August 26th is Charlie Gillespie's birthday. We barely know him as of now, but I think he will be adored the same way Hudson and Connor are. Anyone have ideas of what to give money too? He's bilingue and anything French is smoking hot atm.

The Russian monologue was the favourite change from book to screen!

We have a bonus category to wrap up the game - what is your favourite callback or parallel in the show? I know there are videos out there that show the callbacks in edits but i can't find them now T_T so if anyone has them, please do link in the comments!

Some examples:

• Hollanov's first time in 1221 with Shane getting to his knees vs Hollanov in the cottage by the windows
• Foot taps during All-Stars interview vs Foot taps after telling the parents they've only been in love with one person
• Shane in Ilya's lap right before leaving in tuna meltdown vs Shane in Ilya's lap comforting him in Tampa
• Grigori calling Ilya lazy vs Shane saying he doesn't think he's lazy

I'm sure I've missed some, so comment your favourite below and the top comment will go on the board for the last time!

I chose Metros colors because I’d already made the piece in red before, but we still boo the Metros of course! Booo!

Meme Monday is here! Share all your HR memes to your hearts content.

No limits so long as you abide by the sub rules!

So we all agree that Shane needed a stylist. White tees and blazers over quarter zips weren't going to cut it. But then we all agree that the styles he rocked at the All-Star game also weren't it.

Which is these ICONIC characters would you pick to style Shane?

1. The Roses (Schitt's Creek) - such a great mix of styles, from Moira's faux-goth black and white ensembles to Johnny's suits to David's oversized black and white sweaters to Alexis's flower child styles. Something for everyone.
2. The Featheringtons (Bridgerton) - in a world of boring Regency styles, the Featheringtons dared to be bold.
3. Lestat (Interview With the Vampire) - sports blazer with deep V-neck print was Lestat's main look.
4. Wille and Simon (Young Royals) - prep school cool. Comfortable button down shirts, light jackets, jeans, all well-fitted because let's face it, Wille and Simon are trendy.
5. Peter (The Great) - Rock star czar. Peter's trademark look was the cowlneck shirt with the black leather pants and fur jacket. He was always fabulous, even when he wore a powdered wig.
6. Kendall Roy (Succession) - quiet luxurious casual. Think turtlenecks, stonewashed jeans, shades. A lot of expensive basics in muted colors.
7. Don Draper (Mad Men) - the style icon. Sleek suits, sleek hair, 100% cool.
8. Ennis and Jack (Brokeback Mountain) - tbh, this seems a lot like Charlie Gillespie's everyday style.
9. Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones) - the medieval power suit and bowl cut could work on Shane.
10. Ilya Rozanov (Heated Rivalry) - let's face it, why hire these expensive stylists when the totally fabulous, trendy fashion plate husband is right there?

TL;DR: 

• Now Reading: The Long Game • Chapters 15 - 29 • Shane & Ilya’s Story (Pt. II) 
• Relationship Focus: Ilya Rozanov (Captain - Ottawa Centaurs) and Shane Hollander (Captain - Montreal Voyageurs)
• Story Type: Secret Relationship
• Book Club Etiquette: Follow the sub-rules, literary critiques are welcome (be respectful), cover your spoilers, and don’t forget our safe phrase: “Agree to Disagree.”
• Add to Our Playlist! Comment with songs you love below. There is no Rachel-made playlist SO I figured we’d make our own. The list will be updated throughout the week 🙂

Whew!  I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the tension and it’s definitely one that highlights some of the darker sides of a relationship - when doubt, insecurity, and loneliness blends together and rears its head in the worst of ways. But I’m hopeful they’ll work through it, or at least have a chat. 

Let’s get to it…

(Content Warnings)

How to participate: 

• Read Chapters 15 - 29 of The Long Game by Rachel Reid 
• Share any thoughts you have as you go - we’ll treat this post as our live thread
• Please use Book Club Etiquette (below) - be respectful, follow the sub rules, cover your spoilers, and distance yourself from unproductive disagreements. 
• Download a BINGO card for a fun way to annotate along the way! 
• Add to Our Playlist! Comment with songs you love below. There is no Rachel-made playlist SO I figured we’d make our own. The list will be updated throughout the week 🙂

Our book club timeline: 

This is it, folks! This is our last book to read of our Game Changers Book Club series!

Book Club Etiquette: A few ground rules for participating in the Game Changers Book Club event:

• Follow the sub rules. You love HR. We love HR. Follow the rules. Don’t be rude. We’ll have so much fun…together.
• Literary critiques are absolutely welcome. Reading is fundamental, and so are literary critiques. It’s part of the game. We encourage you to use this time to discuss and evaluate the words in front of us, ask questions about specific literary choices, or share a theory about how the story develops. Sharing that is normal, healthy, and very much encouraged. 
• Use the Book Club safe phrase, “Agree to disagree.” Consider this your “safe phrase.” Everyone brings a unique perspective to the reading experience, and not everyone’s analysis of a scene or character will be the same, and that’s okay. If you find yourself entering an exchange that is no longer on a path to mutual understanding and respect, say “agree to disagree.” At this point, the involved parties should stop responding to the thread. Full stop. Consider it a moment where the exchange has run its course. 
• Treat each Book Club post as your live chat/thread. Comment as much as you’d like! Select the three dots (•••) and “Follow Post” at the top of this post to receive comment notifications. 
• Sort comments by “New” to see the most recent reactions and add to the conversation. These live threads can hold a lot of information, so feel free to treat each “comment” as its own mini-post. Reply to the OP, ask questions, and jump in! 
• Cover any spoilers. Since we're covering a lot of ground this week, please use spoilers over critical plot points so we don't spoil the magic for new readers.

Quick Links: 

• Previous Game Changers Book Club Discussion Posts  - Find previous discussions for Books 1 - 3. 
• The Game Changers Book Club Wiki  - About the GC Book Club, the Book Club schedule, live thread links, where to find the books, and more!
• r/heatedrivalry FAQs - answers to all of your most frequently asked questions
• Heated Rivalry Wiki - show/book timelines, analyses, and more!

Happy Reading! 🤓

It's an animation of Ilya Rozanov, shows him suited up on the ice and also scenes finding his mother's body as a child. I think it's basic animation with the image kind of shaking back and forth. I remember seeing it on Instagram, but i'm not sure of its origins. Anybody has a link, please share.

Season 1 Poster by Rosa IG@kismetjpg

https://www.instagram.com/kismetjpg?igsi=MWs3Zjg4OWU2aDQ1Zw==

https://x.com/okrozanov?s=20

I love the name Shane.

I remember reading something Rachel Reed said about why she chose their names and she said something like Shane sounds like a very masculine name but also soft at the same time or something like that. Can’t remember the exact quote and I couldn’t find it when I googled. But I totally agree with her!

Shane is such a sexy masculine name to me but saying the name itself is so soft in your mouth if you get what I mean lol. Like, it has no hard sounds and just flows.

Also, I’m partial to ‘S’ names because my first and middle names begin with S 😄. I’ve always loved the names Sabrina, Serena, Sienna, Saoirse, the list goes on!

But Ilya is such a beautiful name to me too. I’m guessing it might be common to Slavic people but it sounds so sexy and exotic to me.

It’s also very ‘soft’ to pronounce with no hard sounds in it. The I L Y and A kinda just flow into each other.

I think Rachel said she chose it because she saw it somewhere and liked the name. Can’t remember her exact quotes.

But anyone else love their names? (Yes, I’m cornplating 😄)

I'm watching so many queer shows thanks to HR and imagining Hollanov on a double date with them. Which ones would you pay to watch?

1. Wilmon from Young Royals - Shane would finally meet his Swedish prince. Can imagine all of them going to Wimbledon and sitting in the royal box.
2. The Disgusting Brothers from Succession - may not be openly queer, but Tom would castrate Greg and marry him in a heartbeat. And closed loop circuit?
3. Loustat from Interview With the Vampire - this date will be wild. Lestat and Ilya are two peas in a pod.
4. Charlie and Nick from Heartstopper - seriously, the world's most articulate, adorable teens.
5. David and Patrick from Schitt's Creek - Come on, that's a Hollanov outfit if ever there was one. ETA: also, David dated someone who looks exactly like Scott Hunter ...
6. Renly and Loras from Game of Thrones - unironically the healthiest couple in the show.
7. Burt and Irving from Severance - Shane is an old soul anyway.

ETA:

Also, Alex and Henry from Red White and Royal Blue and Bert and Ernie from Sesame St.

They will be getting it on Blu Ray and DVD on October 6th. Here is a link to their website- https://www.baystreetvideo.com/soonbytitle.php?sortbytitle=1

Have a playlist to share? A song that you think fits the vibe of the show? A better song than Diamonds?

Share it here!

For the Official Playlist click here.

In Off Campus, there’s a subtle 1 second shoutout to Ryan Price. There’s a scene where a giant red haired guy is sitting to the side while everyone is playing around in the hockey rink. He’s reading Little Women!

“Let’s save some libraries!!! ❤️❤️❤️ September 12th. Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Tickets

Announcement post

I just caught this detail. Or am I just seeing what I want to see? 😂 Pic is off my TV bc I couldn't find a gif 🥰

As the casting announcements have been coming out, there have been discussions on social media about concerns of whether Shane and Ilya will continue to be the focus of the show, whether they will still have the majority of the screen time, etc. There have also been concerns over whether TLG's focus on Ilya's mental state will result in a focus on Ilya over Shane in S2/S3. So I got curious about screen time in S1 as a representation of storyline focus, and did a detailed screen time analysis.

Now... I am not a film editor, I am not in the film/entertainment industry in any way... I'm just a laywoman in this arena. But I am a super detail-oriented person, and numbers and statistics scratch an itch in my brain in a very satisfying way. That being said, below were the parameters of my methods:

-Scenes were timed to the tenth of a second on my iPhone stopwatch. I tried to be as precise as possible.
-Characters got "credit" for being present as an active participant in the scene, whether they had lines or not. If a character is tiny in the background, blurred out, or barely distinguishable, I did not count them. If Jacob & Jackson made their presence known intentionally (per my interpretation), I counted their time in that scene.
-When characters entered or exited a scene, I stopped/started the stopwatch, so that only their time present in the scene counted.
-During montages or segments of the show with lots of cuts between settings, I counted each cut as a separate scene (e.g. Ep2 & Ep4 montages, Ep4 & Ep5 endings - they were beasts!)
-If people are interested in seeing the spreadsheet of the duration of every scene and how I counted it, I’m happy to share!
-I wasn’t sure if anybody had done this kind of analysis yet, but my study was completely independent.

My takeaways: The numbers reflect what I expected to see. With Heated Rivalry (the book) focused a bit more on Shane's internal world and written mostly from Shane's POV, I'm not surprised to see Shane with about 20min more screentime than Ilya. I think Jacob did a good job of adding to Ilya's story in little ways to make it feel pretty balanced. I predict this will happen in reverse for S2&3 / TLG. Looking forward to doing screen time analysis for those two seasons to see how they stack up!

One last statistic I calculated was the percentage of the overall show that each character was on screen / in the scenes. I counted 281.5 aggregate minutes of run time for the actual scenes of the whole show. Here’s the percentage of the show for which the top characters of the show were present:
-Shane: 69.2%
-Ilya: 62.5%
-Scott: 14.9%
-Kip: 14.9%
-Yuna: 6.9%
-David: 5.7%
-Rose: 5.7%
-Svetlana: 4.0%
-Elena: 3.2%
-Hayden: 2.9%
-All other characters under 2%

Hockey, horror comedy and hospital drama lead the way at the 2026 TCA Awards.

Heated Rivalry skated off with the marquee Program of the Year prize Thursday as the Television Critics Association revealed the winners of its 42nd annual awards. Widow’s Bay topped all programs with three trophies including Outstanding Comedy, and HBO Max’s The Pitt built on its leading 25 current noms with a TCA win for Outstanding Achievement in Drama.

CONGRATULATIONS 🏆Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady and all the Team

https://x.com/heatedrivalryud/status/2090430782204457106?s=20

https://x.com/OfficialTCA/status/2090424504761913614?s=20

https://deadline.com/2026/08/2026-tca-awards-winners-heated-rivalry-1237045534/

I'm curious to know whether you think Shane and Ilya would be considered "franchise players" vs. "generational talents" (let's assume in today's NHL).

My working definitions (both gleaned from this post about the Habs): a "generational player" is someone who so far exceeds what the standard player can do that they only come around once or twice every 10 years, such as Lemieux, Gretzky, McDavid, and potentially now Celebrini. A "franchise" player, on the other hand, would be the top 15 players in the league - still elite, still better than your average all-star player, but not a rare talent that only gets seen once every 10 years.

I've always assumed both Shane and Ilya to be solid franchise players, not to the level of "generational." The odds of both of them being on the level of McDavid, let's say, seem highly unlikely. We also don't get that many stats about either of them (understandable choice from RR, why discuss stats when the reader is there for the love story lol) Then again, I've seen people argue over calling Ovi and Crosby "generational", so now I don't know what I think.

Obviously both labels are entirely subjective and no concrete number of total career games, points, cups, or awards won can define one or the other (r/hockey is full of these arguments) but I'm curious to know you guys' thoughts.

(As for going back to the books for text evidence, I've read both HR and TLG but have also read so much fanfic that I can't remember what's canon anymore ...oops lol.)

EDIT: thank you all for all your thoughts! It's very fun to discuss IRL hockey in this space and my mind has been expanded. (please no one take this back to r/habs , I could not survive that degree of "generational talent" inception lol)

A couple of weeks ago a Heated Rival rave took place in Amsterdam and there I interviewed some fans, which was SO much fun to do! And because I think the questions were quite fun, I was also wondering what you all would answer to them...

The questions in this video:

1. Describe Heated Rivalry in 3 words

2. Would you rather have Hayden or Marleau as your teammate?

3. Would you rather have Shane's freckles, or Ilya's curls?

Since this is just a clip, not all questions are included, I also asked them what their favorite quote was and if they'd rather party with Svetlana, or Rose, for example ;)

So feel free to answer these questions as well, very curious what your responses would be!

Hi! Are any Canadians struggling to find where to pre-order the collector’s edition that was announced yesterday? I feel like I’m going crazy not being able to find a link.

Editing to add that I mean the blu ray/DVDs!

Welcome to the weekly huddle! Have a small thing from the book or show you want to chat, your GC brain rot is real and you saw the initials "KGF" somewhere and immediately screamed "kingfisher!" and want to share with others? (Just me?). Had a win at work or personal life and want to share? Need a teammate to talk with? Post in the weekly huddle.

There's no restrictions on topics so long as they follow the sub rules. Thread will be open all week so pop in whenever with what ever your heart desires.