Game Changers

The Game Changers series by Rachel Reid follows professional ice hockey players finding love and navigating queer identity in the NHL. Seven novels of rivals, slow burns, and hard-won happy endings.

The Game Changers series by Rachel Reid is a landmark in M/M sports romance - seven interconnected novels set in the world of professional ice hockey, each centring a new romance whilst sharing a richly drawn cast of players, coaches, and the people who love them. Published through Carina Press between 2018 and 2022, the series grew from a passionate debut into a genuine cultural moment for queer romance fiction, combining authentic hockey atmosphere with emotionally intelligent love stories that pull no punches about the costs of hiding who you are.

What distinguishes Game Changers from other sports romance series is its commitment to the interior lives of its characters. Reid writes men who are at the top of their professional game and, simultaneously, quietly and sometimes desperately uncertain about who they are allowed to be. The NHL world she constructs is neither romanticised nor dismissive - it is a place of real pressure, real camaraderie, and real prejudice, and the forbidden romance that blooms within it feels earned precisely because it happens in spite of the sport's culture rather than because of it. The series is unafraid to name the specific difficulties faced by queer protagonists in a hyper-masculine professional environment, while never losing sight of the warmth, humour, and heat that make each book a joy to read.

Across the seven novels, Reid cycles through a range of tonal registers and romantic dynamics - from fizzing rivals to lovers tension to a grumpy-sunshine dynamic built on unexpected tenderness, to a slow-burn romance between men who never quite got it right the first time. The found family that coalesces around the series' recurring cast gives the later books a cumulative emotional satisfaction: by the time readers reach The Long Game, they have watched several relationships evolve, and the sense of a LGBTQ+ community quietly and defiantly taking shape inside professional hockey makes the series feel like more than the sum of its individual romances.

The series was adapted for television in 2025, with the Heated Rivalry storyline - the centrepiece of the series and its most beloved romance - serving as the basis for the show's first season.

Books in the Game Changers Series

Game Changer (2018) is the first book in the Game Changers series and the novel that introduced readers to Rachel Reid's version of professional hockey. It follows Scott Hunter, captain of the New York Admirals, who becomes quietly obsessed with Kip Grady, the barista at his favourite juice bar. What begins as a series of increasingly transparent excuses to return to the counter becomes something neither man expected - a relationship that forces Scott, one of the NHL's most visible stars, to confront what he actually wants. Game Changer establishes the series' tone immediately: funny, tender, genuinely steamy, and anchored by characters whose emotional lives feel real rather than convenient.

Heated Rivalry (2019) is the second book in the Game Changers series and, for many readers, its heart. Shane Hollander, the all-Canadian captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, has built his professional identity around being everything his rival is not. Ilya Rozanov, the charismatic and infuriating Russian captain of the Boston Bears, is his equal on the ice and his opposite in temperament. Their secret relationship - years of stolen encounters conducted entirely off the record - is one of the great enemies to lovers slow burns in contemporary romance. The tension between what Shane and Ilya feel and what they believe they are allowed to have drives the novel to a deeply satisfying conclusion, and their story continues in the later The Long Game.

Tough Guy (2020) is the third book in the Game Changers series and introduces Ryan Price, a gruff, gentle-giant enforcer who has spent his career leading with his fists and his loyalty rather than his feelings. When Ryan relocates to Toronto and reconnects with Fabian Salah - a musician he has never quite stopped thinking about - the novel becomes a story about a man slowly learning to be known. The second chance romance at its centre carries real emotional weight, and Reid gives Ryan one of the series' most quietly affecting internal voices.

Common Goal (2020) is the fourth book in the Game Changers series and shifts focus to veteran goalie Eric Bennett, a silver fox navigating his late-career realisation that he is attracted to men. His relationship with Kyle Swift - younger, more confident in his identity, and disinclined to become anyone's experiment - develops through a friends-with-benefits arrangement that neither of them manages to keep purely casual. The Grumpy-Sunshine Dynamic between Eric's careful guardedness and Kyle's open warmth gives Common Goal a quieter, more introspective texture than its predecessors.

Role Model (2021) is the fifth book in the Game Changers series and follows Troy Barrett, a player freshly traded to the league's worst team following a messy, public breakup. When Troy finds himself increasingly drawn to Harris Drover - the Ottawa team's relentlessly upbeat social media manager - the novel leans fully into its grumpy-sunshine dynamic with real warmth and comic timing. Harris is one of Reid's most purely enjoyable creations, and the contrast between his easy openness and Troy's defensive guardedness makes their slow, affectionate push-pull a delight.

The Long Game (2022) is the sixth book in the Game Changers series and returns to Shane and Ilya - the couple at the series' emotional core - a decade on from Heated Rivalry. Their relationship has endured far longer than either anticipated, but secrecy has its costs, and The Long Game forces a reckoning between what they have built privately and what each of them needs publicly. It is a fitting, emotionally rich conclusion to their arc, and rewards readers who have been with the series from the beginning.

Unrivaled (2026) is the seventh and final book in the Game Changers series, and the long-awaited conclusion to Shane and Ilya's story. For the first time in their professional careers, they have nothing to hide - out, married, and even playing on the same team. But standing together in the open brings its own challenges, and as a backlash movement within the hockey world grows louder around them, Shane and Ilya face their biggest test yet. Unrivaled is a fitting culmination of a series that has always argued, with warmth and conviction, for the right of queer love to exist without apology.