Giving bodychecking a whole new meaning, Heated Rivalry has come into our lives, like a power play in the last 30 seconds of a tied Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Finals. It’s now hard to imagine a world without Ilya and Shane, Scott and Kip, stupid Canadian wolf birds and blueberry banana smoothies. And while they’re bound to be overexposed, stars Connor Storrie, the 25-year-old Texan who plays Ilya Rozanov, and Hudson Williams, the 24-year-old from British Columbia who portrays Shane Hollander, are an absolute delight to watch as they cut a swath through Hollywood, joyfully relishing their overnight success. While we wait and wait and wait until April 2027 for season 2, here is a breakdown of stats for the hottest thing to hit the ice since Team Canada at the 1972 Summit Series. Let’s go!
40 | Number of hours a week Storrie was waiting tables at the Laurel Grill in Culver City, Calif., before getting hired on Heated Rivalry; Williams, meanwhile, was biding his time as a pasta slinger at The Old Spaghetti Factory in New Westminster, B.C.
10,000 | Number of followers for Williams and Storrie on Instagram before the spicy trailer for Heated Rivalry dropped in October. They’ve since jumped to 2.8 million Instafans, including Donatella Versace, who was the first fashion star to follow the pair. She’s also the first – and likely only – icon to invite Williams to her home in Milan and present him with a monogrammed robe.
$80,000 | Salary the stars were each paid for the first season of the show, which, itself, was made for under $5 million an episode – or, as GQ put it, “for about $12 Canadian dollars.”
5 | As in “no kissing until episode 5”: According to Heated Rivalry actor François Arnaud, this was a note given to the show’s Montreal-born creator Jacob Tierney by a U.S. streamer he was talking with. Tierney, instead, made the hot-and-heavy series with 99 percent Canadian financing on Crave. But, without any U.S. funding, the show is ineligible for the main categories at both the Golden Globe and Emmy Awards.
20 | Years since Brokeback Mountain came out, but Williams says the gay-cowboy love story with two Hollywood leading men was an inspiration for his performance: “Brokeback was a movie that shattered me.”
450 grams | The amount of ground beef that Williams and Storrie ate daily during the filming of Heated Rivalry. They also worked out five to six times a week in order to build and maintain those glute-tastic hockey physiques. “I am 90% butt,” Storrie has joked. “I am more butt than man.”
14 | Number of sex scenes in the six-episode series. And, thankfully, Out magazine has ranked them all.
5,805 | The percentage jump in sales at Indigo for the Heated Rivalry novel by Halifax author Rachel Reid, since the TV series premiered. “I’ve been asked to speak at the University of Cambridge,” she told Variety about being thrown into the spotlight. “I write hockey smut. I’m not Kurt Vonnegut.”
8.6 | Rating for Heated Rivalry on Russia’s largest film and television streaming platform – which puts it as the third top show, higher than Stranger Things and Breaking Bad. That said, the series has to be pirated as any LGBTQ+ content is banned in Russia, with potential prison terms for public expressions or advocacy of queer identity. So when Ilya tells Shane they can’t be together, “Because Russia,” he means it.
4 | Number of days it took for Williams and Storrie to decide on a matching tattoo design. They settled on: “Sex Sells” written within a heart. Williams got it on his thigh, and Storrie went for the shin.
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1 | Number of tequila shots Storrie did on the Golden Globes red carpet with interviewer Gayle King and Heated Rivalry superfan/GG nominee Ayo Edebiri (The Bear), kicking off his big Hollywood introduction. Storrie and co-star Williams also found themselves at the top of The Hollywood Reporter’s Golden Globes Red Carpet Power Ranking for the attention they brought to the brands they were wearing – Williams was in Armani with Bulgari accessories and Storrie wore a Saint Laurent tux with Tiffany & Co. jewelry. Since then, Balenciaga has announced Williams as a “Friend of the House” and Storrie has inked an exclusive deal with Saint Laurent.
573,000 | The number of social media mentions that Williams received on Golden Globes night, while Storrie earned 458K, making them the second and third most talked-about celebrities of the event, after K-pop star Lisa – and icing out perennial internet sensations like Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet and Jennifer Lawrence.
30 | Minutes that Storrie was able to stay at the Golden Globes afterparty at the Chateau Marmont in L.A. – “I said hello to Parker Posey” – before hopping a red-eye to New York so he could be a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers the following day.
$7,000 | Cost of the Dsquared² shearling jacket that Williams wore the day after he walked the runway – in double denim, no less – for Canadian designers Dean and Dan Caten at Milan’s Fashion Week. Williams also sat front row seat at the Armani show next to Ricky Martin: “Give me a break, of course I’ve watched it,” the singer told a reporter about Heated Rivalry, giving Williams a pat on the shoulder and knee. “I think it’s the most beautiful love story out there, and I think we need more stories like that one.”
20 | Minutes in a hockey period and also the time it took for the Ottawa Senators official Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander jerseys to sell out at a recent home game versus the Montreal Canadiens. The show’s producers have confirmed that the nation’s capital will feature prominently in season 2.
0 | Number of NHL players who have come out as gay in the league’s 108-year history. Even as NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, publicly stated he “binged all six episodes in one night,” the sport’s culture of homophobia runs deep – including a ban on Pride-themed warm-up jerseys (along with other causes). “I think they’re actually really good at capitalizing on it,” said François Arnaud, the openly bisexual Canadian actor who plays Scott Hunter on the show, about the league’s embrace of Heated Rivalry’s success. “I’m just hoping that it’s backed up by actual, like, openness to diversity.”
2,000 | Number of people who applied for a New York City Library card over one weekend in January (double the amount who applied in all of January last year). This came after newly minted Mayor Zohran Mamdani called a press conference where he encouraged people to stay home during a record-breaking snowstorm and suggested they check out the Heated Rivalry audiobook from the NYPL – as a courtesy, the library made an unlimited number of copies available. “It’s freezing cold outside and there is a snowy quality to the books with the hockey theme, so stay inside and read,” said the chief librarian. And they did: downloads of the book surged 529 percent after the press conference.
49th | Leg that Williams and Storrie carried the Olympic torch – through the town of Feltre – in the lead up to the Milano Cortina Winter Games. “This is crazy,” Williams says in a video posted on the official Olympic site, in which you can hear fans saying, “Italy loves you.” His response: “I love Italy!”
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5 | Words that Canada has gifted the world: “I’m coming to the cottage.”
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