{"id":412933,"date":"2026-01-17T17:44:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/412933\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T17:44:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T17:44:28","slug":"nhl-commissioner-gary-bettman-shares-bold-heated-rivalry-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/412933\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman Shares Bold \u2018Heated Rivalry\u2019 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman shared his bold Heated Rivalry<\/a> review after binging all six episodes of the spicy, gay hockey show.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the January 15 game between the San Jose Sharks and Washington Capitals, Bettman, 73, spoke to reporters<\/a> about the smash-hit HBO Max<\/a> series based on the books by Rachel Reid.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve watched all six episodes. I binged it in one night,\u201d the commissioner admitted. \u201cI thought the storyline was very compelling and a lot of fun, because I could see where they were picking at things that we had in the past, whether or not it was [the Olympics] being in Sochi or the All-Star Game in Tampa. It was very well done.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Q&A, Bettman said that the NHL has \u201cmeaningfully embrace[d]\u201d the LGBTQ+ community, pointing to Pride Nights and the league\u2019s collaboration with the LGBTQ+ nonprofit You Can Play<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a wonderful story. The content, particularly for young people, may be a little spicy. And so you have to balance that out in terms of how you embrace it,\u201d Bettman said.<\/p>\n

In response to a reporter bringing up Stub Hub\u2019s 40% increase in hockey ticket interest<\/a> since the show came out, Bettman said, \u201cThere are a lot of things about the game that we think are driving more and more people to the game, and I do believe Heated Rivalry is one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heat Rivalry follows the story of Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams<\/a>) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie<\/a>), hockey rivals who share a hidden romance and eventual secret love through many years of their careers. It also stars Fran\u00e7ois Arnaud<\/a> as Scott Hunter, another gay hockey player, who falls in love with a smoothie shop worker, Kip (Robbie Graham-Kuntz<\/a>), and comes out in the show by kissing him on the ice after winning the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n

After watching the series, one real-life hockey player (although he never played in the NHL), Jesse Kortuem, even came out publicly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since its November 28 premiere, Heated Rivalry became the most-watched original series ever on Bell Media\u2019s Crave streaming platform, per Variety<\/a>. It is also the top-rated, non-animated acquired series on HBO Max in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Heated Rivalry Season 1, streaming on HBO Max<\/p>\n

Read the latest entertainment news on TV Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NHL commissioner Gary Bettman shared his bold Heated Rivalry review after binging all six episodes of the spicy,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[295,34883,5,2525,4,168,109],"class_list":["post-412933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-gary-bettman","tag-heated-rivalry","tag-hockey","tag-hockey-player","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-washington-capitals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115911685753431268","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}