‘Heated Rivalry’ Is Bringing Me Back To Hockey

I wasn’t sure, at first, that I wanted to read Heated Rivalry, or the rest of the novels in Rachel Reid’s best-selling “Game Changers” series. I had thoroughly enjoyed the first of Reid’s two standalone hockey romances, Time to Shine, which takes place in an imaginary world where homophobia doesn’t meaningfully exist, and prominent male hockey players are out and unfussed about it. The conflict in the book revolves around the potential pitfalls of the main characters being teammates, and deeply unequal ones: one a wealthy star and the other a backup goalie newly called up from the minors. 

The “Game Changers” books, I knew, were set in a world more like ours—one where no NHL player, active or retired, has ever come out publicly as any flavor of queer. In 2021, Luke Prokop became the first out player under contract with an NHL team, and later the first out player to be active in the minor-league AHL. His NHL contract has since lapsed, and in August he was signed to a one-year contract with the Bakersfield Condors.