The series has been described as a slow-burn story that’s emotional and filled with sexual tension. “Heated Rivalry” follows the story of two competitive hockey players, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander — played by Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams. If you want know when it is streaming for free, click ‘Free’ in the filters above and hit the notification bell.
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 https://www.boombetonline.nl/ 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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However, ten days later, Tierney told Variety that the second season would not premiere at the same time the following year, citing slower progress on the episode scripts. Tierney’s creative executive at Crave, Rachel Goldstein, discouraged him from adapting Heated Rivalry’s epilogue into the series, as it could have been perceived as setting up a second season that had not been confirmed at the time. The first season then premiered online on Crave on November 28, 2025, and was picked up for streaming on HBO Max in selected territories; Neon in New Zealand; and Movistar Plus+ in Spain. A trailer for the series alludes to the covert nature of the hockey players’ tryst as a woman asks Shane if there are “any gay hockey players.” The first two episodes of “Heated Rivalry”premiered on HBO Max on Nov. 28.
- 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.
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- Following the episode’s reception, the series itself also entered IMDb Top 250 TV shows chart.
- Each new episode drops on HBO Max at 12 a.m.
- However, by the release of the season finale on December 26, weekly viewership had increased more than tenfold to 324 million minutes.
The series has been described by media outlets as a global sensation and a break-out critical hit. 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. The series had its preview screening at the Image+Nation LGBTQ+ Film Festival in Montreal, Canada on November 23, 2025. Heated Rivalry is a Canadian sports romance television series created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney for Crave.
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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 series became a significant word-of-mouth success, characterized by an “unusual” growth pattern in its viewership. HBO Max also revealed the show is the No. 2 driver of first-time viewers on the platform since its release. The series also debuted at number two in Australia, and consistently ranks as the number one show each week. In addition to its critical reception, the episode achieved notable audience recognition. BJ Colangelo of /Film also praised the performances, specifically Williams, Storrie, and Sophie Nélisse, and remarked that the series and Storrie are deserving of Emmy recognitions. Whitney Evans of TV Fanatic praised the episode’s structure and pacing, as well as Storrie’s performance, highlighting his Russian accent work and screen presence.
Cast and characters
- 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.
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- The renewal follows strong viewer interest and streaming performance during the first season’s rollout.
- In the first 11 minutes of the show’s pilot, for instance, there are four separate time jumps—“One Week Later,” “Six Months Later,” “Six Months Later,” “Six Months Later.” While the pace slows a bit after that opening hopscotch, the time jump remains the show’s signature structuring device.
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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.
He had listened to the Game Changers series on audio book and wanted to discuss the possibility of adapting them to a limited television series. Jacob Tierney first reached out to Reid on August 7, 2023, a day after The Washington Post ran an article about hockey romance novels. Heated Rivalry is based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novel series (2018–2026), with the second novel, Heated Rivalry (2019), providing the series’ title. Although their on-ice rivalry is amplified by media coverage and public perception, the two develop a private, initially casual sexual relationship that continues intermittently over several years as they pursue their hockey careers. Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are two professional ice hockey players who compete on rival teams, the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders, respectively.
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Although HBO Max later acquired the series, it became involved only after the first season had been completed, meaning the show was not developed as a U.S. co-production from the outset. Despite a minimal marketing campaign and a low-cost licensing fee of approximately $600,000 per episode, it experienced a rapid surge in popularity following its late-November premiere. According to data shared by Crave’s social media accounts, the show exhibited unusually high “stickiness”, with a rewatch rate where approximately one-third (33%) of the total audience watched the entire season more than once. According to JustWatch, Heated Rivalry ranked fourth on its television streaming chart during the week of December 7, 2025, while Whip Media, based on data from its TV Time viewership tracking platform of more than 25 million users, reported the series placed sixth during the weeks of December 7 and 14. Following the episode’s reception, the series itself also entered IMDb Top 250 TV shows chart.
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.
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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.