“Off Campus” isn’t “Heated Rivalry,” but it doesn’t have to be.
By Belen Edwards on May 13, 2026
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TV is in the middle of a hockey romance takeover. In late 2025, Heated Rivalry skated onscreen with a low budget, two unknown leads, and a dream. Over the course of six episodes, it plunged millions of viewers into a smutty hockey fugue state, turned Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams into household names, and even drew more fans to the NHL.
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Now, the hockey invasion continues with Prime Video’s New Adult college drama Off Campus, which is bound to draw Heated Rivalry comparisons just by virtue of it being a hockey romance. But the similarities between the two basically start and end with “hot hockey players.” As a queer love story, Heated Rivalry unpacks what it means to be closeted at the highest level of an extremely heteronormative, hyper-masculine sport. Off Campus, on the other hand, focuses on a straight pairing who date publicly. That automatically separates the shows on a thematic level, although Off Campus carries some hockey-themed baggage of its own.
These differences wind up being a good thing for Off Campus, which manages to cook up an engrossing, if familiar, love story without falling into Heated Rivalry’s shadow. (Notably, Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus book series predates Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, although the hockey romance genre exists far beyond these two titles.)
What’s Off Campus about?
Off Campus welcomes viewers to Briar University, a fictional New England Ivy League school whose student body eats, sleeps, and breathes hockey.
Well, most of them, anyway.
Composition student Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) steers clear of hockey players in general due to a traumatic past experience. That changes when Briar U’s hockey captain and star center Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) enters her orbit. He offers her a deal: If she tutors him in their tricky philosophy class, he’ll pretend to date her so she can catch the eye of her crush, rock star Justin Kohl (Josh Heuston).
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Of course, anyone who’s ever read a fake dating story knows how this will go down. Fake feelings turn real, “practice” kisses carry more emotion than anyone would have ever thought, and soon enough, these fake daters only have eyes for each other.
Off Campus offers up a sweet romance, with less spice than the books.
When Hannah and Garrett’s romance turns physical in the Off-Campus book series, Kennedy spares no detail. The show, on the other hand, is less outright explicit when it comes to onscreen sex — another difference from Heated Rivalry. While sex scenes in Heated Rivalry could build over the course of several minutes, or even take up the bulk of an episode, Off Campus focuses on quicker encounters and glossy montages.
These scenes still carry emotional weight, though, especially Hannah and Garrett’s first sexual experience together. While the set up is a little ridiculous — she asks him to give her an orgasm (platonically!) so she can prepare for a date with Justin — it leads to a thoughtful discussion of Hannah’s anxieties around sex. She was assaulted in high school and has a hard time letting her guard down around men. After learning this, Garrett works to make sure Hannah feels safe, leading to a sweet, sexy scene that emphasizes the importance of mutual trust and consent.
As frothy as Off Campus can get, what with its lineup of hockey himbos and cheesy fun college parties, it finds depth in Hannah and Garrett’s upsetting pasts and their worries that their trauma defines them.
Hannah fears that people will only associate her with her assault, meaning she’s never opened up about it to her network of college friends. Garrett worries that he’ll end up like his abusive father Phil (Steve Howey), a former pro hockey player known for his roughhousing. These anxieties surface through series of quick-cutting flashbacks that feel formally clichéd, but still get to the heart of deep issues in a way that lends Off Campus some dramatic heft.
Garrett’s internal conflict is where Off Campus’s hockey emphasis truly comes into play, as he tries to reconcile how vulnerable he is with Hannah with his role in a sport that could get violent. For the most part, though, the Briar U Hawks lack the toxic masculinity of other teams they face, thanks to a supportive coach and a charming ensemble of upcoming Off Campus romantic leads (Stephen Kalyn, Antonio Cipriano,