The heated rivalry behind the Stanley Cup

The heated rivalry behind the Stanley Cup

The sport of ice hockey has transcended a game just for the fans this year as it's found itself at the centre of a couple of big cultural moments across the world. We’re talking, of course, about the raging success of TV shows Heated Rivalry and more recently Off Campus - but it goes well beyond that and into real life. As the current season of the National Hockey League in North America comes to its conclusion, in this Squiz Shortcut we’ll get you across:

• the impacts of those shows on the sport

• how the league works

• and why the Stanley Cup is one of the hardest sporting trophies in the world to win.

🙋🏻‍♀️ This newsletter was written by Claire Kimball

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Geez ice hockey is having a moment…
It’s been hard to miss lately with popular series like Heated Rivalry, and more recently Off Campus, putting the sport front and centre on our small screens and social media. And that interest has converted into more people following the sport and tuning into NHL games regularly. 

Ok, wind it back… What’s the NHL?
It’s the National Hockey League, which is the world’s top professional league in the sport of ice hockey. It includes teams from Canada and the United States, so it’s actually an international league. To give you a local example, it’s kinda like Australia’s NRL - the National Rugby League - which has teams from Australia and New Zealand, and soon Papua New Guinea. 

So Heated Rivalry - just unpack that for me…
It’s a great story - not just as a show, but how it came to be. The makers of the show say it was never expected to be much more than a little Canadian show that connected with romance fiction fans who loved the Game Changers series written by Rachel Reid. 

So it wasn’t meant to be a huge thing?
The creators didn’t think so… It was made on a very small budget, it’s a gay/bi love story packed with spicy content, and as for the ice hockey part of it - it’s a sport that is historically treated as a niche television market outside of Canada and parts of the US. 

So it’s the little show that could…
Sure is… Jacob Tierney took Reid’s books and adapted them for TV, and he had to hustle to get the project funded and into production. Ultimately, it was made for Crave (which is a bit like Canada’s version of Binge here) - and very late in the piece, secured a deal with HBO to distribute it beyond Canada. 

What did that deal look like?
Just 9 days before the first episode aired in late November last year, HBO paid a rumoured US$3.6 million for the rights to stream it in the US and Australia - and only those markets. That’s $600k an episode, which isn’t much when it comes to these sorts of deals, particularly for the payoff HBO got.

It seemed to explode quickly…
It did - and it quickly became the #2 driver of first-time viewers on the HBO Max streaming platform. And it was great for retention thanks to the high number of rewatches - roughly one-third of all viewers rewatched episodes, and over 15% watched single episodes 5 times or more. It was such a success that more deals were done, and the show went global. 

Is the series based on anything close to real life?
We’ll get into that, but here’s a fun story… Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s characters are based on current players… Sidney Crosby is this ‘Mr Perfect’ Canadian. And Alex Ovechkin was a young/cocky Russian. Sound familiar?

Yes. Yes, it does…
They were both rookies starting their careers back in the mid-2000s when the NHL was thrown into turmoil over a player pay dispute, and it shut down for a year. As a way to get things back on track when things were resolved, the NHL sort of created and promoted this rivalry heavily as a way to generate interest in the sport. 

Are they both still playing?
Yep… They’re considered 2 of the greats of all time. But there’s no suggestion there was anything romantic between Crosby and Ovechkin - sorry to disappoint. 

Interesting… So did the show have an impact on the NHL?
Yes, but that’s been a complicated dance for the organisation to do… 

Do tell…
Ice hockey has a conservative sports culture. Reid and Tierney have talked about their complex personal relationship with the sport - they’re fans who have struggled with what they say is its darker side. Reid has talked about the books being a way to process her feelings about the "rampant misogyny, homophobia, and violence" in the sport. 

So it’s not a sport where you see a lot of gay/bi/queer players?
Definitely not - in fact, the NHL remains the only major North American men's professional sports league where no current or former player has ever publicly come out. 

Why is that?
Good question - it’s been under the microscope this year, and many commentators point to that conservative culture… But to bring it home for a second, in Australia, you can count on one hand the male players in our major sports who have publicly said they are gay or bisexual or queer - and those who have, mostly did so when they left their sports. It’s very different in the women’s games, but for men, it’s a common theme across the world. 

So the show hasn’t seen a rush of players coming out… But has it resulted in a heap of new hockey fans?
It sure has… Reports say there has been a 75% increase in hockey ticket searches driven by first-time buyers. And there’s been a 20% rise in weekly ticket sales and a 30% jump in revenue directly following the show's peak popularity. A lot of them are women - a segment of the market the NHL would normally find difficult to get to. As one NHL representative said, across the league's entire 108-year history, the show "might just be the most novel and surprising way new fans are finding our sport”.

I’m curious - why are you telling me about this now?
The 2025/26 NHL season is heading for an exciting conclusion with the Stanley Cup set to be decided in the coming fortnight. If you like top-level sport, dive into ESPN on the Disney+ platform in the coming week to watch one of the Stanley Cup games because it’s quite something. 

Will I enjoy it if I don’t know anything about the sport?
If you enjoy top level sport, we think so… But let’s get you grounded in some basics. If you know a bit about hockey or soccer, there are some common themes - there’s an offside rule, there are rules about how you tackle opposition players and fight for possession of the puck… But it’s a much smaller space they’re playing on - an NHL rink is about 60m long by 26m wide. 

So fewer players?
Each team has a goaltender and 5 skaters - 2 in defence and 3 in offence. There are 20 players on a team, and one of the features is how the skaters cycle in and out of the game in ‘shifts’… They play in ‘lines’ that see groups of players get on and off the ice after short bursts, and that adds to the speed of things because they go really hard for a minute or 2 at a time and then come off to rest. 

How long are the games?
A game is played over 3 periods of 20 minutes. So, in total, the main players are getting about 20 minutes of ice time a game… While we’re talking about how long things are - there are 82 games that are played over 28 weeks in the regular season, which starts in October and goes through to April, and if you make it to the Stanley Cup final, you’re playing into June. It’s pretty gruelling as they get through 3-4 games a week in the regular season. 

And tell me about the teams…
There are 32 teams - 25 from the US, and 7 from Canada. Players aren’t just drawn from those nations, although about 40% of the current crop are Canadian and 30% from the US. Most of the rest are from Sweden, Russia and Finland… Due to the size of the geography the NHL covers, the league is split into 2 conferences - East and West. 

Sounds big - and hard…
And that’s what makes the Stanley Cup amongst the hardest trophies in professional sports to win… The season is gruelling, the injuries stack up, and they keep playing through it. 

And here we are…
Exactly… The Stanley Cup final will see the Vegas Golden Knights (who won the Western Conference) take on the Carolina Hurricanes - aka the Canes - (who won the Eastern Conference). They go into the best-of-7 series that will alternate between their hometowns, starting in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

So who’s your money on to win?
The Canes are the favourite - they finished second on the league table after the regular season, while the Golden Knights finished 13th. But the Stanley Cup is known for upsets, so stay tuned… 

Anything else I should know?
Get ready to see some very hairy men…

Umm, ok…?
One of the most sacred and famous traditions in all of professional sports is that heaps of NHL players do not shave during the playoffs - it’s a practice that kicked off in the 1980s with teams claiming it aided their success. 

What’s that about?
Ice hockey is a very superstitious sport (think Heated Rivalry’s Scott Hunter and his smoothie routine…), and with the playoffs being in action for nearly 2 months, there are a lot of thick/scruffy beards on the ice.

Got it. How do I watch?
The playoffs are on ESPN on the Disney+ channel from 10am AEST tomorrow. We’ll be watching… 

Onto our Recommendations

Watching: The gold medal game from the Winter Olympics in Italy earlier this year - Team USA v Canada. The Hughes brothers are a whole thing in the NHL - they made it onto Saturday Night Live after Jack Hughes scored the golden goal in overtime after being whacked in the face and losing teeth. Head to the last 5 mins of the game if you don’t want to watch it all. 

Watching: The TV series Shoresy… Before Heated Rivalry, Jacob Tierney was central to the comedy shows Letterkenny and Shoresy, which have ice hockey at their core. To set expectations, there’s not a lot of spicy content, but they are shows with a lot of heart that go to the ethos of the game… You can watch both of those for free on SBS. 

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