For gay former hockey player, ‘Heated Rivalry’ mirrors the intensity, silence and tension on his high school team

I first wrote about being gay and a hockey player in 2019 while I was still in high school in Illinois, when the story centered on fear, coming out and the relief that followed.

Back then, survival was the story. Watching “Heated Rivalry” now, years removed from the locker room, I realize how much I couldn’t see while I was in it — the silences that shaped me, the performances I perfected. Hockey was the place where I learned how to hide in plain sight. The show didn’t feel like fantasy and parts of it felt like my memories.

What stood out to me watching the show were certain scenes that vividly showed moments of intensity and quiet tension that felt immediately familiar. The silences, the intensity, the emotions and the lack of actions all mirrored parts of my own experience in hockey that I didn’t have the language for at the time. Watching the show gave me a way to look back at my own story with more clarity, and I kept noticing parallels I hadn’t seen before.

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One aspect that has become clearer to me is how silence is a character in itself. This is true in my own experience and in the show. The moments where characters would disassociate after an intense interaction or stay silent after a comment is something that was felt all the time. 

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Silence in hockey isn’t really silence. In the locker room, on the bench or after a comment that lands wrong, everyone else hears a pause and moves on. But for me (and the characters), that pause was deafening. Those moments when no one acknowledged what was unsaid became louder than any shout, any cheer, any fight on the ice. 

Delayed adolescence

I could feel every glance, every laugh that didn’t include me, every unspoken assumption pressing down, and it shaped the way I moved, spoke and even thought about myself. Watching “Heated Rivalry,” I recognized that same kin d of quiet tension.

Another deeply unsettling realization while watching “Heated Rivalry” was the experience of delayed adolescence. Growing up in an environment like hockey, my version of it at least, has a strange way of forcing you to think and act “mature” long before you’re actually allowed to live honestly. 

Your mindset moves forward while your emotional life stays stuck. While straight teammates move through crushes, dating, heartbreak and public affection in real time, athletes in my position often postpone those milestones.

 I learned how to think like an adult before I ever got to feel like a teenager.  That realization hit while watching a scene where Shane (one of the gay players) and his teammate Hayden walk through an aquarium.

Hayden proudly shares that he and his wife are expecting their fourth child, then casually turns to Shane and asks when his time is coming. Shane shrugs it off, joking with the baby and telling her to have her dad leave him alone. As lighthearted as the moment seems, it quietly captures what it feels like to watch the people around you move through life’s milestones while you remain suspended in between, aware that time is passing, but unsure when it will finally feel like your turn. 

Another parallel that stayed with me was the way the characters grow over time. At the start of “Heated Rivalry,” they are the new faces in the league — young, intense, and operating with a rookie mindset. Their relationship feels thrilling and secretive, something they believe they can manage quietly while everything else moves fast around them. 

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As the years pass and nearly a decade goes by, that intensity softens. Distance and time round them out. What replaces it isn’t clarity right away, but a deeper awareness of how lonely and unsustainable their situation has become. They grow sadder, but also more empathetic toward themselves. I see that same progression in myself. With time and distance, that intensity faded. What replaced it wasn’t relief, but perspective.

I can now look back at my younger self with empathy, recognizing how sad he was. I can look back now with empathy toward Shane and Ilya and toward my younger self and recognize that it’s only age and time that make that kind of understanding possible.

Coming out in high school

When I finally came out in high school, I was braced for loss of friends, of teammates and hockey. I had spent so long preparing for things to go wrong that I hadn’t considered the possibility that they might not.

Instead, I experienced a kind of shift. My teammates stayed. My friends stayed. Being elected homecoming king months later only reinforced that feeling. Standing there, surrounded by teammates and classmates who knew who I was and chose me anyway, I realized how much fear had shaped my expectations and how wrong some of those fears had been.

That moment didn’t erase the years of silence or waiting that came before it, but it did change the trajectory of my life. It was the first time I could look ahead instead of just getting through the day. In that way, my own experience mirrors what unfolds in “Heated Rivalry” in the realization that secrecy isn’t sustainable forever, and that choosing yourself can be the beginning of something fuller.

Anthony Arnoni is 23 and based in Tampa, Florida. He graduated from the University of Tampa in 2024 with a degree in business entrepreneurship and startup management. He currently works for a Shark Tank–affiliated company that collaborates with former contestants as well as a wide range of founders to host reunions and large-scale networking events. He can be reached via Instagram.

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