Creator Of Hit Gay Hockey Show Wants To Destroy The NHL

When you think of professional hockey, the notion that the teams, the players, and the fans are part of a “safe space” is totally absurd. Hockey, of course, is a brutal sport. Players get body-checked. Players slug each other in the face. Players lose teeth. It’s a gladiator battle on ice.

So it was particularly infuriating when Jacob Tierney, the creator of the hit HBO show “Heated Rivalry,” about a gay romance, described the NHL’s culture as “toxic” during a recent interview with actor Andy Cohen.

His comments come as the league looks to expand into different demographics thanks to the explosion in popularity of the hockey romance novels gaining traction on TikTok. (RELATED: Gone Are The Days Of ‘Broad Street Bullies’: NHL Targets TikTok Zoomettes With Gay, Sensitive Hockey Romance)

“No… The NHL is not meeting the moment,” he told Cohen. “I think the NHL has a lot of ongoing work to do.”

Cohen also suggested that the show was a “gift” to the NHL because it helped draw in new, younger, female fans. Tierney was having none of it, saying, “It’s up to the NHL to convince anybody that this is a safe space for people.”

He went on to claim that the NHL is “not doing what they should be doing to make their sport an inclusive place” and that “they really need to deal with their own toxic culture, and they’re not.”

This is completely absurd, and no actual fan (at least fans who have loved the game longer than newbie Zoomettes who started following the sport just the other day) wants the NHL to become a “safe space.” If anything, people want the “space” to be more dangerous, because that is what makes hockey appealing in the first place: it is dangerous and violent. (FWIW, this is also what makes it appealing to women, who find it sexy when two dudes drop their gloves and punch each other into a bloody pulp.)

Tierney should really stay in his lane and not bite the sport that helped give him a hit television series.