Ah, hockey. The most impish of sports. A bunch of blissfully beefy individuals wearing colorful sweaters zoom around in skates chasing a wee little object called, of all things, a “puck”. It’s adorable. It’s like A Midsummer Night’s Dream for people missing teeth. These days, if you’re talking about hockey, you probably are thinking about HBO Max’s gay sex-capade romance, Heated Rivalry. In the TV series, two hockey players on opposing teams fall in love, engaging in various erotic scenarios in between smashing each other into plexiglass. Actually, maybe that second part is connected to the first part.

Heated Rivalry has become an absolute phenomenon, enthralling American audiences despite all the factors that might prevent someone less than tolerant from connecting with the show – it’s gay, it’s about one of our least popular major team sports, and most damning of all, it’s Canadian. It might as well be about talking beavers. And yet, it’s a major hit that’s done a lot of good for healthy representation of the LGBTQ community.

Still, as hockey emerges from the ice, flails its stick in our faces and screams “I’m kind of like soccer, but colder and with more equipment,” the real players are now challenging their sexy fictional counterparts for cultural supremacy. I just wish it was all less stupid.

The final days of the 2026 Winter Olympics were dominated by the culmination of the men’s and women’s hockey tournaments. In both cases, the American team conquered their gentle, maple syrup-infused enemies from the north. Not only did both the men and women defeat Canada, but........

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