Heated Rivalry has added five new cast members to its upcoming second season.
Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek), Edvin Ryding (28 Years Later), Robert Naylor, Sabrina Jalees (Search Party) and Priyanka are joining the queer hockey series, Crave announced Thursday morning. The news comes just a week after the key castings of Charlie Gillespie and Justice Smith, who are set to lead season two alongside returning stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie.
The new additions hail from different books throughout Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, which serves as the source material for the show. Ryding has been cast as Luca Haas, a rookie player on the Ottawa Centaurs, and Naylor will play as Wyatt Hayes, the team’s goalie. Both are teammates of Storrie’s Ilya Rozanov, and eventually Gillespie’s Troy Barrett, and are fan favorites in the book series. Jalees joins as Farah Jalali, who works as the agent to Williams’ Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov in the book series.
Hampshire has been cast as Vanessa and Priyanka has been cast as Tarek, characters in Reid’s third novel in the series, Tough Guy. The pair are best friends of Fabian Salah, an aspiring musician who makes up one half of the main couple in that novel alongside hockey player Ryan Price. The addition of the characters Vanessa and Tarek suggests that Fabian and Ryan’s love story will be featured to some extent in season two, but casting for those characters has yet to be announced.
Season one of the award-winning show was adapted from the second novel in the Game Changers series, Heated Rivalry, which focuses on the ever-complicated situationship between Shane and Ilya, who are generational talents in the world of professional hockey and sworn on-ice rivals. The first novel of Reid’s book series, Game Changers, centered on François Arnaud’s character Scott Hunter and Robbie G.K.’s character Kip Grady and served as secondary material for the first season.
Robert Naylor and Sabrina Jalees.
Annie Diotte; Sela Shiloni
Season two of Heated Rivalry will be adapted from Reid’s sixth novel in the series, The Long Game, which continues Shane and Ilya’s story. The novel finds the hockey players now in a committed relationship with one another and learning how to build a life together while hiding their true feelings for one another in public. Series creator Jacob Tierney has said that Role Model, which takes place concurrently with The Long Game, will also be source material for the season.
Tierney created, wrote and directed season one of Heated Rivalry. The show, which premiered in November 2025, made near-instant stars of Williams and Storrie, who were both working as waiters when they booked the roles. Williams won a Canadian Screen Award for his portrayal of Shane.
Crave renewed Heated Rivalry for a second season early into the show’s first season run. HBO Max has confirmed it will continue to air the series. The show begins shooting its second season this month and is aiming for a spring 2027 release.
Tierney serves as writer, director and executive producer on the series. Brendan Brady and Jayme Alter Wilson serve as executive producers; Lori Fischburg and Liane Cunje are producers. Reid serves as a consulting producer. Mike Goldbach joins season two as co-writer alongside Tierney.
The series was commissioned by Bell Media’s Crave, with the participation of the Canada Media Fund and is produced by Tierney and Brady’s Accent Aigu Entertainment.
Hampshire is repped by Atlas Artists, Paradigm, Creative Drive Artists and Felker Toczek; Ryding is repped by CAA, Agentfirman Planthaber/Kildén/Mandic/Boström and Independent Talent Group; Naylor is repped by Marie-Pierre Tremblay and Mélanie Belzile of Agence M; Jalees is repped by WME and OPE Partners; and Priyanka is repped by Daniel Birnbaum at The Talent House.