The Summer He Turned Gritty?
After the massive success of hockey romance series Off Campus and Heated Rivalry, and the overall prominence of “hockey romance” as a book genre, the NHL is trying to convert that growing young audience into fans through the “Hot for Hockey” campaign.
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“The data is overwhelming,” commissioner Gary Bettman said Wednesday from Xfinity Mobile Arena, that a large number of the NHL’s newest fans started watching the league after discovering the sport through one of those two television shows.
“The hockey romance genre is extraordinarily popular,” Bettman said. “It’s not necessarily everybody’s taste. Not all of it is suitable for every audience or every age group, but for the people who are connecting to it? They’re also connecting to hockey.”
In January, StubHub reported a 40% increase in interest in NHL tickets following the release of Heated Rivalry. The first season of Prime Video’s series Off Campus released on May 13, but immediately became one of the streamer’s biggest hits, having the third-best debut in platform history. San Jose Sharks superstar Macklin Celebrini did a joint interview with Off Campus star Belmont Cameli as part of a Hollywood Reporter series that also featured Sixers star Jaylen Brown and Mahershala Ali.
Sean Eggert, the NHL’s new Chief Marketing Officer, told Sports Business Journal that hockey romance is by far the largest segment of the booming sports romance genre.
So, as part of the NHL’s new campaign to draw in more of those fans, the league released a series of romance-inspired audio series, including one “starring” Trevor Zegras, The Summer I Turned Gritty. The goal of the campaign is to present real-life NHL story lines in the style of romance novels, written by popular hockey romance authors.
Zegras’ voice isn’t actually featured in the audio — at least not in the first installment released on Spotify. Bettman said he listened to all of them — in addition to binging both Off Campus and Heated Rivalry.
The first editions earned a fair bit of ridicule from fans across the spectrum, both older established fans and from the exact fans who might be the target audience for this kind of content.
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it’s actually worse than i imagined https://t.co/7WybNY6H4Z pic.twitter.com/9CSPTmOq9v
— allie SAW WHALIEN52&HOME&LOVEMAZE&MAGICSHOP (@odelllrry) September 30, 2026
Spotify doesn’t publicize listener statistics for audiobooks, so it’s unclear how well these stories are actually performing on the platform. The Summer I Turned Gritty earned a 2.6-star rating from 16 reviewers as of Wednesday night.
In 2023, the Seattle Kraken attempted to lean into the BookTok audience, inviting popular creators known for reading and reviewing hockey romance to games and engaging with their content on TikTok. The team ran into trouble when some of those creators began to sexually harass center Alexander Wennberg, in ways his wife Felicia said were “predatory and exploitative.”
Despite the mixed success of the NHL’s attempts to engage romance readers and watchers, Bettman said the league’s efforts to reach that new audience will continue.
“We’re going to do a variety of things to continue to market and promote the game,” Bettman said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had more fans. Our buildings are sold out. We set another record last season. Our ratings were up dramatically.
“We’re looking to encourage people who might not be focused on hockey to take a look because we believe once they take a look, they’re going to like what they see and they’re going to keep coming back.”
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