Heat Rivalry fans will appreciate Ontario’s Guelph Storm ice hockey team. Last year, the team missed the playoffs, and the three-man center was unusually vacant.
“Normally we don’t book anything in April and May,” said Ryan Giles, who manages the multipurpose arena. “(But) after they missed the playoffs, I had this much availability. I always get calls from different shows and movies and commercials like, ‘Hey, we need an arena for this,’ and it just so happened that we had availability. We actually took the ice off during the season and put it back on for filming.”
It may have been disappointing for the team, but it worked out well for the facility. The cast and crew of “Heated Rivals” filmed all the hockey scenes in 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. MLH (the show’s version of the NHL) may be fictional, but that doesn’t stop die-hard fans of the series from making their way to the Three-Man Center to see the rink for themselves.
Created by Jacob Tierney, Rivals depicts the relationship between secretly gay hockey player Shane and Elijah. It is no exaggeration to say that it has taken the world by storm. Since the show’s premiere on November 28, 2025, Crave original series have been streamed for more than 600 million minutes. It’s no surprise that fans are eager to see where the show was filmed. Over the past six weeks, Giles said there has definitely been an increase in spectators who are “quick on camera” and “looking around the venue a little wider” than the typical Guelph Storm crowd.
So far, he estimates he has seen hundreds of fans take selfies and purchase Sleeman Center merchandise. But since hockey games tend to sell out (it’s winter in Canada, after all), it’s impossible to know how many spectators will show up just to get a glimpse of the show’s filming locations. “They can sneak in easily and inconspicuously, but when there are 5,000 people at a game, we don’t notice,” Giles said.
One way he knows fans are coming is through the facility’s thousands of social media mentions, he said. “We’ve been looking at TikTok,” Giles said. “There are a lot of people who want to take pictures around the building.” Luckily for them, the team at the Link is happy to give a quick tour, but fans of the show probably won’t need a tour. “You go into the space and you see where they were,” Giles said. “If you’ve really watched this show, you’re like, ‘Oh, I know what this is and what that is.'”
The bowl below the rink is general admission, so anyone who wants to see it up close can buy a ticket and enjoy the game. It is the suite level that is difficult to access. This requires a VIP ticket (this is where Shane and Ilya had their tense exchange at the Sochi Olympics). “We’ve had some people come up to us and say, ‘Hey, can I take a look at that space?'” and working with our staff, we were able to give them a quick tour and then bring them back to the general admission space, Giles said.
Giles had no idea how popular the show would become (the extent of his knowledge before filming was that it was “a hockey-based production”), but he’s excited to see how it’s sparking interest in the sport from a new demographic. “There are so many people who don’t normally follow hockey or aren’t interested in hockey, and this puts them at risk,” Giles said. The Sleeman Center isn’t the only place this is happening. Interest in hockey tickets on StubHub increased 40% during the “Heat Rivalry” run, the company reported earlier this month. Additionally, the show is “opening doors” in the sport’s typical “boys club” culture, Giles said. “We’re trying to push the boundaries of, ‘It’s 2026, let’s be inclusive…’ We want to support in any way we can.”
The “heated rivalry” effect is not limited to three-man centers. Other filming locations, such as Relay Coffee Roasters, which appears in the third episode as Straw + Berry’s smoothie shop, continue to draw fans to the cafe in Hamilton, Ontario.
“The response has been really fun,” said Rachel Hoffing, who co-founded Relay Coffee Roasters with her husband, Jason. “People seem to be making plans to come see it, otherwise they might not have known about my cafe… Quite a few people came and posted about it, always with a little joke about the ‘Blue Moon Over Brooklyn’ smoothie.”
And while Relay Coffee doesn’t actually offer smoothies, it’s experimenting with ways to include a “Heat Rivalry” drink on its menu. He’s currently working on a banana brûlée syrup and hopes to add banana blueberry coffee to the menu (both nods to Scott and Kips’ relationship in the episode). The cafe is also planning to hold a sold-out fan meeting later this month.
Other filming locations in Ontario include the Mansion Nightclub, the rooftop bar La Belle, Le Tambour Tavern, and Dundurun Castle, which plays the role of Moscow in Ilya’s jogging scene, to name a few.
Naturally, speculation about season 2 has already begun. However, Giles could not provide any insight into when filming would take place, saying: “I have not heard anything from the production company about season two.” “But given the opportunity, we can change some things.”
