For a sport played in an ice-cold arena, hockey sure is hot on television.
And not just because “Heated Rivalry,” the Crave drama about rival players who fall in lust and love that has become a gargantuan North American hit, set a record for Canadian Screen Awards wins and has engendered a wildly devoted fan base.
Prime Video, for instance, has a hit of its own in “Off Campus,” an adaptation of Canadian Elle Kennedy’s romance novels about college hockey players and their paramours.
And there are lots more hockey shows heading our way, a mix of dramas and documentaries.
Crave has five in the works, including one about fighting in the game from “Goon” star and writer Jay Baruchel, plus a look back at the 1987 Canada Cup finals against the Soviet Union.
CBC has announced three puck shows, including a drama inspired by ex-NHL player P.K. Subban’s time in junior hockey. This fall, Prime Video will debut a junior hockey show of its own, “Hometown Giants,” a docuseries starring Vancouver celebrities/team co-owners Michael Bublé and Drew Scott.
And Netflix has an untitled drama in the works about a woman who steps in to guide a Minnesota high school team after her coach husband and several players are killed in a bus crash.
Shooting to score
Why so much hockey and why now?
According to James Nadler, who teaches screenwriting and TV producing at Toronto Metropolitan University, it’s in part about the sexiness of hockey players — and not just as portrayed in the swooningly romantic “Heated Rivalry” and “Off Campus.”
Even “He Shoots, He Scores,” the seminal 1986 CBC-Radio Canada series about a player on a Quebec NHL team, was kind of sexy, he said.
”It may be that hockey players are inherently sexier than football players and basketball players and, as a Canadian, I would like to posit that,” Nadler said, tongue in cheek. (Ice hockey was invented in Canada, after all, and is officially this country’s national winter sport.)
There’s no question that chiselled hockey bodies provide eye candy, particularly in “Heated Rivalry,” in which Russian player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) engage in secret, steamy sexual encounters on the way to falling in love.
Nor is college player Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) a slouch in “Off Campus,” in which an initially fake romance between the hockey star and music student Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) turns real, with the requisite spicy sex scenes.
(It’s worth noting that while these series present a positive view of the sport and its players, they mention issues that have negatively impacted hockey, such as homophobia and sexual assault.)
But the upcoming hockey shows are not love stories — not unless you count love of the game.
Executives at Bell Media, Crave’s parent company, weren’t looking for another “Heated Rivalry.”
“Please don’t bring us that pitch,” Justin Stockman, Bell Media’s vice-president of global content, told the Star.
“We’ve got that nailed,” added Carlyn Klebuc, general manager of original programming.
The executives were seeking series with original takes, whether or not they were about hockey, Stockman said — although he noted that Bell has done well with hockey titles like “Shoresy,” “The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens” and, yes, “Heated Rivalry.”
In the case of the Baruchel docuseries “Blood on the Ice,” “we were interested immediately,” Klebuc said. “It was like, why is Canada — this collaborative, kind, polite country — why do we want to see a hockey fight and see blood on the ice? What is that really saying about us?”
A release date hasn’t been announced for that one, nor for docuseries “Canada Cup ’87: The Cold War on Ice.” Other Crave productions in the works include an untitled documentary about Canadian NHL player Jonathan Toews; a reality show about youth hockey, tentatively titled “Puck Parents”; and a docuseries about the Stanley Cup, “If Stanley Could Talk.”
New seasons of “Heated Rivalry,” “Shoresy” and “The Rebuild” are also on the slate.
CBC’s marquee hockey show, meanwhile, is “Junior,” inspired by the experiences of former NHL defenceman P.K. Subban and series creator Kyle Hart in what the network calls “the ruthless world of junior hockey.”
“‘Junior’ is a raw, up-close and highly entertaining look at the greatest sport in the world,” Hart and executive producer Clement Virgo said in an email.
It focuses on a 16-year-old Black player who, determined to make it to the NHL, finds himself challenged by the “unrelenting expectations, personal drama and volatile coach/player relationships that come with pursuit of a Canadian dream,” they added.
CBC’s other hockey titles include two docuseries: “Power Play” (not to be confused with the 1998 CTV drama of the same name), about the stars of the Professional Women’s Hockey League; and “Barnburners,” which spends a season with a senior hockey league in Saskatchewan.
That there are so many hockey shows coming up is “one of those nice coincidences that happens every now and then,” Nadler said, like the spurt of TV shows about vampires in 2024.
And while “Heated Rivalry” may not be the reason the others are getting made — “Junior” has been in development for three years — Nadler said that “if something was in development, it will move faster through the process,” thanks to the hit show.
A nation’s passion
One might wonder, in fact, why there aren’t more shows about hockey in Canada, given the country’s passion for the sport. After all, there’s no “Lacrosse Night in Canada,” despite it being the national summer sport.
According to Hart and Virgo, “there’s room for more shows about hockey in the same way we see hundreds of shows about cops, lawyers and doctors.”
Of course, production companies make TV series with an eye toward not just homegrown audiences, but also to international markets, and Nadler says that, thanks to streaming, there’s more interest in hockey shows these days than ever before.
It’s a far cry from 1998, when the Gemini Award-winning dramedy “Power Play,” about a New York sports agent who returns to his hometown of Hamilton to manage the local team, lasted only a couple of episodes on the American UPN Network before being cancelled.
“Canadian audiences have always been passionate about our hockey and it feels like the rest of the world is just catching up to Canada,” said Virgo and Hart.
“What (producers) Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady have done (with ‘Heated Rivalry’) is terrific for the whole domestic Canadian industry. They are showing it’s possible to make a show about Canada’s favourite pastime and export it around the world.”
With files from David Friend
Hockey night at the movies
It might seem as if hockey made its big-screen debut in 1977 with the much-loved “Slap Shot,” in which a coach (Paul Newman) revives the fortunes of a failing Rust Belt team with the help of a trio of sibling goons called the Hanson brothers.
In fact, hockey movies date back to the 1930s. In the earliest I could find, “King of Hockey” (1936), a star college player is accused of throwing games for money. The following year’s “Idol of the Crowds” stars John Wayne as a player trying to make enough dough to enlarge his chicken farm; coincidentally, he’s also offered money by gangsters to throw a championship match, so perhaps opinions of hockey players’ morals weren’t high in the ’30s.
Canada got into the game, so to speak, with “Face-Off” (1971), starring Art Hindle as a player who joins the Toronto Maple Leafs. Real Leafs and other NHLers appeared in on-ice scenes and bit parts.
In the Saskatchewan-set “Paperback Hero” (1973), Keir Dullea of “2001: A Space Odyssey” portrays a minor-league player who moves to a small town and begins to believe he’s an Old West gunslinger.
Here are five more-recent Canadian-made movies and TV shows about hockey.
Power Play (1998)
Alas, this CTV comedy-drama can’t be streamed anywhere, although episodes can be found in pieces on YouTube. Hotshot sports agent Brett Parker (Michael Riley) goes from planning to move Hamilton’s NHL team to Texas to becoming its general manager and starting a romance with his nemesis, team president Colleen Blessed (Kari Matchett). The series also starred Dean McDermott and Gordon Pinsent, while Don Cherry had a recurring role as a coach.
Goon (2011)
Some have called this movie our “Slap Shot.” Written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg (“The Studio”), it stars Seann William Scott (“American Pie”) as a bouncer turned minor-league hockey enforcer in Halifax, while Liev Schreiber does the fighting for the rival St. John’s team. The Canadian cast members include Baruchel, Alison Pill, Kim Coates and Eugene Levy. Stream it on Crave or on Starz via Prime Video.
Indian Horse (2017)
Adapted from a novel by acclaimed Indigenous author Richard Wagamese, the film tells the story of Ojibway hockey star Saul Indian Horse (Ajuawak Kapashesit), whose career as a Toronto Maple Leaf is stunted by racism and the trauma of the abuse he suffered in residential school. It can be streamed on Crave or on Starz via Prime Video.
Shoresy (2022)
In this “Letterkenny” spinoff, the title character, played by series creator Jared Keeso, brings his foul mouth and hatred for losing to a senior AAA team in Sudbury. Besides Keeso, who spent time playing (and fighting) in the former Mid-Western Junior B league, “Shoresy” stars real ex-hockey players Jonathan-Ismaël Diaby, Terry Ryan, Andrew Antsanen, Jonathan Mirasty, Brandon Nolan and Jordan Nolan. Seasons 1 to 5 are streaming on Crave, with Season 6 to come.
Youngblood (2026)
In this update of the 1986 film that starred Rob Lowe as a young hockey prospect who has to learn to fight, Ashton James plays a Black prodigy trying to tamp down his pugilistic side, despite the urging of his father (Blair Underwood) to keep his fists up. It can be rented on Prime Video or Apple TV.
Honourable mentions: “Rent-a-Goalie” (2006), a comedy series about a Little Italy cafe manager with a side hustle renting goalies to house leagues; “MVP” (2008), a soapy drama about the romantic entanglements of players on a Leafs-like pro team; and “Dying Seconds” (2025), a comedic web whodunit about a murder at a hockey rink. Unfortunately, none can be streamed, though you can buy “Rent-a-Goalie” on Apple TV.
