Shane and Ilya are getting company.
Heated Rivalry has officially cast Ryan Price and Fabian Salah for season two, adding another major gay romance from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers universe to the show.
Daniel Diemer will play Ryan, while Shaheen Jafargholi will play Fabian.
And if you already know Tough Guy, you know this is not a tiny supporting-story announcement.
Ryan and Fabian are the couple at the center of that book.
Meet Ryan Price
Ryan is a former hockey enforcer whose intimidating reputation on the ice hides a much more vulnerable man underneath.
By the time his story intersects with the wider Heated Rivalry world, he has moved into coaching and becomes connected to Shane and Ilya through a summer hockey camp.
Daniel Diemer steps into the role after appearances in projects including The Half of It and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Rachel Reid herself had a wonderfully affectionate reaction to the casting.
She referred to Ryan as her “big sad son.”
Which, frankly, tells readers of Tough Guy almost everything they need to know. 😂
And Then There’s Fabian
Fabian Salah is Ryan’s very different counterpart.
He is a musician, far removed from Ryan’s hockey-enforcer world, and their relationship gives Tough Guy much of its emotional tension and charm.
Shaheen Jafargholi, known from Lost Boys & Fairies and The Agency, has been cast as Fabian.
Reid’s description for him?
Her “rockstar son.” ❤️
The pairing instantly gives season two another dynamic that looks very different from Shane and Ilya.
And that is probably a good thing.
Season Two Is Becoming Much Bigger
The success of Heated Rivalry could easily have led producers to simply keep the focus tightly on Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.
Instead, season two appears to be expanding the world around them.
Ryan and Fabian join another previously announced couple, Harris Drover and Troy Barrett, played by Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie.
That means the series is starting to look less like one central gay hockey romance with supporting characters and more like an interconnected ensemble of queer love stories.
For fans of Reid’s books, that makes perfect sense.
The Game Changers novels were always built around multiple couples whose lives overlap through hockey, friendships and relationships.
Now the television adaptation appears increasingly willing to embrace that structure too.
Ryan And Fabian Still Connect Back To Shane And Ilya
Importantly, Ryan and Fabian are not being dropped into some completely separate corner of the show.
Their story connects with Shane and Ilya’s world.
That gives season two room to expand without abandoning the couple who made Heated Rivalry such a phenomenon in the first place.
It also means viewers who have never read Tough Guy should not need homework before meeting them.
Ryan can enter through the hockey world.
Fabian enters through Ryan.
And suddenly Shane and Ilya are surrounded by considerably more gay romantic chaos than they had in season one.
Apparently One Gay Hockey Couple Was Never Going To Be Enough
The fan reaction to the announcement was immediate.
Crave’s official casting post quickly attracted tens of thousands of likes and a flood of comments from viewers who already knew exactly who Ryan and Fabian were.
Others were simply discovering that Heated Rivalry season two intends to keep adding attractive men and queer storylines at an impressive rate.
We see the strategy.
And we support it. 😂🏒🌈
Season two is currently in production and is expected to arrive on Crave in spring 2027.
By then, Shane and Ilya may no longer be the only couple everybody is obsessing over.
Meet Ryan and Fabian.
Something tells us they’re about to become very popular. ❤️
📷 @cravecanada
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