A few years ago, Sig Gauthier was a third-round draft pick who limped onto the Boston lineup after a near-career-ending injury in the AHL. Now, he’s a two-time NHL All Star predicted to score an eight-figure contract when he’s a free agent at the end of the season. He’s got just one problem, and it’s cheering him on in the stands wearing a bedazzled pink jersey with his name on the back: His soon-to-be-step-sister, Chloe, with whom he had a steamy encounter hours before they both realized their parents were getting married.
Gauthier is not a real NHL star but the protagonist of romance author Tessa Bailey’s bestselling “Big Shots” series, which chronicles the world of hockey with the same breathless enthusiasm as any play-by-play announcer, though most of the, uh, stickhandling happens off ice.
Welcome to the thriving sub-sub-genre of hockey romance novels. Stories of spice-on-ice have more longevity than any post-season bandwagon: Searches for “hockey romance” on Amazon Canada are up 20 per cent year-over-year. The sports romance genre posted its highest ever sales going into 2025 and in 2024, 70 per cent of the bestsellers in that category were about hockey, up from 30 per cent the year before.
While the Toronto Maple Leafs’ playoff run may be over, heartbroken fans can take refuge in an alternate universe where the roster is perennially stacked with jacked-but-emotionally-evolved-stars who worship the feisty women they fall for. During the playoffs, fans have been posting cheeky videos from the stands, like a popular Instagram reel of players doing slightly suggestive on-ice stretches, captioned, ‘Not sorry for enjoying. It’s a book girl thing.’
Hockey romance author Bal Khabra says readers send her photos of themselves holding her books at games. “It’s the ultimate full-circle moment,” she says. “I love knowing that this story can spark a real-world connection to the game.”
Khabra’s collegiate hockey romance novel “Collide” was the top-selling sports romance novel of 2024. “Readers are obsessed with the tropes like ‘wear my jersey’ or the bang against the plexi-glass for an intimate moment between the two characters in a packed arena,” she says.
Khabra grew up watching hockey and was in the Boston arena the last time the Leafs lost in a playoff series game seven. She says there’s just something “magnetic” about the sport. “The atmosphere, the playoffs, the drama. Even if you’re not a diehard fan, the appeal is in the athletes themselves. There’s a mix of intensity and drive in each player,” she says. “They’re so skilled at what they do, and I think that dedication makes it hot.”
Staff at Toronto’s Hopeless Romantics Books have seen quite a few shoppers browsing in-store before games this season, wearing their team jerseys. But not all hockey followers are into this sub-genre. “I’ve heard from lots of hockey fans that they can’t quite get into hockey romances, because they’re not quite sure if hockey players are this romantic in real life,” said the store’s bookseller Shelly, who asked not to disclose their last name. “Some readers also occasionally tell us the actual hockey-playing in the books is not quite accurate or realistic enough.”
Ontario author Becka Mack is behind the BookTok-viral “Playing For Keeps” series. “If they’re not already a hockey fan, I don’t think readers understand just how inherently sexy hockey is,” she says. “It’s fast, it’s aggressive, it’s sweaty, and hockey players are incredibly skilled with their hands. What’s not to love? Hockey’s one of those sports that gets your blood pumping when you watch it, and a good hockey romance can do the same thing.”
But there’s more to these books than eight-packs and puck-based innuendo. “You’ve got this team, this group of tight-knit players who go through so much together and would do anything for each other. It’s so refreshing to read about men who aren’t afraid to love their friends and be vulnerable with each other,” says Mack. “When I write about hockey players, they’re communicating, they’re feeling what they need to feel, and they’re asking for and accepting help. If they’re not, the journey to that point becomes part of their story.”
Hockey fan and author Helena Hunting’s series about a team called the “Toronto Terror” is climbing the leaderboard at the moment. Her readers often talk about the comradeship in her hockey novels, whether that’s between players or the WAGs around them. “We all want a group of friends who will show up for us when things get tough, and a partner who will support us and our own goals,” she says. “Romance, and sports romance in particular, does that well in a natural way.”
There are other ways that sport lends itself to romance. “There are a lot of fit people that are very sweaty,” says Kitchener-born Kayleigh Platz, co-creator of the book club and blog Romance by the Book and lifelong Rangers fan. “Hockey captures readers because, unlike football or even basketball, it’s a very physical sport. There’s fighting. There are big, burly men. They’re kind of the bad boys of sport, who make a ton of money, but then it’s like, who are they in real life? Are they sweethearts? Are they a single dad who’s looking for a nanny?” (Here she’s nodding to the first book in Tessa Bailey’s hockey series.)
“I love to see the clash of the drudgery of training and the risk when they are in the games, and the peeling back of the shell and seeing what they’re like as humans,” she says. “Hockey, more than other sports, is like wrestling in that they have these personas that they put on one ice. He’s the fighter, he’s the stick master. You don’t really know what they look like half the time either. There’s this mystery.”
It is also an exploration of fantasy, one that is separate from the reality where athletes have made headlines for domestic and sexual violence against women. Recently, readers reacted in horror to the news that Sean Avery, a former NHL player who once referred to his ex-girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert as “sloppy seconds” and who has been who has been accused of abuse by his ex-wife Hilary Rhoda, is co-writing a romance novel due out this fall.
“I don’t think it’s landing the way the publishing company thought it would, because a lot of the target market are women my age who remember the headlines. He is a bad boy, but he’s a bad boy who hasn’t redeemed himself,” says Platz. “That breaks that bond of fantasy, that trust relationship with a romance author.”
That trust is something authors are considering too. “It’s a weird time to be a reader or writer of hockey romance. The ongoing Hockey Canada sexual assault trial has forced us as a nation to confront the ugly underbelly of hockey culture,” says Jenny Holiday, the London, Ont.-based author of “Canadian Boyfriend,” which centres around a widowed NHL player. “At the same time, Canadians have embraced the ‘elbows up’ rallying cry in our response to economic and existential threats from the United States. I think the takeaway is that hockey is woven through how we collectively define ourselves as Canadians.”
Take her book’s hero: “He plays hockey, considers himself a hoser, and wears a toque, not a hat. I was having fun with leaning into Canadian stereotypes, and the hockey player part of his identity was part of that,” she says. “But one of the main themes of the book is that people are always more complicated than our ideas of them. So I knowingly sidestepped most of the stereotypes of the hockey player.”
In the fantasy world of hockey romance, too, queer love can flourish in a sport with a history of homophobia, as in Rachel Reid’s popular “Game Changers” series.
Khabra also delights in upending stereotypes in her stories, like the way the dismissive term “puck bunny” is used to refer to women who like hockey. “Personally, I avoid using that unless it’s in a cheeky, harmless way that doesn’t target women. I think it’s important to recognize that women can — and do — genuinely love the sport,” she says. “My friends and I are walking proof of that. Hockey isn’t just a guy thing, and I love showing female characters who enjoy it without being reduced to a stereotype.”
