Heated Rivalry, since its release in November, has swept through global pop culture. The series tells the story of two fictional male ice hockey players—Shawn Holland, a Japanese-Canadian portrayed by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rozanov, a Russian played by Connor Story—who develop a secret romantic relationship while maintaining a public rivalry throughout their hockey careers.

Everyone wants a piece of the action, and the NHL—the league widely regarded as the most anti-LGBTQ+ sports organization in North America—is no exception.

POLL: Of the Big 4 major men's pro sports leagues in America, which do you perceive to be the most anti-LGBTQ?

— Outsports (@outsports) December 18, 2023

The Montreal Canadiens, the real-life team that serves as the prototype for Shawn Holland’s team in the show, played a trailer for Heated Rivalry during their Pride Night event on December 9 local time, when they hosted the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The Boston Bruins, the real-world counterpart to Ilya Rozanov’s team in the series, played All The Things She Said, the show’s iconic background music, during their home game against the Utah Mammoths on December 16 local time, and later posted related content on social media during their home matchup against the Montreal Canadiens on December 23 local time.

Heated rivalry 🔥💪 pic.twitter.com/8898dRoI47

— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) December 24, 2025

Later, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman stated in a January 16 interview with The Athletic that he had binge-watched all six episodes of the series in one night, and also claimed that “the league had ‘meaningfully embraced’ the LGBTQ+ community.”

The Hollywood Reporter reported that the NHL “has been trying to broaden its appeal to gay sports fans with LGBTQ-themed events and nights.” Yet if we simply rewind the clock by two years, it becomes clear that such a statement is not only inaccurate but absurd.

In June 2023, the NHL announced a ban prohibiting teams from wearing specialty jerseys, including Pride-themed rainbow jerseys, during warmups, practices, or games. Shortly after the start of the 2023–24 season, the league further announced a ban on players using Pride tape to show support for the LGBTQ+ community. Later that same month, the league reversed the Pride tape ban, not because it recognized the fundamental flaws in the policy, but as a “forced concession” in response to public backlash and protests from players like Arizona Coyotes defenseman Travis Dermott and Philadelphia Flyers forward Scott Laughton.

If the NHL truly embraced the LGBTQ+ community as Gary Bettman claims, or as The Hollywood Reporter suggests, such a ban should never have existed in the first place, let alone required public outrage to be rescinded. Even if we generously assume that the reversal stemmed from a genuine change of heart by Bettman, we should have seen tangible follow-up actions over the past two seasons. Yet the reality tells a different story.

Despite continuing to brand itself with slogans like “Hockey Is For Everyone” and maintaining its partnership with You Can Play (though we’ve seen little evidence of its impact), the NHL has consistently failed to give meaningful visibility to LGBTQ+ issues on its biggest stages. Even the NFL—often stereotyped as more conservative—aired a Super Bowl ad titled Football is GAY. Meanwhile, the NHL has never once allocated even 30 seconds of airtime to LGBTQ+ representation during high-profile events like the All-Star Game or the Winter Classic.

The above phenomenon makes Gary Bettman’s recent statement—“the league has ‘meaningfully embraced’ the LGBTQ+ community”—appear even more absurd and laughable. If the league were truly “meaningfully embracing” the LGBTQ+ community, it could have started taking concrete actions over the past two years, rather than waiting for a TV drama to become a cultural phenomenon before even pretending to act. And even this statement itself can hardly be considered “action.” The interview was published over a month ago, yet the league has still taken no tangible steps to put Bettman’s claim of “meaningfully embracing” the LGBTQ+ community into practice.

If we closely examine Bettman’s remarks in that interview, we find that—even within the article itself—his attitude toward the LGBTQ+ community hardly comes across as genuinely supportive.

“I think it’s a wonderful story,” Bettman said. “The content, particularly for young people, might be a little spicy. And so you have to balance that out in terms of how you embrace (the show).”

Bettman used the word “spicy” to describe the show’s content. Admittedly, the series does contain numerous explicit scenes. However, as the core conflict driving the narrative—the protagonists’ struggles with self-identity and their professional careers, which poignantly expose the real-life challenges faced by active players considering coming out—Bettman completely skipped over this crucial dimension. If the league truly had “meaningfully embraced” the LGBTQ+ community, this would be precisely the issue it needs to address.

Moreover, as commissioner of a league widely regarded as one of the most violent non-combat sports in the world, Bettman seemed to not consider on-ice trash talk and physical violence as something that requires “balancing” or protection for young viewers. Yet the moment the screen shows two men holding hands, kissing, or falling in love, Bettman suddenly believes young people need shielding and that we must “balance how we embrace” such content.

By reducing the entire significance of the show to nothing more than its sexual content (even though sex is indeed present), Bettman inadvertently strips away the mask of his claimed “inclusivity.”

According to The Harvard Independent, interest in and sales of hockey tickets have indeed seen a significant surge thanks to Heated Rivalry. Even with such substantial commercial upside, Bettman’s language remains deliberately vague—a clear signal: “I want the traffic (and revenue) brought by the LGBTQ+ community, but I refuse to take on the social responsibility of LGBTQ+ equality.”

Although the league officially banned all specialty jerseys—including those for charitable causes like “Hockey Fights Cancer”—the ban was in fact triggered specifically by Pride-themed jerseys. In the season prior to the announcement of the rainbow tape ban, multiple players refused to participate in pregame warmups when their teams wore Pride Night jerseys. Bettman’s stated justification for this ban was:

What happened last year was that the issue of who wanted to wear a particular uniform on a particular night overshadowed everything that our clubs were doing. So what we said, instead of having that distraction and having our players have to decide whether or not they wanted to do something or not do something and be singled out, we said, ‘Let’s not touch that.’

Bettman defined social issues as “distractions” and suggested it would be better to simply say, “We’re not going to touch this area at all.” To avoid making a minority of people uncomfortable, the league has chosen to “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” abandoning its social responsibility as a corporation with significant cultural influence.

As the fourth-largest professional sports league in North America, the NHL should aspire to more than merely “not making mistakes”—it should strive for “responsible influence.” Even while acknowledging that disagreements exist, the league must continue promoting positive values. What it ought to do is build bridges, not walls.

Therefore, no matter how verbally supportive Bettman may sound on social issues, as long as the league continues to send the message—through silencing players and restricting expression—that “the NHL doesn’t care and doesn’t support” social issues, it will forever be seen as the most conservative of the major leagues.

By contrast, the other three major North American sports leagues have handled social issues with far greater sophistication. Examples include the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats initiative, the NBA’s actions during the Black Lives Matter movement, and MLB’s decision to relocate its All-Star Game to uphold voting rights.

What sets these leagues apart from the NHL’s approach of “shutting people up” is their willingness to either create safe platforms for expression or take principled stands—even at the risk of public backlash.

In the latter half of his interview with The Athletic, Bettman didn’t even bother “pretending anymore.” He claimed:

It wasn’t about Pride jerseys or Pride tape. It was about the fact of bringing things into the game that might not be embraced by the players wearing the jerseys. If some players don’t embrace the cause, whatever it is, then you create a distraction that doesn’t fulfill the purpose.

Although there are indeed players who have refused to wear Pride Night jerseys due to religious or geopolitical reasons, the reality—according to both USA Today’s anonymous survey of 35 NHL players and ESPN’s anonymous poll across the four major North American sports leagues—is that the majority of NHL players do not oppose LGBTQ+ equality. In this context, Bettman’s excuse about avoiding “distractions that don’t fulfill the purpose” sounds like pure fantasy.

When the league chooses to sacrifice the visibility of an entire community just to avoid making that tiny minority—3% (per USA Today) or 8% (per ESPN)—feel “uncomfortable” or “singled out”; when the league refuses to actively support, encourage, or even defend LGBTQ+ inclusion, yet puts on a performative show of allyship the moment it sees revenue flowing in from that very community; and when the league maintains only symbolic partnerships with LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations like You Can Play while taking zero substantive steps forward, then tell me, Gary Bettman: is this what you call having “‘meaningfully embraced’ the LGBTQ+ community”?!

Finally, I’d like to close this post by quoting sportswriter Frankie de la Cretaz—because at this point, I’m utterly exhausted trying to critique the NHL.

Do I hope that the Heated Rivalry effect will be one that begins the painstaking process of rooting out homophobia from the sport of hockey? Of course I do. But it’s going to take a real cultural change and an investment in the LGBTQ+ community that continues way after the hype from the gay hockey show has died down. Celebrating elements of queer community without actually celebrating and supporting the community itself isn’t worth shit. Especially not when members of our community are dying and being legislated out of existence by the current administration.

― Frankie de la Cretaz, Out of Your League - sorry but I don't give a fuck that the NHL has embraced 'heated rivalry'