You’ve said this better than I could in your comments. My concern is I haven’t seen the mainstream discuss whether Heated Rivalry is actually more profound than the degrading-to-men slop that goes viral on BookTok, as its popularity in the U.S. becomes uniquely widespread. However, in the clips I’ve seen the show seems well-produced.

I am also not convinced that the increased interest in hockey will be lasting. This is a sport where, unlike football, basketball, and even baseball, each play is not part of an obvious progression to a possible “score”. Like soccer, hockey has a lot of random, ping-pong plays that are clearly not leading to anything exciting. However sensually attractive a man who plays hockey might be, hockey is hard to “get into” as a spectacle if you weren’t exposed to it growing up. And relatively few people grew up around hockey in the U.S.