The allure of hockey smut Kelsey WeekmanOctober 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM 0 Tessa Bailey got the idea for one of her hockey romance books when she locked eyes with a Detroit Red Wings player during warmups before a game. It's not important which guy it was.
- - The allure of hockey smut
Kelsey WeekmanOctober 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
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Tessa Bailey got the idea for one of her hockey romance books when she locked eyes with a Detroit Red Wings player during warm-ups before a game. It's not important which guy it was.
The author has written several steamy novels about beefy NHL players falling in love throughout her career. Her recent releases, The Au Pair Affair and Dream Girl Drama, follow members of the same fictional hockey team, the Boston Bearcats. A side character from that universe, a red-haired playboy named Robbie, was so beloved by readers that Bailey wrote a whole rink-side romance just for him: Pitcher Perfect.
It follows the rookie player as he pursues a college softball phenom named Skylar. They seem to be enemies, but he secretly falls for her immediately, hiding his feelings behind playful teasing and flamboyant acts of fierce competition.
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Bailey is one of many writers tapping into the ever-expanding genre, and she completely understands why stick-wielding hunks are ideal lovers: They remind us of modern-day Scottish highlanders.
"They're over-the-top, masculine, they don't mind fighting and they're not worried about their appearance," Bailey tells Yahoo. "It's sexy when a man isn't concerned about his well-being and how he looks. He just has this passion and this drive … throw in the fact that they fist fight, get bloody and lose teeth."
In the book, Robbie applies the same obsessive drive that made him an elite athlete to winning Skylar's heart. Romance novelists know that's insanely hot. And so do readers.
'Central casting's perfect sexy hero-slash-lover'
People have been actively seeking out hockey romance for years. According to data shared with Yahoo by Wattpad, a social platform where authors share original fiction and fan fiction, the number of stories tagged as hockey romance increased 300% in 2021. During the 2021-2022 NHL season, female viewership on cable TV rose by 61%. There's no one reason for the spike, but there are a few theories: Teams started taking their social media presence more seriously, youth divisions have grown in popularity and the 2022 Winter Olympics raised awareness about the sport.
Elle Kennedy's bestselling Off-Campus series also helped spark interest. The books, which first came out in 2015, follow the elite members of a hockey team in their search for love — and is soon to be a Prime Video show. Since then, there's been a steady flow of similar novels that have blown up in recent years, like Icebreaker by Hannah Grace and the Pucking Wrong series by C.R. Jane.
We're seeing so many romance novels like this because they're working. The publishing industry follows the trends that are popular online. Terena Bell, a book publicist, tells Yahoo. Hockey romance has long dominated BookTok, the reading-obsessed corner of TikTok. That community drives sales and creates consistent fans.
"If readers like one novel with a hockey stick on the cover, then hey, they might buy another," Bell says. "And so hockey romance becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy: The better it sells, the more it will continue to be sold."
So what makes these athletes the type of leading man that people can't stop reading and fantasizing about? Jean Joachim, who wrote The Final Slapshot, tells Yahoo that professional athletes are "top physical specimens of men everywhere."
"That alone will draw a crowd of willing women," she says. "While a cerebral man might technically be an excellent lover, a pro athlete has a hard, muscular body that can deliver stamina, flexibility and an ultra-sensual experience between the sheets. Couple that with his raw drive to win at all costs, and the fame that swirls around him, and you have central casting's perfect sexy hero-slash-lover."
A man who can do it all
These books about stick-swinging paramours are meeting women where they are, suggesting a shift in what they want. Bal Khabra, author of the Off the Ice series, sees how that raw masculinity is appealing — but these romantic leads are not just random jocks. They're specially crafted to stand out from their peers.
"We want men who are capable and disciplined, yes, but also emotionally present, vulnerable and deeply invested in their relationships," Khabra says. "It's about seeing men who can communicate openly and support their partners."
In Pitcher Perfect, Robbie is a big guy with a beard who isn't afraid to get a black eye, which is a relief in a world in which women looking for male partners have to swipe through endless photos of men posturing themselves to be as appealing as possible on dating apps, Bailey says.
He might be a super impressive athlete, but he's always pining for Skylar, who is accomplished in her own right with hopes and dreams outside of romance. Their enemies-to-lovers dynamic is one that Bailey loves revisiting in her writing, but she has a rule: the man has to always be pining for the woman.
"It has to be that the hero has sort of loved her all along. That's the only way it works for me, otherwise I just get sad," she says. "In the world I want to live in, there's no reality where he couldn't love her ... that's just impossible to me."
She likes making beefcakes yearn for their love interests and fight hard for them, against their competition and their own personal failings.
"I think we're partially in this to watch men suffer … and as often as we [as authors] can do that, we should do it," she jokes.
'A psychological sweet spot'
Hockey smut's growing popularity has been innocent enough, with desire relegated to reading nooks, libraries, pickup lines and wherever else enthusiasts could find a quiet moment alone. But problems arose when hockey romance fans — particularly the ones who create content on BookTok — began sexually harassing the real-life players that the fictional love interests were based on. The thrill of lusting after a fictional character crossed the line in 2023 when Felicia Weeren, the wife of Seattle Kraken player Alex Wennberg, spoke out about how people were talking about her husband online and at games.
"While I'm all for female empowerment and especially around sex, there have been videos and comments made that have crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and [exploitative]," she wrote in an Instagram story, according to Rolling Stone.
Alex Wennberg of the Seattle Kraken skates against the Pittsburgh Penguins at a game in 2024. He inspired at least one hockey romance protagonist. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images) (Steph Chambers via Getty Images)
Since then, BookTokers have been more vigilant about calling out inappropriate behavior toward real-life NHL players. The appeal of the rugged ice gladiator withstood the controversy, though — and it might be deeper than just some passing trend. Ross Hackerson, a marriage and family therapist, tells Yahoo that hockey romance hits a "psychological sweet spot."
"The sport creates perfect emotional containers — intense physical competition followed by mandatory cooldown periods, which mirrors healthy relationship dynamics where passion needs regulation," he says. Couples often struggle with "warrior-to-lover transitions," when they have to adjust from guarded states to consistent, vulnerable intimacy.
"Hockey players demonstrate this exact shift every game, going from aggressive competitors to supportive teammates in seconds," Hackerson explains. "This gives readers a familiar framework for emotional flexibility that many real relationships lack."
Hockey smut isn't just a fantasy — though there's no problem with that. It's good for us.
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