Check, Please!: The Original Gay Hockey Romance

By Hervé St-Louis
December 31, 2025 - 10:36

Webcomic series Check, Please!, the original gay-themed hockey romance has been overlooked in favour of the broadcast adaptation of the Heated Rivalry novel. Heated Rivalry, originally a novel by Canadian author Rachel (Goguen) Reid, adapted as a streaming television series by director Jacob Tierney, cast a shadow over the original gay-related hockey drama Check, Please! by cartoonist Ngozi Ukazu. This is another example of a comic taking a back seat to other media in the cultural zeitgeist.

Check, Please!, a popular comic, is the story of amateur hockey player Eric Bittle and former junior figure skater from Georgia, USA who moves to Massachusetts and joins a local team at his new college, the prestigious Samwell University. There, he meets French Canadian player Jack Zimmermann who is the captain of Samwell University’s hockey team, and a potential NHL draft pick. While the pair’s relationship is confrontational at first, over the years, the two men eventually fall in love as they develop a romance.

Heated Rivalry, broadcast on Canada’s streaming channel Crave has been very popular across the world and renewed for a second season. It is the second gay-related hockey romance from author Rachel Reid. The first season of Heated Rivalry has adapted that novel as well as Game Changer, her first gay hockey-themed novel. In the Crave series, professional hockey players, Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov are opponents and rivals on the ice rink but involved in a tumultuous sexual and romantic relationship privately.

Both series share the same themes of exclusion, fear, and inadequacy of gays in professional and amateur ice-hockey culture, depicted and perceived as adverse to LGBTQ people. The themes apparently resonate with audiences, whether LGBTQ or not and have been very popular for both series. Unfortunately, Ngozi Ukazu’s comic series begun in 2013, a whole five years before Reid’s first gay-themed novel while critically acclaimed, has not garnered the attention of the novels. They have been adapted as a series of books and recently cartoonist Ukazu has mentioned that a fifth series would be released in 2026.

Given the initial popularity of Check, Please!, even as a webcomic, it is difficult for Reid to claim that she knew nothing of it when she wrote and published Game Changer in 2018. The producers at Accent Aigu Entertainment and Bell Media cannot claim that in their research and adaptation of the novel series that they had not come across any reference to Check, Please! If their legal team is any good, they would. Ukazu develops the world of hockey much better than Heated Rivalry. She understands hockey, its customs, its rules, its culture. Her illustrations are vivid and colourful.

Once again, just like with Disney’s Mid-Century Modern sitcom and the Chelsea Boys webcomic, as a television production is developed, the very similar comic is not acknowledged. Even in 2025 with the indisputable popularity of comics as source material for film, television, and game adaptations, they are shunned, easily copied, and used as inspiration without any credit. Surely, the theme of hockey-based gay romance is not copyrightable and exclusive to Ukazu. However, from now on, even though she originally came up with the concept, her work will be perceived as the cheap knockoff, and any adaptation opportunities will be stalled because of Heated Rivalry’s sway over audiences.

Last Updated: December 31, 2025 - 11:31

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