This story originally appeared on Them.
While Jacob Tierney may have brought us the gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry, one of the biggest queer cultural phenomena of the decade, the creator and showrunner slammed real-life men’s hockey for its “toxic” culture.
While appearing on Radio Andy, Bravo star Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show, Tierney had an immediate response to Cohen’s claim that the NHL, the North American men’s professional hockey league, had “capitalized” on Heated Rivalry’s success and “met the moment.”
“Have they?” Tierney responded.
“Have they not?” Cohen said.
“No!” Tierney continued. “They’ve just hired four rapists to play for them. The NHL is not meeting the moment… The NHL has- I think the NHL has a lot of ongoing work to do.”
As of December 2025, the NHL has fully reinstated five former Hockey Canada players — Dillon Dubé, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, and Michael McLeod — who were acquitted of sexual assault charges in July of that year, per ESPN. The five had been criminally charged in 2024 over an alleged 2018 incident of sexual assault against a woman in a hotel room. They all pleaded not guilty.
Since their acquittal, three of the five have been offered an NHL contract with a team — which the league allowed in October of last year, ahead of their full reinstatement in December. In 2026, Formenton joined the Edmonton Oilers, while Dubé signed a contract with St. Louis Blues; Carter Hart signed with Las Vegas Golden Knights last October.
Cohen went on to say that Tierney and the Heated Rivalry team had “handed the NHL a gift.”
“Yeah, I agree, and it is up to the NHL,” Tierney added. “It is up to the NHL to actually convince anybody that this is a safe space for people. Because every day they want to prove that it's not.” He continued, “They are not, they are not doing what they should be doing to make their sport an inclusive place.”
Tierney finally added, “They really need to deal with their own toxic culture. And they’re not, you know?”
Tierney is not the only member of the Heated Rivalry crew who has criticized the NHL since Rivalry brought the organization’s issues with homophobia into the spotlight.
During a January appearance on the Kelly Clarkson Show, François Arnaud said that, while the league is certainly capitalizing on the show’s success, that hasn’t translated into more acceptance for LGBTQ+ hockey players.
“It’s crazy to think that there’s no out player in the NHL,” Arnaud, who plays closeted hockey player Scott Hunter on the hit show, said. “I hope that the league that is now using the show for tweets and Instagram posts and selling tickets, that it actually follows through and supports openly in the league and in the players.”
As of 2026, the NHL remains the only major men’s sports league in North America without any out gay players in its entire history.
In 2024, former hockey pro Brock McGillis, who came out after his career ended, launched a tour of youth hockey leagues to promote inclusivity in the sport. “When we humanize the issue, people become more receptive to shifting their environment and engaging in the conversation,” McGillis told Outsports at the time. “They don’t understand my lived experiences without sharing my journey. How can we expect them to?”
In September, the NHL’s Dallas Stars even cancelled their annual Pride Night for the first time in five years, replacing it with a night celebrating women in sports and a night dedicated to a romantasy charity event.
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