Team USA’s Quinn Hughes is set to appear on ‘Heated Rivalry’ star Connor Storrie’s ‘SNL’ episode — and fans are not happy about it.

The Heated Rivalry fandom has spoken: Connor Storrie should be protected in any respect prices.

Storrie, who is one-half of the breakout twosome that emerged from the homosexual hockey romance, is set to make his Saturday Night Live debut this weekend. But what started as unbridled, feral pleasure returned into dread after it was reported that Team USA’s Quinn Hughes would additionally appear on the episode. Many fans have been distressed to be taught that the Minnesota Wild defenseman is scheduled to be a visitor on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this Monday.

The information, which was first reported by theAthleticyou will have sparked an impassioned response from Heated Rivalry fans who, earlier than final week, may need welcomed a Storrie-Hughes collab with open arms. Whatever goodwill Hughes had constructed with the devoted fandom appears to have dissipated following Team USA’s gold medal win final Sunday.

American hockey fans had each purpose to have a good time after defeating longstanding rival, Team Canada, within the gold medal recreation. The event was vital because it marked the primary time the USA had received Olympic gold in males’s hockey in over 40 years. But the unifying second was sullied for Heated Rivalry fans after FBI Director Kash Patel was seen partying with the fellows within the locker room after the sport. Coupled with a controversial phone call with Trump and a seemingly excited response to an invite to the White House, athletes like Hughes got here beneath hearth from the fan base.

Hughes, with an American flag draped over his jersey, was among the many Team USA hockey gamers seen celebrating with Patel and laughing at Trump’s remarks about reluctantly having to invite the ladies’s group. What was doubly troubling to Hughes’s former fans was that he’d discover such remarks amusing, provided that his mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hugheswas an integral member of the US Women’s National Hockey Team in 1992, and additionally helped coach this yr’s girls’s group to Olympic gold.

At this level, it’s normal data that Heated Rivalry es a global phenomenon. The Jacob Tierney-created present, tailored from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers e-book sequence, has been extensively praised for its candid and heartfelt depiction of the emotional strife closed athletes hardens. Storrie performs Ilya Rozanov, the bad-boy Russian captain of the fictional Boston Raiders, who falls in love with Shane Hollander, performed by Hudson Williams, the soft-spoken captain of the beloved Montreal Metros. Their years-spanning fling evolves into one thing deeper and extra sophisticated as they stability their on-ice rivalry with their off-ice romance.

Heated Rivalry fans have taken to social media to share their ideas on NBC’s choice to uplift and market Hughes somewhat than, say, Hilary Knightthe captain of the USA girls’s hockey group that additionally received gold in Milan. Knight will, nevertheless, appear on The Tonight Show with each Quinn and his brother, Jack Hughes, on Monday. Some members of the fandom are even calling for Sidney Crosbythe Team Canada captain who Shane Hollander is supposedly based mostly on, to appear on SNL as a substitute.

Yahoo reached out to NBC for remark, however did not obtain a direct response.

One X user wrote“SUCH a bad idea. They should have the women’s team on,” whereas one other pointed out“Not sure if Heated Rivalry Twitter is aware of this, but for anyone going to the show through the SNL Standby Line, that studio only seats about 300 and I know from experience that boos carry in that room. Not encouraging anything. But keep that in mind.”

While the precise purpose behind Hughes’s inclusion on Saturday Night Live is not identified, some fans are speculating that it has to do with a long-running joke within the on-line hockey neighborhood that he “sees ghosts.” The former Vancouver Canucks captain is well known for his signature vacant stares whereas sitting on the bench in between shifts. Hughes even weighed in on the now viral joke throughout the Olympics, telling the Boston Globe, “Sometimes you hear some funny stuff out there. But yeah, as the people say, I’m usually seeing ghosts.”

The fandom has additionally cited quotes from Storrie himself to additional illustrate how tone-deaf this link-up with Hughes is. Storrie has overtly spoken about the difficulties of rising up as a creative queer boy in Odessa, Texas.

“I was this artist, sissy boy in West Texas that didn’t want to play football,” he told Variety. “I wanted to play pretend and play dress up and disappear into weird worlds and entertain and try to connect with people that way, and that was just not the norm out there.”

Whether NBC listens to the Heated Rivalry fandom’s pleas to cancel Hughes’s upcoming look stays unknown. But to them, the info are simple: Hughes is the antithesis of what Heated Rivalryan uplifting, celebratory homosexual hockey sequence, stands for — and spotlighting him the identical evening as Storrie’s internet hosting debut feels icky.