‘Heated Rivalry’ fans visit the real rink’s Sleeman Center

If you’re a fan of ‘Heated Rivalry,’ you may have the Guelph Storm ice hockey team from Ontario to thank. Last year the team missed the playoffs, leaving their facility, the Sleeman Center, unusually empty.

“We don’t normally book anything in April and May,” said Ryan Giles, who manages the multi-purpose arena. “[But] Once they missed the playoffs, I had all this availability. We get questions all the time from different shows, movies or commercials saying, ‘Hey, we need an arena for this,’ and we just happened to be available. We actually had our ice taken out for the season and then put back in for the filming.”

While it may have been a bummer for the team, it turned out well for the facility: The cast and crew of “Heated Rivalry” filmed every hockey scene at the facility’s rink in just 10 days, transforming the 5,000-seat space into the fictional home of Shane Hollander’s Montreal Metros, Ilya Rozanov’s Boston Raiders and Scott Hunter’s New York Admirals. And while the MLH (the NHL version of the show) may be fictional, that doesn’t stop dedicated fans of the series from heading to the Sleeman Center to see the rink for themselves.

Created by Jacob Tierney, “Heated Rivalry” follows the relationship between closeted gay hockey players Shane and Ilya. To say it has taken the world by storm would be an understatement; Since the show’s premiere on November 28, 2025, the Crave original series has amassed more than 600 million streaming minutes. It makes sense that fans would be eager to see where the show was filmed: Over the past six weeks, there has certainly been an increase in the number of attendees who are “clicking their cameras faster” and “a little more wide-eyed around the room” than the typical Guelph Storm spectator, Giles said.

At that moment, he estimated he saw hundreds of fans passing by to take selfies or purchase Sleeman Center merchandise. However, because the hockey games are often sold out (it is winter in Canada, after all), it’s impossible to know how many spectators will be in attendance just to get a glimpse of where the show is filmed. “They could easily come in discreetly and with 5,000 people at a match we don’t notice,” Giles said.

In one way he do The fact that fans are visiting comes from the facility’s thousands of social media mentions, he said. “We’ve seen the TikToks,” Giles said. “There are a lot of them, from people who just show up and want to take pictures in the building.” Luckily for them, the rink’s team is happy to give a quick tour, although fans of the show probably won’t need one: “Once you enter the space, you can see where they were,” Giles said. “If you’ve actually seen the show, you’re like, ‘Oh, I know what this is and that is.'”

The rink’s lower bowl is general admission, so anyone can purchase a ticket and enjoy a game if they’re interested in getting a closer look. The only place that’s difficult to access is the suite level, which requires a VIP ticket (that’s where Shane and Ilya have their tense conversation at the Sochi Olympics). “We’ve had a few people approach us and say, ‘Hey, can I see the space?’ And with our staff, we were able to give them a quick tour and then take them back to the general admission area,” Giles said.

Giles had no idea how popular the show would become (the extent of his knowledge prior to filming was that it was a “hockey-based production”), but it was exciting for him to see how it sparked interest in the sport among a new demographic. “There are so many people who generally don’t follow hockey, or aren’t interested in hockey, that they’re exposed to,” Giles said. The Sleeman Center isn’t the only place where this happens; interest in hockey tickets on StubHub rose 40% during the “Heated Rivalry’s” run, the company reported earlier this month. Plus, in the sport’s typical “boys club culture,” the show “opens doors,” Giles said. “It’s pushing those boundaries by saying, ‘It’s 2026, let’s all be inclusive’… We want to support it with everything we can.”

The ‘Heated Rivalry’ effect is not exclusive to the Sleeman Center. Other filming locations like Relay Coffee Roasters, which stars as the Straw+Berry smoothie shop in the third episode, have also seen a steady stream of fans coming to their café in Hamilton, Ontario.

“The response has been really nice,” says Rachel Hofing, who founded Relay Coffee Roasters with her husband Jason. “People have made a plan to come check it out, when otherwise they might never have heard of my cafe… Quite a few people have come in and then posted about it, always joking about the ‘Blue Moon Over Brooklyn’ smoothie.”

And while Relay Coffee doesn’t actually offer smoothies, they’re experimenting with ways to get a “Heated Rivalry” drink on the menu — right now, they’re working on a banana brulee syrup and hope to add a banana blueberry coffee to their offerings (both nods to Scott and Kips’ relationship in the episode). The café will even host a sold-out fan meeting later this month.

Other filming locations in Ontario include Mansion Nightclub, the rooftop bar Lavelle, Le Tambour Tavern and Dundurn Castle, which acts as Moscow during Ilya’s jogging scenes, to name a few.

Naturally, speculation surrounding season 2 has already begun. But Giles couldn’t provide any insight into when the shooting could take place: “We haven’t heard anything from the production company for Season 2 yet,” Giles said. “I might move a few things around if the opportunity presents itself.”