LISTEN | Former hockey players Matt Kenny and Brock McGillis talk about what it’s like to watch Heated Rivalry:
The current24h26Heated Rivalry is a success, but can it change hockey culture?
The First Time Matt Kenny Watched a Hit TV Show Passionate rivalryhe 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 insecure and eventually left the sport. Those feelings resurfaced while he was watching the TV romance about two gay hockey players.
“It was this heavy feeling that weighed down everything, which was, you know, the fear, the joy, the secret of love that was never supposed to exist in broad daylight and, you know, the internal homophobia and the shame – the shame that players like me wore like a second skin,” he said. The currentIt’s Matt Galloway.
Passionate rivalry is a Canadian television series that tells the love story of two professional hockey players from opposing teams. The adaptation of a novel by Canadian Rachel Reid has become a runaway success for Crave, which says the first episode of the series 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 really means to be a gay man who plays competitive hockey — and expressing hope that the fear and pain they’ve endured will become a thing of the past.
As a child, Kenny played four to six days a week, taking long bus journeys to other provinces to play, but in his late teens he stopped.
“I just felt like I was giving my all to this sport, and deep down I knew that this sport that I loved probably wasn’t capable of loving me back,” he said.
He first looked Passionate rivalry on Christmas Eve and posted about the show and his own secret teenage relationship with another hockey player on Instagram four days later.
“When I shared what I shared on Instagram, I woke up three times that night, you know, panicking – take it down, delete it, delete it. You posted something into the world that’s not safe.”
But he was “blown away” by the positive response.
He received hundreds of messages, not only from athletes but also from parents, telling him stories of children locked away and scared.
“So many young people live in the shadows and are afraid to come out,” he said.
Matt Kenny played competitive hockey as a teenager and recently opened up about his own secret relationship with another 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 professional hockey player Brock McGillis challenges this locker room environment on a cross-Canada tour, speaking with players about the norms surrounding hockey culture and asking them to get out of it.
McGillis, a gay man who played in the OHL and in Europe, was also hit hard by Passionate rivalry because of its depiction of something he experienced.
Hockey has evolved, he says, but it’s not where he’d like it to be.
There are certain topics players tend to discuss in the locker room, he said — women, video games, sports, maybe music — but he wants them to feel like they can talk about things that really matter with their teammates.
“They adhere to these standards, but there is much more,” he said on The current. “A lot of my work challenges them to be brave enough to not buy into that, to share more of themselves.”
The NHL, which sponsors his tour, is expected to capitalize on the popularity of Passionate rivalryMcGillis said.
“I mean, how can you not take the most popular show on television about the sport and use it?”
For its part, the league says it welcomes new fans attracted by the show.
“This phenomenon continues to attract new fans to the sport of hockey and, as stewards of the greatest sport in the world, we welcome all fans,” Jon Weinstein, NHL director of communications, said in a statement emailed to CBC Radio.
Kenny says Passionate rivalry will not only attract new fans to the sport, but it will “change lives”.
“We need more voices speaking up. We need more voices for characters like that to become real life, who maybe don’t even need to come out because it becomes so normalized that they can be from the moment they kind of realize that that’s how they are.”
Now living in California, Kenny recently went skateboarding for the first time in over a decade.
“The little child that I was — I was so terrified of everything I was and I didn’t think the world could ever accept it — I’m starting to realize that, you know, the world we live in right now might just be able to do that. »
