Heated Rivalry, an ice hockey romance, is a television series created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney for Crave Media based on the Game Changers novels by Rachel Reid. The series follows the evolving relationship between 2 professional hockey players, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, who maintain a secret, long-term romantic relationship while playing for rival teams. Hollander, a Japanese-Canadian, who plays for the Montreal Metros, and Rozanov, a Russian immigrant playing for the Boston Raiders, navigate emerging adulthood as profession athletes in hypermasculine sports culture and as public figures, struggling with obligations to their families of origin as they wrestle with visibility management around their sexual identities as gay and bisexual men and as their cultural differences collide in their efforts to understand each other. Clinically, Heated Rivalry invites us to support gay males in emerging adulthood who are navigating visibility management with cultural humility and awareness.
Lamar-Sterling et al. (2026) studied this question.