Brock McGillis, the first out gay professional hockey player, has poured cold water on the idea that Heated Rivalry will help players come out.

McGillis, 42, who came out publicly in 2016 after he’d retired, now advocates for more inclusivity in hockey.

Speaking exclusively to PinkNews, the Canadian weighed in on the LGBTQ+ sports drama that has quickly gripped the internet.

The series focuses primarily on Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), two rival hockey players who enjoy a secret romance.

“Episode one gave me a panic attack,” he says, seeing himself in Hollander and Scott Hunter (François Arnaud). “I was scared. I dated a guy for three years, not a soul in my life knowing. We had an alias for [me in his phone] in case [his friends] ever saw.”

When it comes to capturing a sense of hockey culture, McGillis says the series could show more of the normalised homophobia he says exists in the sport.

“The language, behaviours, and attitudes that you get in locker rooms are sometimes homophobic – that starts at a very young age and progresses through your whole life. You’re programmed to feel that everyone will hate you and you’ll lose your career,” he says.

McGillis adds: “Sometimes I don’t think people recognise what they’re saying or the impact it has. But if you’re hearing that daily, it’s death by 1,000 paper cuts.”

In response to comments by former hockey pro Sean Avery that Heated Rivalry could help players come out, McGillis disagrees “wholeheartedly”. He also says: “That’s just [Avery] trying to get press.”

He tells PinkNews: “It might help the people around [players] understand a little more if they’re dating somebody; hopefully.”

But he points to his own coming out as well as Luke Prokop’s with both men doing “every press” lamenting that more “[players] didn’t jump out of the closet”.

Applauding the show’s sex scenes McGillis continues: “Nobody’s like, ‘Oh, yeah. This came out and now I’m ready [to come out].’ It’s not happening.”

He then says: “It’s probably more likely to have an adverse effect on a player coming out. And I hate to be negative because I really enjoy the show. But I also don’t believe that many hockey bros are going to watch it. And I don’t think, if they are watching it, they’re talking about it positively.”

And while McGillis says if he had children, gay or straight, he wouldn’t let them play hockey, he believes that hockey players are “really good people”.

He goes on to say: “If a player did come out, hockey players would be the most likely to rally around their teammate more than any of the other big sports.”

Highlighting his ongoing Shiftmakers tour, already having visited approximately 150 junior (16-20) and youth hockey teams across Canada and North America in six weeks, McGillis has evolved his practice to focus less specifically on LGBTQ+ issues and more on creating a safe space for everyone to be themselves.

This, he argues, will then allow for more people to come out as LGBTQ+.

“I would say I’ve had over 200 hockey players in the last six weeks disclose that they’ve experienced some form of self-harm, suicidal ideation,” McGillis shares. “I’ve had 15 to 20 players disclose they’ve been sexually assaulted. I would say over 1,000 have some form of anxiety or depression.”

At the end of last week, confirmation came that Heated Rivalry would return for a second season. The series is based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novel series.