Posters gravitate to players who remind them of their favorite book boyfriends, and one popular choice is Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg. His team initially courted BookTok with posts and hashtags in the same style, and flew out a popular creator for a playoff game.
But in late July, Wennberg’s wife, Felicia Wennberg, released a statement on Instagram that some videos and comments were “predatory and exploiting.” Alex Wennberg followed up with a statement saying the situation went too far when “people post vile comments on my wife’s Instagram and on photos of our child … Enough of sexual harassment, and harassment of our character and our relationship.”
It’s unfortunate that this episode is what introduced so many people to the subgenre — a long-standing favorite of the romance community. Why exactly are hockey romances so popular? I have some theories.
The world of romance novels has a slew of fiefdoms — like contemporary romance, historical romance and fantasy/sci-fi romance. If your romance novel involves a duke or a corset, you’re probably reading a historical, whereas if fairies and elves are hooking up, you’re looking at fantasy. If it’s taking place in the modern day on a recognizable planet Earth, it’s a contemporary. When at least one of the main characters is an athlete or somehow involved in the world of sports, we get even more granular and call it a sports romance.
Within the subcategory of sports romance, hockey dominates. Right now, all 10 of the top sports romances on Amazon involve hockey. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
In the United States, hockey may not be the most popular sport, but, as it turns out, the bloody, brutal pastime where people aggressively speed across ice on knives “just creates a perfect storm for a romance,” says Laynie-Rose Rizer, the events manager at East City Bookshop in Washington. “The sport itself inherently has so much tension and inherently has so much high risk and drama that when you put that in a romance environment, it really does elevate things.”
Hockey is the only team sport that still allows fighting. There’s an entire etiquette around when to drop the gloves and throw down — and most of it is all about defending teammates. The nuanced set of rules resembles a chivalric code, positioning the players as modern-day knights protecting their brethren. Then, the books show their softer side as they fall head over heels. Plus, we’re talking about wealthy, in-shape, sexually desired people, with a degree of fame that ratchets up the inherent pressure of any relationship.
Romance novels rely on tropes — the recognizable building blocks of the plot, like friends-to-lovers or fake relationship. The world of hockey can accommodate all of these. Reverse harems? You got it. Forbidden relationships? Take your pick of off-limits people for an athlete: someone who works for the team, a teammate, the coach’s kid or even the coaches themselves — you name it, I’ve read it.
The built-in cast of supporting characters — an entire team of them — is also conducive to a favorite romance novel tradition: the series. Mirroring the Marvel Cinematic Universe, characters who have smaller roles in earlier books go on to have their own star turn down the line, at which point readers can witness past favorites thriving in their happily-ever-afters.
Contemporary romance author Kandi Steiner has written dozens of books, including football romances, but made her hockey romance debut with “Meet Your Match” in July. The workplace romance kicks off a new series focused on a Florida hockey team. “You have the spotlight on the main couple in the book, but you’re also giving your readers a taste of who’s to come,” she says. There’s a grumpy single dad on the team, a young player without a lot of sexual experience, a hot team dentist, for starters. “For readers, it’s really cool because then it gets their theory minds going, and they’re wondering who can end up with who and when that’s going to happen … And I think that really builds the loyalty to a series.”
The whole team dynamic can also be a draw for another reason. “The books have a lot more male friendship than other subgenres,” says Leah Koch, owner of the Ripped Bodice, a romance-only bookstore in Los Angeles opening its second outpost in Brooklyn. “It’s written in a way where they’re kind and supportive of each other and that can be really fun to see. It’s almost like the dream locker room talk.”
Narrative wish fulfillment is part of what motivated lifelong hockey fan Rachelle Goguen to begin writing “Game Changers,” her male/male queer hockey series under the pen name Rachel Reid. (The second book in the series, “Heated Rivalry,” is what got me hooked on this genre in the first place. Highly recommend.) “‘Game Changer’ came from a place of me being angry at hockey culture and how clearly homophobic it was and is, and all the other things that made me really ashamed to be a hockey fan,” says Goguen. “That whole series attacks the NHL and hockey culture quite a bit.”
Other theories I’ve considered for the popularity of the hockey romance: Professional hockey players are the only athletes in North America still required to wear suits before games. Their excellent skating skills open the door for a romantic ice skating date. The word “puck” is ideal for any number of punny book titles. (To wit: “Pucking Around,” “Pucked Over,” “Hot as Puck.”) Hockey’s relative lack of popularity compared to other major league sports may make it better fodder for escapism.
BookTok has also boosted the visibility of the genre. Going viral on TikTok can send books straight to bestseller lists and, apparently, to hockey games, too. Romance book fans helped triple attendance at Australian Ice Hockey League games, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Professional hockey has taken notice. Philip Nilsson Fornes is a center for Nacka HK, a professional team in Sweden, and runs the team’s TikTok account. After learning about hockey romance, he started posting videos of his teammates reading popular books.
“We saw that many people really, really liked when we posted [videos showing us] reading,” Fornes says. Part of the idea is to break common stereotypes about hockey players as staid men who follow orders and don’t pick up books.
He didn’t expect to find as much knowledge about the game as he has seen in the books. “Before we started reading it, we thought, ‘Okay, they don’t know anything about hockey,’” he says. “But right now, I’m really impressed.” In particular, he thinks the books capture the way members of the team constantly spend time together.
And now, they’re even reading hockey romance together. “Four or five of us are reading the whole book, and some just get the highlights,” he says.
He acknowledges that he is still very much a rookie when it comes to the genre. But for anyone who chooses to dive in, there’s enough to sustain many, many seasons of reading.
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