Heated Rivalry, a new romantic hockey drama, is taking over the Internet, and for good reason. The show revolves around Asian-Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov, the top two most promising players in the NHL and arch enemies—who miiiiiight be more than rivals, actually. Because it doesn’t take long for the two to start hooking up on the DL, though neither are willing to let their love affair come to light—not to their friends, certainly not to their fans, and not even truly to themselves.
The show was created by Canada’s app Crave but syndicated on HBO Max, but it started out as a best-selling book series—so well-selling, it turns out, that once the show aired, the book almost immediately sold out in the U.S. and Canada. Which is a pretty big bummer for fans who want to know what happen with Shane and Ilya but don’t have the patience to wait for the next few weeks.
So whether you can’t get your hands on the book or you don’t really care to read it but want to know what happens, don’t worry—I read it so you don’t have to.
Here’s what we can look forward to this season, according to the books.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
The first two episodes of the show laid the groundwork for Shane and Ilya—it showed their first meeting, their first flirtations, the first time they ever hooked up. We see Shane’s nervousness about the relationship (not that he would ever admit there was a relationship involved here) and Ilya’s hot and cold nature, especially when he’s reminded of his home country, Russia, and his dysfunctional family. But we also see moments of genuine connection between the two: Ilya trying hard to flirt with Shane over text, Shane’s emotional breakdown after seeing Ilya at an awards show (after Ilya had ghosted him for 6 months), and we also see concern for the other from both sides, even though they only show it in the moments they’re together. The foundation has been set—which means the more complicated aspects of the story are about to come into play.
Shane, Ilya, And Some Tuna Melts
Okay, stick with me here, because this is the pivotal next step in the show. When Shane’s team plays against Ilya’s in Boston, he sneaks off to Ilya’s apartment to meet up as planned—but things don’t exactly go the way Shane expected.
To begin with, Ilya calls Shane “sweetheart”; and after they’re done hooking up, Ilya asks him to stay.
Shane is shocked but warily agrees, and Ilya makes them both tuna melts to eat while they watch a game on TV and talk. It’s the first time they’ve ever really hung out, and even though Ilya seems hell-bent on telling Shane about his other intimate relationships, it’s clear that their own is evolving. It’s even more clear when they hook up again and Ilya calls Shane by his first name for the first time ever. Shane calls Ilya by his first name, too.
Shane is so shaken up by this that, even when Ilya asks him again to stay, he leaves the apartment soon after.
Shane’s First Celebrity Girlfriend
While out with friends one night, Shane meets Rose Landry, an actress, and is surprised by how well he gets along with her. He decides to take her out, and soon the two begin dating.
It doesn’t take long for reporters to leak the relationship, much to Ilya’s dismay, and both Ilya and Shane continue to avoid one another. However, one night while in the same city, they both go out with their respective friends and end up at the same nightclub. Ilya shows up while Shane is dancing with Rose, and immediately finds a girl he can dance with on the other side of the room. But Shane doesn’t realize this, and after he’s done dancing with Rose (which he felt awkward about to begin with), he decides he should leave. On his way out, though, he sees Ilya and freezes, stunned. When Ilya realizes Shane is watching him, he also feels a jolt, but decides to try to make him jealous; however, Shane ends up leaving quickly, and Ilya goes home alone.
A few weeks after that, Rose and Shane have a serious conversation, where Rose asks point-blank if Shane is gay, and Shane finally lets himself accept that yes, he is. Rose is supportive and the two promise to remain close friends, though they end their relationship there.
Shane And Ilya Reconnect At The All-Star Game
Shane and Ilya don’t see each other again until the All-Star game, where, for the first time, they’re playing on the same team. While they’re both excited to see the other, Ilya is especially nervous, since he believes Shane is still dating Rose. However, when Shane finally admits to him that he and Rose broke up because they were incompatible, Ilya can’t contain his glee.
When it’s finally time for the game, the two of them feel the adrenaline rush of finally getting to play together, so much so that Ilya kisses Shane on the cheek in the middle of the game—and plays it off as him just being playful and excited.
Later, after the game, Ilya finds Shane on the beach, and Shane asks if they can go back to the hotel and talk. When they get there, Shane admits to Ilya that he has come to terms with the fact that he’s gay and brings up the last day they spent together—the day Ilya had made him a tuna melt. At first, Ilya denies it, though he eventually admits that day had felt nice. Shane asks if Ilya would want to be with him, and Ilya says they can’t be together because of Russia’s stance on homosexuality and his own family’s compliance to that. He finally begins to open up about his life, telling Shane that his mother had died when he was young, that his father now has Alzheimer’s, and that his brother and stepmother use him for money.
Ilya’s Father Dies And Shane Gets Injured
Soon after the All-Star game, Shane and Ilya begin texting more casually. They meet up before a game they’re supposed to play against one another, and Ilya admits to Shane that his father is dying. Shane doesn’t hear from Ilya after the game, but learns the next day that Ilya isn’t traveling with his team to the next city. He ends up calling Ilya and finds out he’s gone to Moscow for his father’s funeral.
Shane continues to check up on Ilya, leading to several phone calls between the few. In one, Ilya is so overwhelmed and exhausted that he struggles with communicating his thoughts in English, so Shane tells him he should try just saying everything he wants to in Russian while Shane just listens. Ilya agrees and rants in his native tongue, but unbeknownst to Shane, one of the things Ilya admits is that he’s fallen in love with Shane, but that he doesn’t know what to do about it.
A few days later, during a (spicy) Skype call, Ilya finally admits that he’d been attracted to Shane since the moment they’d met. That encourages Shane to finally tell Ilya that no one has ever made him feel the way Ilya does.
Later, while Shane and Ilya play their final game of the season together, Shane gets injured by one of Ilya’s teammates. He’s knocked out cold, though he comes to when the medical team shows up—and that’s when he notices that Ilya stays by his side, panicked, until Shane’s carried out of the arena for medical attention.
The next day, Ilya doesn’t travel with his team and instead goes to visit Shane in the hospital. He tells Shane how scared he’d been, and when Shane asks if Ilya would stay with him at his cabin over the summer, Ilya tells him he’ll consider it.
Scott Hunter Comes Out
Shane can’t play for the rest of the season, and when Ilya’s team loses in the playoffs, the two text while watching the final game of the Stanley Cup championship. Shane fulls believes that Ilya is planning to end their relationship—and, to be fair, Ilya does seem ready to—but all of that changes when New York wins the game. While Ilya doesn’t care for the outcome (and Shane says he’s happy for player Scott Hunter), they’re both floored when, on national TV, Scott Hunter kisses a man.
(To be clear, yes, this is Kip from the third episode of the show. But Ilya and Shane don’t know that.)
Shane starts freaking out excitedly over text, but the moment really changes everything for Ilya, who immediately calls Shane and says he’ll spend the summer with him at his cabin.
The Cabin
At Shane’s cabin, the two finally try out being a couple, though they both seem convinced that it won’t last more than the two weeks they’ll be spending there together. However, Ilya finally admits to Shane that he’s in love with him, and Shane says it back. The two spend the rest of their time there together brainstorming how they could work as a couple, suddenly committed to trying to make it work. Ilya even agrees to change teams and sign on to a Canadian hockey team for Shane.
While at the cabin, Shane’s father walks in on Shane and Ilya kissing but quickly leaves. Shane and Ilya decide to go to Shane’s parents’ cabin to finally come clean, with Shane coming out as gay to his parents and also admitting that he and Ilya are officially a couple. His parents are shocked, but they are immediately supportive and help the two come up with a plan that will allow them to see each other more often: Ilya signs to a new team, and Ilya and Shane start a mental health charity together (named after Ilya’s mother, who committed suicide) to change the narrative about their relationship and show that they get along. While they’re still secret about their relationship, they’re officially together.
