Join the club: ‘Heated Rivalry’ is making queer hockey New York’s hottest sport

Themed club nights and watch parties. Thousands of e-book downloads from the New York Public Library. A crowd gathered in Tompkins Square Park for a scream-sing-along in the freezing cold.

In New York, as everywhere, the “Heated Rivalry” phenomenon has swept through town, including among fans looking to recreate some of its magic — on ice.

In the queer hockey romance, the sport itself is more a setting than the plot. Yet the show’s popularity has led to a wave of people itching to lace up their skates.

At the New York City Pride Hockey Alliance, a league for LGBTQ+ players, organizers have noticed a lot more interest since the show premiered on HBO Max late last year.

Before the show, the league got a new player request once “every three months” or so, said Steve Greenberg, the president of NYC PHA. Likes and views have spiked exponentially, said Mike Bresette, a board member and player who helps run the league’s social media accounts, with between 85,000 and 135,000 views on recent posts when normally the NYC PHA would see “a couple thousand.”

The surge in interest has surprised Besette. He thought the show would be “like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ for hockey,” he said — until he was “bawling my eyes out for several different reasons watching an episode.”

“I don’t even know if I can remember the last time something like this happened where the buzz around one show or one thing has been this extreme,” he said.

On a recent Sunday, that enthusiasm translated to hundreds of people gathered at a playground in Greenwich Village for a look-alike contest for “Heated Rivalry”’s main characters, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander. Despite a steady wind and 20-degree weather, the crowd overflowed onto nearby fences, snowbanks and into Mercer Street.

Among them was Noa, a queer Brooklynite who grew up in Toronto playing hockey, and is now inspired to return to the game. The show “reminded me of the fact that I really loved this sport as a kid,” they told THE CITY, and of how much they love the Professional Women’s Hockey League, full of “queer women with the most amazing and romantic and funny and cute love stories.”

Recently, they found a women’s recreation league at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside skating rink in Prospect Park, 15 minutes away from their place in Flatbush.

“This has been my reminder that I really want to get back into this,” they said.

‘I like my hot queer teammates!’

Across town, a couple of hours after the look-alike contest, the Party Lizards are getting ready to play the Stonewall Shepherds at the Chelsea Piers Sky Rink. It’s the first of two games of the evening for the NYC PHA’s recreation league, which welcomes people of all playing levels.

The league also welcomes players of any gender or sexual identity, including straight people, said Greenberg. Of about 300 players, he estimates about half are queer and half are straight.

“We love our allies,” Greenberg said.

The league is always trying to diversify its membership. That was the impetus for a scholarship fund begun in 2021 to help defray the significant cost of playing. (The fee for a 13-game season at the NYC PHA is $645, and equipment can cost hundreds of dollars.) Though the fund is open to anyone, it was created specifically with trans players in mind, given the income gap between trans and cis people, Greenberg said.

“As a result of the scholarship program, we have seen a huge uptick in participation of the transgender community, which is what we want to see,” he said.

Now, the league gives away about $40,000 a year to players who need financial help getting on the ice. And with the positive attention from “Heated Rivalry,” Greenberg is hoping for more donations this year.

He’s been on the board for a decade and keeps volunteering “for the stories.” Greenberg recalled one email from a player who said he had been “contemplating suicide until this organization kept me alive.”

“That’s what keeps me going,” he said.

As the teams gathered for the game, a key song from the “Heated Rivalry” soundtrack, “I’ll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade, boomed from the rink’s speakers. The NYC PHA players hauled gear to benches, strapped on pads, chatted and passed around a light-up princess wand left behind after a kid’s birthday party.

For Nozlee Samadzadeh, a 38-year-old defensive player, hockey started as a pandemic-era hobby and has become a bit of an obsession. They now play in three winter leagues: “Two gay teams and one women’s team.”

“ It’s just really rare that I don’t leave the ice with a smile on my face, whether we win or lose,” they said. “And I don’t know — I like my hot queer teammates! Hot queer friends came to watch our game. I got to wink at them through the glass! Like, that’s so fun.”

And has Samadzadeh watched the show?

“ You’re legally required to, I think, if you’re a gay hockey player,” they replied. “It’s fun and hot and insane that it’s on TV. Who can complain?”

During the game in the players’ box, Samadzadeh and fellow Lizards cheered for each other, slamming the boards with hockey sticks wrapped in rainbow-colored tape. They scored several goals, but couldn’t beat the Shepherds — Greenberg’s team — in the end.

The NYC PHA league is not the only gay league seeing a “Heated Rivalry”-related boost. At Boston Pride Hockey, more than 10 new players have started in the past month, and there’s been a “clear increase in curiosity and engagement,” board member Kevin Corsino told THE CITY — including from many people who “stepped away from hockey years ago, or never felt it was a space for them.”

The all-volunteer staff at Chicago Pride Hockey has had trouble keeping up with all the attention; they’ve received 75 new player requests since the beginning of the year, a representative said. In Washington, D.C., the Gay Hockey DC league has seen a “real shift,” said founder Justin del Rosario.

“More people reaching out, more new players asking how to join and more fans coming out to games. We’ve had people tell us directly that they found us through the show, which is pretty amazing,” he wrote in an email. “It shows that people are hungry for spaces built on belonging and authenticity.”

For Bresette at NYC PHA, he jokes about how much attention the show has brought to the sport — “I’m like, is everything a “Heated Rivalry” reference now?” — but is “super grateful for the exposure.”

“ I’ve been in plenty of toxic locker rooms and the whole nine yards,” he said. “And to find this league and to play with like-minded people that have been through what you’ve been through — have shared the same experiences and now everyone can play freely — is just quite powerful.”