As the world enters yet another month obsessed with Heated Rivalry, Google has unveiled some of the at-times slightly unhinged terms people are searching in the lead up to the 2026 Winter Olympic games. Unsurprisingly, there’s an increased interest in several hockey-related terms, with Heated Rivalry itself being top trending related show.
Searches for “Boy aquarium,” the TikTok-originated term for hockey arenas, is at an all-time high, according to the search engine, with “hockey goalie warm up” as a popular break out search over the last month. Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams’ appearance on The Tonight Show, where the 24-year-old actor enlists host Jimmy Fallon in hockey stretches in front of the audience, provides some context as to why people are investigating if that’s actually happening at hockey games. Spoiler alert, it is.
Searches for “hockey players” is at a 10-year high, while “are there any gay hockey players” is an all-time high. There’s also an increased interest in ice sports ahead of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. “Olympic hockey schedule” and “olympic figure skating schedule” lead the winter games’ event schedule searches, and “USA men’s hockey olympic roster” is the top trending roster search over the last month.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping stat, however, is that searches for men’s ice hockey at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi spiked 1,925 percent over the last three months. It’s possible fans were just looking to see who Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov might’ve been playing alongside when they took the ice for team Canada and team Russia, respectively.
Williams and co-star Connor Storrie had their own real-life brush with the winter Olympics outside of their Heated Rivalry characters. The actors served as torchbearers in the 2026 Olympic torch relay last month.
Heated Rivalry, produced by Bell Media for Canadian streamer Crave, airs on HBO Max in the U.S. It centers on the fictional hockey universe found in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers book series, focusing on two rival professional players — Canada-born Shane Hollander (Williams) of the fictitious Montreal Metros and Russia-born Ilya Rozanov (Storrie) of the fictitious Boston Raiders. The series follows the pair as they navigate an increasingly complicated yet deeply romantic near-decade long secret affair.
Crave renewed Heated Rivalry for a second season, and HBO Max confirmed it will continue to air the series. Jacob Tierney — who created the series for television, serving as the sole writer and director for the show’s entire first season — has confirmed that he’ll return to direct season two. However, he told THR ahead of Heated Rivalry’s finale that he was considering the possibility “that other writers will come in to help” him out for the next season, but that he wasn’t sure yet.
Reid has announced that she’ll be publishing her seventh book in the Game Changers series, Unrivaled. The book is slated to be the next chapter in Shane and Ilya’s story. It’s expected to hit shelves on Sept. 29.
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