Jack and Quinn Hughes crashed Connor Storrie‘s Saturday Night Live opening monologue on February 28, but Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid wasn’t laughing along.
“I was honestly pretty grumpy all week about the Hughes brothers being there,” Reid, 46, told Glamour in a story published Thursday, March 19. “I felt like it was a damage-control situation. They’re sort of using this episode of SNL because of the popularity of Heated Rivalry.’”
Reid was at the taping to watch the host Storrie, 26, who portrays Ilya Rozanov on the TV adaptation of her series.
The Team USA hockey stars — joined by their women’s team counterparts Hilary Knight and Megan Keller — made cameo appearances, surprising the audience after a week of controversy stemming from the men’s team’s gold medal celebration.
After the men defeated Canada to win the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics on February 22, they took a congratulatory call from President Donald Trump. Trump, 79, made seemingly disparaging comments about the women’s team, which had also just won a gold medal and video showed the men’s players laughing.
Jack, 24, scored the game-winning goal for the men’s team and tried to downplay the controversy, emphasizing how close the men’s and women’s teams were to each other.
“People are so negative about things,” he told the Daily Mail the next day. “I think everyone in that locker room knows how much we support them, how proud we are of them and we know the same way we feel about them, they feel about us.”
While Reid, for her part, didn’t love seeing the brothers at 30 Rock, her green room was next to Knight and Keller’s, which she loved.
“To get to meet them and talk to them was awesome,” Reid said. “I was excited for them, so it ended up all being better than what I was expecting.”
Reid added that while she was initially disappointed to see the NHL benefiting from Heated Rivalry’s immense popularity, she has since changed her tune.
“When I saw that the NHL was benefiting from the success of the show, I was a little bit disheartened,” she admitted. “That wasn’t the message. But now I see people are going to these games as fans of Heated Rivalry, wearing merch — whether it’s homemade or official — and bringing signs that are related not only to Heated Rivalry but to being a queer hockey fan. I think it’s cool that they’re being loud and taking up space, as long as everybody’s respectful. Maybe that’s how change really starts. It’s getting people in the building that maybe have different opinions about the sport than others.”
