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The hosts of a straight dude hockey podcast who got a ton of mainstream love and adoration for their reviews of Heated Rivalry have (unsurprisingly) milkshake ducked pretty hard. It turns out they were secretly homophobic the entire time! Quelle surprise!

In case your algorithm isn’t filled with the same kind of brainworms as mine, here is the TL;DR of the whole situation: Two straight bro hockey pods gained massive followings reviewing Heated Rivalry. “What Chaos!” was the first hockey podcast to do these reviews and the “Empty Netters” brothers jumped on the bandwagon after the first or second episode when they saw how popular it was and how much traffic it could drive. People fawned all over these straight men watching the gay hockey show, to the point that these straight male “allies” essentially became the faces of the Heated Rivalry craze. Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid and show creator Jacob Tierney both made appearances on “What Chaos!”; actors Robbie G.K. and Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, who play Kip and Svetlana respectively, went on “Empty Netters” (where, it’s worth noting, the hosts had Ksenia (age 23) unexpectedly (read: non-consensually) read “fan-fic” of her and one of the co-hosts (age at least 30+) and Hudson Williams, who played Shane, shouted out their episode six live react.

Cut to Thursday, when the LGBTQ+ sports outlet Outsports drops a story citing leaked texts from one of the “Empty Netters” hosts calling Heated Rivalry “trash” and saying it was likely only greenlit in order to “check inclusivity boxes” and please “blue haired twitter.” The dog whistles, they be dog whistling!

Fans then start calling the reporting “fake news” because Outsports didn’t share screenshots of the texts (this would be to protect their anonymous source; the reporting was clear that the publication had reviewed the text messages). People were bending over backwards to absolve these guys. Others were declaring that the “Empty Netters” dudes were always trash, and we should be shouting out the real true allies, the “What Chaos!” hosts.

Late Thursday night, “Empty Netters” releases an "apology" video that is 17 mins long and never contains the word "sorry." It’s really more of an explanation video, and one that never denies they said what they said but does say the texts were taken out of context and clarifies that the texts were sent before they ever watched the show (I do wish Outsports had been more clear in their reporting about this timeline of events. The fact that I ever had to defend the journalistic integrity of Outsports pains me lol). They SHOW SCREENSHOTS OF THE TEXTS that people said didn't exist. They explain that the guy was just really jealous that his hockey show didn’t get made but this other gay one did. They say they love their new queer fans and those texts were private and the public was never supposed to see them (!!!).

Even though the source of the leak has remained anonymous, context clues seem to point to the potential source being one of the hosts of THE OTHER STRAIGHT DUDE PODCAST. Oh, also, the major villain in Unrivaled, the third book in the Shane and Ilya series, publishing this fall, is hockey bro podcasters.

Now, if you’re still with me, thank you so much for reading all that (or maybe you didn’t and you’re either sorry that happened or really happy for me). If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you are likely unsurprised that the hockey bros turned out to be publicly performative allies who were secretly homophobic MAGA asshats. There was a reason I never covered those pods or gave them the time of day. It’s sad, really. Straight women (and gay men, to a large extent) want so badly to believe in a better version of cis men, they’ll center and believe them every time.

If you are newly into hockey after watching Heated Rivalry and are looking for podcasts to listen to that are hosted by women and/or queer folks, I’ve got you covered. A non-exhaustive list:

And if you’re feeling extra spicy, the Double Hockey Stix shop now sells this shirt

Thank you to double hockey stix, cellynchill, and others for their help recommending podcasts.