I used to play hockey in a senior men’s league in Georgetown, Ont. And when I say seniors I mean fifty-five and up. There were some surprisingly spry 80 year olds in the group.
I no longer play but I’m still on that granddad group’s email chain. One just wrote about the sensational Crave hockey-based drama Heated Rivalry, a love story based on steamy romance novels by Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid. The series, as most know by now, is heating up across North America. This one skitish Georgetown senior wrote: “To each their own but my daughter flat out said – DAD OMG NO! DO NOT WATCH IT! I think I will take her at her word.”
Fact is, this is an enormous Canadian success story and I am late to the game, so a review is overdue. Heated Rivalry stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams as hockey players on rival teams who, uh, meet in the crease; can’t stay out of the penalty box; keep earning gross misconducts.
Basically they fall in love.
Whereas Rocket Richard used to get “two minutes for looking so good,” these guys are dyeing for each other. There is elbowing, high sticking, scoring and when they drop them, they drop them. This isn’t your grandfather’s Gordie Howe hat trick; this is Gordie? How!
Many in the States — as seen at the recent Golden Globes where Storrie and Williams were presenters –are amazed at the graphic nature of this series. This is the second most outrageous thing there on ICE.
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True, male nudity is still not as common as female nudity on cable channels. The real shocker is just watching a series that breaks the taboo of showing the sex lives of gay athletes in pro sports. Consider the macho pageantry of Monday’s US College Football Championships with all that red, white and blue, flag-waving festivities. Had Heated Rivalry depicted young college football heroes as gay lovers, the White House would have deployed the ‘choppers.
This rivalry keys in on two characters. One a soviet hockey prodigy, Ilya Grigorev played by Storrie, and the other hot Canadian prospect Shane Hollander, played by Asian-Canadian Williams. The first episode shows the two circling each other on the ice in championship games. The series is told in flashbacks and flash-forwards, following their pro careers over a ten year arc.
Grigorev, the more sexually active of the two, makes the first sensuous eye contact. Hollander seems both rattled and intrigued. There is a scene of the two, side-by-side, getting all sweaty pedaling madly away on Pelotons. You can almost hear the strains of “Maniac” or other Top-40 anthems from “Flashdance” and other raunchy movies from the ’80s. Shades of “The Blue Lagoon” or “Wild Orchid,” or a few late night, “Skinemax” TV shows from the dawn of the cable era.
Eventually these two drop their towels and jump in the sack. This is the part the Georgetown senior’s daughter was warning him about, but also why the series has garnered such attention. Acts of oral sex are suggested to the extent that many viewers from Canada’s core hockey culture may want to dive for the remote. There will be jokes about Tim bits.
I watched the pilot episode with Sandra and she found it awkward as well, although, as she pointed out, if the scene showed two female hockey players getting it on, I’d be making popcorn.
There were more frisky hotel room shenanigans in the opening episode. I thought there could have been more tension, more scenes of Hollander’s hockey parents (played by Christina Chang and Nip/Tuck’s Dylan Walsh) busting in and perhaps freaking out and worrying about endorsement deals. That likely comes later. François Arnaud (The Borgias) plays a veteran hockey captain; Ksenia Daniela plays Svetlana, Ilya’s occasional female sex partner.
The series is based on “Game Changers,” a series of romance novels by Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid, and created, written, and directed by the very accomplished Jacob Tierney (“The Trotsky,” Letterkenny, Shoresy). Clearly Tierney has the on-ice scenes down pat. The two leads are game and committed, and the right age to comfortably span the decade-long story arc.
Was I compelled enough to watch the rest of the series? The pilot was well produced, but I could guess what came next from scene to scene. Perhaps there are unexpected twists and turns ahead, but I didn’t care enough about Grigorev and Hollander, and while Amaud makes the most of his short scene, nobody else really grabbed me in the pilot. Ditching now ignores some potential situations that could spark interest, including what do Hollander’s teammates feel about him fraternizing, among other things, with the enemy.
Heated Rivalry is probably a generational view, aimed mainly at younger viewers. Shot mainly in Toronto and Hamilton, Ont., it is certainly a hit. Streaming on HBO Max in America, it has already been picked up for a second season. It ranks as Crave’s most-watched original to date and is getting world wide buzz in places such as New Zealand and Spain.
Bring on a Shoresy cross-over scene or two I say; it would be fun to see the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs react to the series.
