How Older Gay Hockey Fans Found Themselves In “Heated Rivalry”
The HBO series Heated Rivalry has been a global hit. Based on Rachel Reid’s romance novels, the show follows two closeted professional hockey players whose on-ice competition hides a secret off-ice relationship. It has broken streaming records, dominated social media, and even landed its leads a spot carrying the Olympic Torch ahead of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games.
The conversation most people missed.
A lot has been written about the show’s popularity with straight women. Less attention has been paid to the men who saw their own lives reflected back at them.
Mike Holmes, 59, started watching for the sex. “The first two episodes are the spiciest and, of course, that’s fun to watch,” he told The 19th. But it was actor François Arnaud’s coming-out scene that caught him off guard. “The actor seems to be gulping air. I could viscerally feel that and flashed back to coming out to important people,” Holmes said. “The first couple of times you come out, there’s such a sense of panic.”
Holmes has been married for over two decades and out for a long time. But Heated Rivalry pulled him back to a period he thought he had moved past. “The show is set in the late 2010s. The idea is that they can’t come out because they’re in the hypermasculine world of hockey,” he said. “But when I was growing up, that was my reality everywhere. It wasn’t just hockey, it was life.”
A love story that started with a hockey jersey.
Eric Pinder, 59, initially resisted watching. “My response was that I’m watching actual hockey right now. The season is on,” he told The 19th. When he finally gave it a go, he was surprised by how much he connected with it.
Pinder and his husband Dwayne Smoot have been together 25 years. They got married on the ice at the Orlando Solar Bears arena, complete with a Zamboni-shaped cake and a goal horn when they kissed. The couple met at a party where Pinder was wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey. Smoot recognised the logo but knew nothing about the sport, much like the dynamic between characters Scott Hunter and Kip Grady on the show.
Pinder is now working on a Heated Rivalry opera parody for the Orlando Fringe Festival.
Gay hockey fandom existed long before the show.
Craig Brownstein, 68, co-founded PuckBuddys in 2010 with his late husband, journalist Doug Johnson. The blog became the hub of a small but passionate gay hockey community. At its peak, around 20 contributors wrote for the site. Brownstein and Johnson earned press credentials to cover Washington Capitals games and were featured across national media.
“We were going to be the cheeky gay bastards of the NHL (National Hockey League) and, as a lark, write about that,” Brownstein said. He is less taken with the show itself, but remains optimistic about what it could mean. “If anybody gay watches Heated Rivalry for the sex and the scintillating aspects, if they come to care more about the sport, they will be welcomed in the fandom as gay fans,” he said.
At DNA, we went deeper.
The current issue, DNA #313’s The Real Heated Rivalry story, features a personal essay by Kade Matthews, founder and president of Southern Lights, an LGBTQIA+ inclusive ice hockey club based in Melbourne. Matthews writes about how hockey saved his life at 28 while he was confronting his bisexuality and living with bipolar disorder.
It’s a story about what happens when queer people stop waiting for permission and build something for themselves. Get a copy. HERE
