Heated Rivalry gave this former hockey player a panic attack — and hope stories like his belong on the ice

LISTEN | Former hockey players Matt Kenny and Brock McGillis talk about what it’s like to watch Heated Rivalry:

The Current24:26Heated Rivalry is a hit, but can it change hockey culture?

The first time Matt Kenny watched hit TV show Heated Rivalry, he had a panic attack that lasted five days.

Kenny played competitive hockey as a child in Quebec. But as a closeted gay kid, he felt unsafe and ultimately, walked away from the sport. Those feelings popped up again as he watched the TV romance about two gay hockey players.

“It was this heavy feeling that hung over everything, which was, you know, the fear, the joy, the secrecy of love that was never supposed to exist in daylight and, you know, internal homophobia and shame — shame that players like me wore like a second skin,” he told The Current‘s Matt Galloway.

Heated Rivalry is a Canadian television series that tells the love story of two pro hockey players on opposing teams. The adaptation of a novel by Canadian Rachel Reid has become a runaway hit for Crave, which says the show’s debut is the most successful of its original series to date.

The show’s steamy love scenes and unabashed romantic joy have people like Kenny talking about what it is actually like to be a gay man who plays competitive hockey — and expressing hope that the fear and pain they suffered will become a thing of the past.

Hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams, left) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) are pitted against each other on the ice but have a secret relationship outside the rink in Heated Rivalry. (Bell Media)

As a child, Kenny played four to six days a week, taking long bus rides to other provinces for games, but in his late teens, he quit.

“It just kind of felt like I was giving everything to this sport, and deep down inside, I just knew that this sport I loved probably wasn’t able to love me back,” he said.

He first watched Heated Rivalry on Christmas Eve and posted about the show and his own secret teenage relationship with a fellow hockey player on Instagram four days later.

“When I shared what I shared on Instagram, like, I woke up three times that night, you know, panicking — take it down, delete it, delete it. You’ve put something out in the world that isn’t safe.”

Matt Kenny’s Instagram post, made days after he first watched Heated Rivalry, includes a photo of himself as a young hockey player superimposed over the romantic couple in Heated Rivalry. (Matt Kenny/Instagram)

But he’s been “blown away” by the positive response.

He’s received hundreds of messages, not just from athletes but also from parents, telling him stories about kids being closeted and afraid.

“So many younger people are living in shadows and living in fear of coming out,” he said.

WATCH | Heated Rivalry shows joy ‘most of us didn’t end up seeing,’ Matt Kenny says:

His real-life Heated Rivalry story wasn’t full of joy

Matt Kenny played competitive hockey as a teen and recently opened up about his own secret relationship with a fellow hockey player. He says watching the hit TV romance took him back to that time in his life.

The NHL has never had an openly gay hockey player, and in October 2023, briefly banned rainbow hockey tape, used on hockey sticks to show support for LGBTQ people.

While the league backtracked after a player defied the ban, the sport has a reputation for hypermasculinity and a locker room culture that can include homophobic slurs.

Former pro hockey player Brock McGillis is challenging that locker room environment on a cross-Canada tour, speaking with players about the norms around hockey culture and asking them to step outside that.

McGillis, a gay man who played in the OHL and in Europe, was also hit hard by Heated Rivalry because of its portrayal of something he lived.

Brock McGillis is working to change hockey culture by encouraging young players to talk about more than women, sports and video games. (Submitted by Brock McGillis)

Hockey has evolved, he said, but it’s not where he’d like it to be.

There are certain topics players tend to discuss in locker rooms, he said — women, video games, sports, maybe music — but he wants them to feel able to talk about things that really matter with their teammates.

“They adhere to these norms, but there’s so much more to them,” he said on The Current. “A lot of my work is challenging them to be brave enough not to adhere to that, to share more of themselves.”

The NHL, which is sponsoring his tour, should capitalize on the popularity of Heated Rivalry, McGillis said.

“I mean, how do you not take the most popular show on television that’s about this sport and utilize it?”

For its part, the league says it welcomes new fans attracted by the show.

“This phenomenon is continuing to bring new fans into the sport of hockey and as stewards of the world’s greatest game, we welcome every fan to the party,” Jon Weinstein, the NHL’s chief communications officer, said in an email statement to CBC Radio.

Kenny says Heated Rivalry is not only going to bring new fans to the sport, it’s “going to change lives.”

“We need more voices speaking up. We need more voices so that characters like that become real life, who maybe don’t even have to come out because it just becomes so normalized that they can just be that from the minute they kind of realized this was the way they are.”

Now living in California, Kenny recently went for a skate for the first time in well over a decade.

“The little kid that I was — that was so terrified of everything that I was and didn’t think that the world could ever accept — is starting to realize that, you know, this world that we’re currently living in might just be able to do so.”