys did not single out Pride and that the league still offers Pride-themed apparel.
Harrison Browne was the first openly trans pro hockey player. He was a Buffalo Beauts and Metropolitan Riveters center for the Premier Hockey Federation—a professional women’s team that was previously known as the NWHL—and came out via an ESPN article in October 2016. Now an actor and filmmaker, he also stars in Heated Rivalry as one of Rozanov’s teammates.
Recently Browne called out USA Hockey’s decision to reverse its inclusive 2019 policy for trans players and limit trans players' ability to participate in programs that are designated by sex, which includes rec teams. The new policy, which will go into effect April 1, means that in any program “where participation is restricted by sex, athletes are only permitted to participate in such programs based on their sex assigned at birth.” It also states that trans men can’t play in games, even so-called “beer league” games, for women players if they have “undergone male hormone therapy.”
Browne explains it more plainly. “I personally can't play in a USA Hockey recreational adult league with my friends that I played my entire career with, just because I have testosterone in my system,” he says. “Like, we're just adults having fun.”
As for why the change is taking place, Browne, who is Canadian, says, “We can't really overlook the fact that the current [Trump] administration is really putting a lot of pressure on sports leagues, withholding funding, other types of threats if they don't come up with policies that exclude trans people.”