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The NHL’s “Hot for Hockey” campaign is a series of 60- to 90-second, romance-novel-style audio stories about real NHL players, made to promote watching games. It is not a set of full romances: the first stories feature Trevor Zegras, Sebastian Aho and Jack Eichel, and WIRED reports they do not pair the players with romantic partners. The format has drawn criticism from romance writers and fans who see the league borrowing the genre’s appeal without addressing persistent concerns about hockey culture.
What is the NHL’s “Hot for Hockey” campaign?
Announced in 2026, “Hot for Hockey” packages brief, romance-inspired descriptions of players as audio content distributed on audiobook platforms. Author C.R. Jane, whose books include Pucking Wrong, wrote the first batch. WIRED described the pieces as closer to the promotional copy on a book jacket than to complete romance stories. The league’s stated commercial aim is to encourage people to watch NHL games, and it also plans to work with BookTok creators to promote the campaign.
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Which players appear in the first stories?
- Trevor Zegras of the Philadelphia Flyers
- Sebastian Aho of the Carolina Hurricanes
- Jack Eichel of the Vegas Golden Knights
WIRED reported that the NHL said players approved all campaign content and that the stories would remain exclusively hockey-focused. That approval addresses participation in the campaign; it does not, by itself, settle questions about how audiences might respond to real players being framed in romanticized promotional material.
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The criticism is not simply that a sports league is trying romance-themed marketing. It is about who gets to use the genre’s credibility, what the campaign offers readers, and whether the league’s outreach is matched by meaningful attention to issues those readers care about.
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Some writers see the campaign as borrowing credibility
Best-selling hockey-romance novelist Emily Rath said on Threads, “I cannot begin to describe the depths of my rage that this is actually happening.” According to WIRED, the NHL approached Rath and she declined. She argued the league was using romance authors’ standing with readers to attract an audience while failing to address racism, homophobia and misogyny in hockey.
Author Chelsea Curto, whose work includes the D.C. Stars series, also declined. WIRED reported that Curto criticized the league’s use of AI graphics and said her books can be critical of the league. Lacey Conine, founder of Double Hockey Stix, said she initially thought the announcement was satire. She characterized the campaign as “mocking you, and pandering to you, and making fun of you,” and said the league seemed to “see dollar signs.”
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Real-player romance framing raises boundary concerns
Some critics worry that romanticizing identifiable players could intensify sexualized attention or encourage uncomfortable parasocial relationships—one-sided feelings of intimacy with public figures. That concern sits alongside the league’s statement that players approved the content: consent to participate in an advertisement is not the same thing as endorsing every fan response to it.
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“RPF” means real-person fiction: fan-created stories about real people. Lecturer Jess Rauchberg of the University of Leeds told WIRED that hockey RPF has existed since at least the late 1990s. Her analysis is that the line between fan fiction and official marketing is becoming less distinct as teams encourage personal connections with players. She also described fans using hockey romance and RPF to imagine more representative worlds, including hockey cultures that reject rape culture and toxic masculinity.
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| Dimension | “Hot for Hockey” | Independent hockey romance or fan-created RPF |
|---|---|---|
| Narrative purpose | Short promotional audio intended to help sell interest in NHL games. | Reader-centered storytelling or fan-created fiction; individual works vary. |
| Relationship to real people | Promotional stories about identifiable players, with player approval reported by WIRED. | Hockey romance may use fictional characters; RPF uses real people as its subjects. |
| Audience relationship | A league campaign aimed at reaching romance and BookTok audiences. | Created for readers or fans; the motivations and treatment of audiences vary by author and work. |
| Accountability question | Whether promotional outreach is accompanied by credible action on inclusion and abuse concerns. | Works can engage critically with hockey culture, but approaches vary and should not be treated as uniform. |
The categories overlap in their use of hockey-romance conventions, but they are not interchangeable. A brief league advertisement has a marketing objective and uses real players with reported approval; a romance novel or fan-created story has its own authorship, audience and narrative aims. The available account does not establish that every fan response to the campaign is welcome to the players, nor does it describe the full boundaries around such responses.
Why does the campaign feel especially charged now?
Hockey romance has grown in visibility over several years: the New York Public Library highlighted the trend in 2019, and WIRED connects the genre’s more recent mainstream attention with the success of the romance novel and streaming adaptation Heated Rivalry, followed by Off Campus. The NHL’s move makes that readership visible as a potential audience for sports marketing, but the culture around hockey is part of what many readers bring to the genre.
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Earlier disputes help explain the skepticism. In June 2023, the NHL banned players from wearing specialty-themed uniforms, including Pride sweaters, and from using specialty tape; the tape decision was later reversed. Also in 2023, Seattle Kraken player Alexander Wennberg and his wife, Felicia Wennberg, posted about “predatory and exploiting” comments they received after the team’s BookTok-oriented social content. Those episodes do not establish that the current campaign will produce the same outcomes, but they inform concerns about whether fan engagement is handled responsibly.
What does the NHL say?
NHL spokesperson Jon Weinstein described the campaign to WIRED as “a playful nod to something that’s clearly going on in the cultural zeitgeist.” He said the league was proud to partner with hockey authors, illustrators and voice actors and grateful that players were willing to have fun with it. The NHL Players’ Association did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
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The league’s explanation presents the project as lighthearted participation in a popular cultural trend. Critics are asking a different question: whether a campaign that borrows romance’s audience and language can feel like genuine engagement when the league’s handling of inclusion and harassment remains contentious. Those positions can coexist—the campaign can be intended as playful marketing and still strike readers as opportunistic or poorly judged.
Where can readers find hockey romance like Heated Rivalry?
Heated Rivalry is one prominent entry point named in WIRED’s account of the genre’s visibility. For other starting points, the article identifies C.R. Jane’s Pucking Wrong and Chelsea Curto’s D.C. Stars series as hockey-romance works. These are book recommendations, not campaign audio stories, and current retailer availability or pricing is not established here.
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