What’s With All the Hockey Romance Adaptations?

I guess we need to get ready for a lot more hockey TV shows. This week, Netflix announced that it has given a series order to Icebreaker, which will chronicle the unlikely love story between figure skater Anastasia Allen and hockey player Nate Hawkins.

The TV show is an adaptation of Hannah Grace’s 2022 novel of the same name, which has sold over two million copies and been a frequent topic of “BookTok” for years. On paper, those details would be more than enough reason to green light a live-action adaptation… but the news started prompting a question. Why are hockey romance shows having such a moment?

The trend began, almost-inescapably, with last fall’s adaptation of Heated Rivalry. The Crave series, which found a streaming home on HBO Max, chronicled the enemies-to-lovers dynamic between rival hockey players Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams). An adaptation of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novel series, the show became a smash hit, both for how cool it made the sport of hockey seem, and the queer relationship between Ilya and Shane at the center of the show. A massive fandom blossomed around the show, as well as Storrie and Williams themselves.

Then, in May of this year, Prime Video premiered the first season of Off Campus, a television show based on Elle Kennedy’s series of books. The books are an almost Bridgerton-like anthology about a web of friends who are hockey players at the fictional Briar University, and the drama that ensues as each of them attempt to find their true love. The first season adapted the first book in the series, The Deal, which focused on the love story of music major Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) and hockey captain Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli). It did such a good job, in fact, that a second season of Off Campus was greenlit in February, months before the show even premiered.

It is worth mentioning that Off Campus was given a series order in October of 2024, long before the words “Heated Rivalry” were even on the lips of the TV world, and the books had already sold three million copies and counting when the show was first announced. But since the show debuted in May, the conversation about the two shows and their similarities have, naturally, flowed. And now, with the news of the Icebreaker TV show, that conversation has evolved yet again.

Why Do We Keep Getting Hockey Romance Shows?

On paper, it’s understandable why these shows keep becoming a reality. Hockey and winter sports are undeniably having a moment, as evidenced by how everyone embraced the US Women’s hockey team and figure skaters like Alysa Liu and Amber Glenn during the Olympics earlier this year. And the shows themselves can be pretty inexpensive to produce, and can be populated with relatively-unknown actors destined to quickly earn a following, as has been the case for the leads of both Heated Rivalry and Off Campus.

It also helps that there is a sort of built-in audience of book readers: both Off Campus and Icebreaker already sold millions of books prior to their show announcements. All three are part of shared universes of their author’s other books, which are either about hockey romances or something else entirely. Icebreaker is technically part of a trilogy known as the “Maple Hills” series, with subsequent books following rival camp counselors and students.

All three also have steamy sex scenes — Icebreaker, in particular, has become notorious, in part, for “the car scene” and an intimate moment involving… a Despicable Me Halloween costume. But many have been quick to point out that Heated Rivalry has one major difference from the other two titles: it has a queer relationship at its center. That has, to an extent, been the most buzz-worthy aspect of the show — not just when it initially aired, but in the months that have followed. Conversations about whether or not the show reflects the reality that real-life closeted hockey players felt in the sport, or the role that “fujoshi” fans have in fandom space, have ensued. And with the Icebreaker announcement, plenty began to argue that the success of Heated Rivalry should have led to more queer stories, instead of (or, at least, in addition to) hockey romance stories.

Hollywood’s attempts at capitalizing on trends aren’t anything new… and in recent years, they’ve also arguably missed the larger context of why the trend worked in the first place. The smash success of Barbie in 2023 led to a glut of toy-related movies being greenlit, instead of a push to elevate stories that are colorful, female-fronted, and female-helmed.

And the ongoing success of A24’s Backrooms has, according to a recent deep dive from The Hollywood Reporter, inspired studios to search for other Reddit posts to potentially adapt into movies and television shows. The Internet has had fun with that update, joking about the goofiest Two Sentence Horror Stories or the messiest “Am I the Asshole” posts to adapt… all while acknowledging that the actual takeaway of Backrooms should be passionate, creator-driven horror from young voices.

So in a way, the “hockey romance” trend taking precedent over the queerness of something like Heated Rivalry is unsurprising. But honestly, the trend is still only three projects, and there could still be places for things to improve.

(featured image: HBO/Prime Video)

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