The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that hockey, Canada's favourite sport, may not be a hit in China, but one of its top TV shows is. The Globe's James Griffiths writes that Crave's Heated Rivalry, which follows the steamy sex life and slow-budding romance between a Canadian and a Russian hockey player, was briefly the top-rated foreign show on Douban, China's answer to movie cataloguing app Letterboxd, and remains in the top 10, putting it on par with Stranger Things or Emily in Paris. That is not down to canny marketing by Bell Media's Crave, which also is not making any money off Heated Rivalry's Chinese viewers, as the show is not legally available to stream. Its pirated popularity has spread by word-of-mouth on-line, particularly among fan-fiction communities focused on same-sex relationships, similar to that which inspired Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid to write the book on which Heated Rivalry is based. Mu Zi, a 27-year-old vocal coach in Shanghai, said she discovered the show on a friend's recommendation, and "never expected it to be this good," she told The Globe. "Ice hockey is a highly confrontational sport, and pairing that with a gay romance creates a strong contrast that's really interesting."