Hockey season this year is for the girls and the gays.

With the release of Heated Rivalry on HBO Max everyone is talking about hockey. The show follows two hockey rivals, Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), throughout their journeys from rookies to NHL stardom as they struggle to hide their secret romantic relationship amidst the growing pressures of their personal and professional lives.

Although they are always fighting each other tooth and nail for the number one spot, Shane and Ilya are everything the other is not. Shane is the perfect poster-boy for his team, an Asian-Canadian with a spotless reputation. And Ilya is quite the opposite. He is cocky and arrogant, earning the reputation of the Russian asshole who plays dirty. Yet Shane is the only one who can beat Ilya, and Ilya is the only one who can distract Shane from the game. As the lines of hatred and attraction blur, one thing is clear: the two boys are obsessed with each other. And while they are quick to give in to the physical intimacy they are both so clearly desperate for, it is the complicated emotions that come after that will force them to think about what it is they really want throughout their years of secret trysts. They could lose everything if the truth of their relationship gets out, but as their attraction for each other grows, they will be forced to make a choice: ambition or love.

Heated Rivalry is based on the novel by Rachel Reid of the same name, the second book in her Game Changers series. Fans of the book have been waiting for months to see how faithful the show will be to its original form and so far the news is good. Shane and Ilya will be seen in all their glory, from intense yearning, to their complicated internal struggles, and the steamy scenes of explicit intimacy between them. The show is giving us everything the book promised, which is a relief because of how beloved the book is.

In a world where hockey romance is an oversaturated market, Heated Rivalry stands apart from the rest. While other hockey romance books are primarily centered on the romance and use hockey as more of a setting, the world of hockey and its intricacies have a huge impact on the relationship between Shane and Ilya. Fans of Heated Rivalry have actually noted that it has the most accurate depiction of hockey seen in any of the hockey romances that are currently popular.

So maybe I lied. Hockey season this year isn’t just for the girls and the gays, but for anyone who enjoys some romance and sex with their hockey. So let’s take a look at the first two episodes of Heated Rivalry.

Episode 1: Rookies

Right off the bat, the show skips the book’s prologue, a scene eight years into their relationship that gives us a quick peak into their rivalry turned romance (and a taste of the many hot scenes to come), and instead dives right into their meeting before their first game against each other in Saskatchewan, Regina for the International Prospect Cup. But fans of the book shouldn’t be disappointed for long. The show delivers their banter from the book word for word as Shane and Ilya size each other up for the first time. This is where it all begins, with Ilya holding a cigarette between his lips as he shakes Shane’s hand, telling him “you won’t be so nice when we beat you,” and Shane’s answering “that’s not happening.”

After Canada’s defeat, we then jump six months ahead to the draft, where Ilya swoops in, taking the number one spot with the Boston Raiders and leaving Shane at number two, being drafted by the Montreal Metros. Unable to sleep after the event, Shane goes to the gym for a midnight workout, where Ilya joins him moments later. After a rigorous workout, pushed harder by their need to out-do each other, the two share an unexpectedly soft moment together, sitting on the floor of the gym passing a water bottle between them. While their conversation is nothing unusual for two rivaling hockey players, the camera highlights the unspoken desire already showing between the two of them. Intense eye contact, hands brushing, the first spark of the yearning that will ruin them both.

Another six months later, Ilya receives a phone call from his brother Alexei, giving us our first look into the life Ilya left in Russia to play hockey, the night before his second game against Montreal. The Metros win, another loss Ilya has to pass on to his family. Meanwhile Shane is receiving a different kind of pressure, the kind that comes from sponsorships and always presenting himself as the perfect role-model.

After shooting an ad campaign together six months later, Shane and Ilya cannot keep their eyes off each other. Even in the shower. Even after Shane tells Ilya to “fuck off,” misinterpreting the spark in his gaze. But Ilya knows what he wants and Shane quickly realizes that Ilya isn’t messing around when he sees Ilya touching himself, eyes still on Shane. “Not here,” Shane says, and when Ilya knocks on Shane’s hotel door, he opens.

Their first night together begins, filled with competitive banter and ending with Ilya’s promise to Shane that he won’t tell anyone about what transpired between.

(For all the dirty details and delicious camera shots you’re just going to have to give it a watch yourself!)

Three months later, we cut to Ilya boasting about making 50 goals this season and Shane is put under the pressure of more brand deals by becoming an ambassador of Rolex. After losing their face off, Ilya watches Shane’s interview from his hotel room, asking him how it feels to be perfect. Meanwhile, his brother calls and asks him for more money.

The second time Shane and Ilya hook up is four months later, but with Shane’s teammate in the room next door, things are less than ideal. Shane’s insecurities begin to show, his thoughts spiraling as they plan where they will meet up in two weeks when they are both in Montreal. But unlike Shane, this is not Ilya’s first time hiding a gay relationship. “It is just a plan to fuck,” Ilya says, and puts his number in Shane’s phone under the name “Lily,” saving Shane’s under “Jane.”

But when two weeks go by, a snowstorm hits and Ilya is stuck in Boston. Instead of flying to Montreal to meet Shane, Ilya goes home, where his friend Svetlana is waiting for him. While Ilya is having sex, Shane spends the evening having a mundane dinner with friends waiting for Ilya to text him back.

Four months later, Rookie of the Year is announced with Shane taking the win. Shane finds Ilya outside, brooding, and they argue. As Shane walks away, Ilya kisses him, but this isn’t what Shane wanted, out in the open where anyone could walk out and see them. So he pushes him away, leaving Ilya to stand there staring after him with a look of longing etched deep into his eyes.

And back to Russia he goes.

Episode 2: Olympians

The episode opens with a montage of scenes spanning the months between summer of 2011 to spring of 2013, all throughout which “Jane” and “Lily” text each other back and forth, flirting and teasing. Or rather, Ilya flirts with Shane, sending him crass texts in the middle of the day and dick pics at night, while Shane struggles to give in to the sexual nature of their back and forth.

We then jump to fall of 2013, the season Ilya has made promises to give Shane exactly what he wants. Before their first game of the season, Ilya sends Shane a text: how many times can you cum in 1 hour? Shane types several messages, as if struggling to decide how he feels, before settling on an appropriate, if not slightly boring, response to Ilya’s sexting. Cut to Railer’s locker room where Marly, Ilya’s teammate, tells him he’s blushing.

After the game, Ilya arrives at Shane’s apartment, where he is immediately rushed inside. We then receive a few scenes of their night together, wherein Ilya tenderly asks Shane if he’s okay, checking in with him each step of the way. At the end of the night, Ilya asks Shane if it was worth the wait, to which Shane answers by kissing him, once on the lips and then softly on his forehead.

And then onto the Sochi Olympics!

The Olympics open with a shot of Ilya being interviewed after Russia’s loss to Latvia, sweaty and disassociating, and Shane sending him a text asking if he is okay. He doesn’t respond.

Instead of being able to comfort Ilya, Shane is with his teammates, where they have a conversation about Shane’s friend Joe, who is performing in the men’s short form figure skating program. When one of Shane’s teammates says he would love to show up for any man who’s that brave, Shane asks him what he means, to which he says that if Joe is gay, Russia is not a safe place for him to openly express himself. At Joe’s performance, Shane approaches Ilya to once again check in on him after Russia’s loss. Ilya, who is obviously under more stress than he is letting on to Shane (the text from his brother announcing that their father is fucking mad at you is a good enough indicator), pushes him away and tells Shane that they aren’t anything and to go away.

The camera cuts to Ilya with his father, who is, as Alexei said, angry. But throughout his rant, Ilya’s father gets increasingly confused and while being shouted at, Ilya must continue to guide his father’s mind back to the present. After, they attend a party with the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, a party Svetlana and Sasha, the notorious coach’s son Ilya first had sex with, are also attending. The three of them find a moment’s peace together, where Sasha comes on to Ilya. Ilya only tells him to stop and once Sasha leaves, he looks at his phone to read Shane’s u doing okay? text.

In the spring of 2014, Shane is captain of the Montreal Metros and Ilya is captain of the Boston Raiders. While Shane is watching the Boston vs. San Francisco game for the cup with his team in Montreal, Ilya is delivering game-winning speeches and leading his team to victory. Shane stares at the TV as Ilya holds the cup in his hands, glassy eyed, with a smile flickering in and out that suggests what he is feeling isn’t as simple as plain jealousy.

At the Major League Hockey Awards, Shane and Ilya present an award together and the tension between them comes to a head. In the bathroom, away from the crowd, Shane lets out all the emotions that have been building up since the Olympics, demanding to know what Ilya wants from him. But despite all of the complicated emotions brewing between them, more than anything, they want each other (and perhaps maybe even need each other). So they go back to their seats, watch the rest of the show, and attend the boring party, with Ilya’s promise that he will do whatever Shane wants if he wins MVP night.

Shane doesn’t win. But even at Ilya’s mercy, Shane manages to unstring him with heated looks and a dangerous new coyness (not to mention Hudson Williams’ insane back arch that broke the internet). At the end of the night, Shane’s attempt to ask Ilya if he likes it in Russia, if he is even safe there, causes Ilya to turn him away once again.

Shane leaves Ilya’s hotel room and gets into the elevator, slowly deleting an unsent text on his phone: we didn’t even kiss.

“Fuck.”

My thoughts so far

As far as just the show goes (I’ll get into the book in a minute), I’m finding myself really enjoying it. There is a really good balance between romance and plot and I’m happy to see that there are complex things happening in the characters’ lives outside the conflicting nature of their relationship. Both Shane and Ilya have more weighing on them than just hockey and their desires for each other, which not only makes the plot multidimensional but also puts more emotions into the mix that will, in turn, affect their relationship.

I don’t know much about hockey, so I cannot speak to the show’s accuracy as many fans of the book have, but I do think that the show is doing an excellent job showing how much pressure both Shane and Ilya are under as they strive to go pro.

In terms of the sex scenes, since there is much discourse online as to how explicit they are, the show remains pretty true to the book. So if you are uncomfortable watching a show with handjobs, blowjobs, and penetration, then maybe this isn’t the show for you. That being said, the director is strategic with the camera work, not only delivering us gorgeous shots of Shane and Ilya draped over each other in the most perfect and delectable ways, but with strategic positioning that allows us to know what is happening without actually seeing too much. HBO has definitely aired more explicit shows than this (Game of Thrones, I’m looking at you) and, in my opinion, this isn’t anything more graphic than the kinds of shows on Netflix that also contain explicit sex scenes.

Book vs. Movie

Although only two episodes have aired, I am in agreement with the masses: the show is very faithful to the book. Several scenes are directed in the exact ways they were written and a lot of the dialogue is word for word what Rachel Reid originally wrote. Although a few changes have already been made, such as slightly altering the timeline and adding some additional scenes, the show is probably as close to the book as you can get when understanding that some changes must be made when converting a book into a TV show. But, there are certainly some things that the book naturally does better.

I am in the unique position where I watched the show first and then started reading the book and one thing I didn’t realize when watching the show was that Ilya is not 100% fluent in English. While I think that the show hints at it, making jokes about how Ilya knows certain vulgar words in English but not more useful ones or asking him if he used google translate when texting, I don’t think that it fully conveys that there is a language barrier that impacts Ilya’s confidence. You see this particularly in the interview scene in episode one, when the reporter asks Ilya a lengthy and convoluted question. While his hesitance to answer first came off as a moment of nerves when being reminded of the immense pressure he is under (specifically from what is expected of him back in Russia) and his curt response after an attempt at him being funny, the book portrays this in a different light. When Ilya doesn’t immediately respond, Shane realizes that Ilya probably didn’t understand all the English in the question being asked of him. The result is the same. Shane still politely cuts in to save Ilya when he can’t respond, but I do think that the language barrier is a layer to Ilya’s struggle that is overlooked by the show.

The other major difference is that when reading the book, we get a better look at Shane and Ilya’s emotions. While the actors are undeniably doing an incredible job encapsulating the struggles and complicated emotions of their respected characters, there is only so much they can convey to us when we are not in their heads listening to the personal narratives.

Instead of just seeing Ilya watch Shane’s interview in perfect French on TV and being harassed by his brother to send him thousands of dollars, commenting on how nice it must be for Shane to be so perfect, the book offers a slightly deeper perspective.

“Ilya told himself the twisted feeling in his stomach was just jealousy, but he was terrified that it was something much, much worse.”

As Shane and Ilya’s obsession with each other blurs the lines between love and hate, they both suffer from an immense fear. While the show does a good job conveying particularly Shane’s fear of getting caught, of being publicly outed as the first gay hockey player, I think the show downplays Ilya’s fear of what his feelings for Shane could actually be. We see this in Shane’s unsent text to Ilya at the end of episode two, in the way he slowly deletes every letter of the vulnerable text before swearing. But unlike Shane, I don’t think we see this in Ilya as clearly as the book conveys to the reader.

That being said, I still agree that the show is doing an excellent job remaining faithful to the book. I think that a show is inherently not going to capture all the details a book can, simply because of the fact that we are watching from the outside rather than viewing the story from the inside of two alternating perspectives. And even with the small changes, nothing has impacted the overall story and the impact it has on the audience.

The story continues…

HBO Max dropped the first two episodes of Heated Rivalry on Friday, November 28th and will continue to release an episode each Friday until the season finale on December 26th.

In comparison to the book, episode one contains all of part one and episode two all of part two, leaving us at about 38% of the way through the book. If the show continues to remain true to the book, then we should be picking up right where we left off, at the beginning of part three in October 2016, two years after Shane walked away from Ilya the night of the Major League Hockey Awards.

Happy watching!