I grew up in a hockey town where there was no escaping Canada’s beloved sport. Our suburban streets doubled as rinks; the choppy slap of tennis balls reverberating against hockey sticks a constant sound. As pre-teens, my friends and I would put on lip gloss and tight jeans to hang out at the Friday night junior hockey games. I still find comfort in the sound of skate blades slicing across ice and that sweaty, chemical odour of public arenas.

My experiences are not unique in a country with a 95-year-old broadcast institution called Hockey Night in Canada. Rachel Reid, the Nova Scotian author of the queer hockey romance Heated Rivalry, grew up a hockey fanatic, more interested in playing the game than ogling boys. Jacob Tierney, who wrote and directed the TV adaptation of Reid’s 2019 bestseller, was raised in Montreal, where the Canadiens (or the Habs, as the team is affectionately known) are considered sacred.

This is not to romanticise a sport fraught with a history of racism, misogyny and homophobia. In July last year, six months before Heated Rivalry aired and became a cultural juggernaut, five junior hockey players were acquitted of sexual assault. And there still isn’t an openly gay player in the National Hockey League (NHL). The NHL released an innocuous statement acknowledging the show’s popularity but not the issues it addresses: “There are so many ways to get hooked on hockey and, in the NHL’s 108-year history, this might be the most........

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