Portside

An obscure 19th-century Russian novel about love and class and a 21st-century gay hockey romance might seem worlds apart. But both Heated Rivalry and Molotov offer the same thing: small parables of tenderness and bravery in overwhelming times.

The surprise hit series has reopened a familiar debate: why, in the National Hockey League, visibility is still treated as a problem rather than a possibility

In less than two weeks, “the gay hockey show,” as so many have generalized it, has become an out-of-nowhere phenomenon at the end of a year in need of one.