Hot New (Gay) Hockey Series on CRAVE

[TonyDown]

Former hockey player Jesse Kortuem will appear on The Drew Barrymore show tomorrow,

talking about the positive reflection of gay athletes offered by Heated Rivalry. 

A special moment happens on the show, already posted on the Internet. 

So if you'd rather be surprised, I won't reveal what happens with Drew.  You can search for it or just watch tomorrow.

Was nice to see her show adding more voices to what's good about Heated Rivalry.

 

On Andy Cohen's show,  Cohen asked Francois Arnaud a personal question.  Arnaud immediately shut it down. 

IMO the entertainment media needs to be a little more clever about all of their bullshit personal questions. 

 

 

[+ jeezopete]

47 minutes ago, TonyDown said:

On Andy Cohen's show,  Cohen asked Francois Arnaud a personal question.  Arnaud immediately shut it down. 

I watched that episode. I was really impressed with his response. 🤩

[samhexum]

I wound up watching reviews of all six episodes by two different hockey podcasts. After watching the one posted earlier in this thread, I watched their review of episode six and a few few days later decided to watch the rest so I googled hockey podcast heated rivalry and because I am either an idiot or Ilya's father (or both), it wasn't until I got up to the review of episode five and realized it was not the one I had previously watched that I realized I was watching different people.

Each one had two hosts and their producer/engineer and all six men are straight and all six love the show about as much as any of us, which was fascinating to watch.  All six love the "Skip" episode.

One of them is called what chaos! and one of the hosts there looks a bit like a young Matt Damon when he's not wearing his glasses and the other is called empty netters and it's two screenwriting brothers who are based in LA named Dan and Chris.  Their producer/engineer is Sean who is from Ireland and he made an interesting point. Ilya should easily be able to get citizenship on his own, which Sean knows about because he went through the process himself.  Ilya would be considered a skilled worker since almost no one else can do what he does and he brings a lot of money into the economy and since he's been living in Boston now for eight years… Sean said athletes should have one of the easiest paths to citizenship.  He also had the best line of the season when they reviewed episode four and Dan and Chris were talking about the end when Shane was banging Rose and Ilya was jerking off in the shower and they were obviously thinking about each other.  Sean said Well, they were both looking into the camera, so I choose to believe they were both thinking about me.

Dan looks kinda like Tim Daly in Wings so while watching Chicago Med tonight, I kept chuckling because Chris looks absolutely nothing like Steven Weber.

Edited Thursday at 02:25 PM by samhexum
for shits and giggles

[samhexum]

Empty netters live streamed the three of them watching episode six from their apartments.  Normally when they've done a live stream related to hockey about five minutes beforehand there were a few people in the "waiting room" waiting for the podcast to start, and it gradually increased as people trickled in. Five minutes before they started their live stream of episode six, there were 10,000 people in the waiting room. They are the podcast that Hudson Williams mentioned on the Tonight Show.   (watch it on 1.5X... you can totally understand, & it saves time)

Chris wore his glasses for the live stream. He said it was just in case Ilya asked him to put them on. I knew before I started watching that at some point Chris's Wi-Fi froze. It turned out to be just before Shane brought the sweater out to his mother so they had to stop right there and wait for him to get back.  You can jump forward a lot at that point. 

It is really a fascinating watch because I practically know the episode by heart. All you see is the three of them watching it and commenting. You don't actually see the show and oh my God they got so emotional. Chris and Sean each had to step out of frame at one point because they were so overcome and Dan looked like he was gonna cry when he heard about Ilya's mother.  

They are hilarious. When Shane was blowing Eli against the window in the cottage Chris said I want the cheeks against the glass shot.  When Ilya was in the lake he said I want lake sex; Dan said you keep making comments that show you have a horrible sex life… Water is a terrible lubricant. It turns everything into two sticky plastic bags.

So they're happily watching as the boys come up from the lake and I'm saying to myself oh if they only knew what's coming…

OH MY GOD! SOMEBODY'S THERE! WHO IS THAT?  NOOOOOOOO! DAD WHERE ARE YOU GOING? THERE'S 15 MINUTES LEFT IN THE SEASON. THEY CAN'T BLOW IT UP LIKE THAT.

Dan got so emotional watching it that when they did their review of the episode he said I just want you all to know I am drenched in sweat and he lifted up his arm and the pit stain went down to his ribs along his side and to his bicep on his sleeve.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 02:22 PM by samhexum
to maintain the incredibly high standards he has established here

[BSR]

Storrie and Williams have been selected as torchbearers for the 2026 Winter Olympics!  Wow, it wasn’t that long ago that these two were unknown actors waiting tables to pay the bills.

 

Edited Thursday at 06:32 PM by BSR
Typo - damn autocorrect!

[Luv2play]

3 hours ago, BSR said:

Storrie and Williams have been selected as torchbearers for the 2026 Winter Olympics!  Wow, it wasn’t that long ago that these two were unknown actors waiting tables to pay the bills.

 

And they can’t even skate. Lol

[+ Gar1eth]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

And they can’t even skate. Lol

I know from what Storrie said on Late Night that he's not a particularly good skater.  But I wonder about Hudson. He is from Canada. While obviously not every Canadian knows how to ice skate, it's a lot more probable that he has more experience than say Storrie who grew up in Texas and California. 
 

As for podcasts I watched a two straight guy podcast called Nick & Cory. Nick's family is from Belarus. And he speaks Russian.  So he gives critiques on the spoken Russian. If they weren't playing to their audience, they seemed to like it. Here's their 1st episode. 
 

I also ended up reading "Heated Rivalry's" sequel "The Long Game."  It was pretty good. There's also a third one coming out next September. 

Edited Thursday at 11:09 PM by Gar1eth

[MikeBiDude]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

And they can’t even skate. Lol

I binged-re-watched all 6 episodes last weekend with a friend who played a lot of hockey…he said the skating wasn’t very good.

[Luv2play]

I would be surprised if their skating was good. There is nothing in their backgrounds to suggest they could play hockey competently. I was forced to play hockey as a young boy in a private school for boys in Canada and hated it. Later in life I learned to enjoy skating as a recreational sport but no pressure to perform athletic feats on the rink. 

[+ jeezopete]

 

[samhexum]

Ticketing giant StubHub says it received a surge in interest for Saturday night’s game, six times higher than average. The show, “Heated Rivalry,” on Crave and HBO Max, primarily focuses on a romance between two male hockey players who play for rival Montreal- and Boston-based teams. StubHub says the surge is 35 percent higher than in a typical matchup between the two teams. Finally, 82 percent of those who have purchased tickets are first-time buyers, three times more than usual.

The growing interest hasn’t been limited to Canadiens and Bruins games. NHL single-game ticket sales on StubHub are up 82 percent compared to last season. The ticketing company also says it has seen a 40 percent increase in general interest for NHL tickets and a 75 percent surge in NHL ticket searches, as well as a 5 percent increase in first-time NHL ticket buyers since the show first aired on Nov. 28, 2025.

[BSR]

Both Storrie and Williams look like they enjoyed the honor of carrying the Olympic torch …