Forget the Stanley Cup—These 20 Hockey Romance Books are the Real Winners
The 20 best hockey romance books based on my analysis of 35 best-of book lists. Is your favourite on the list?
Originally published June 3, 2025
As sports fans anxiously await the final round of the NHL playoffs, some of us have slightly different priorities—like finding our next great romance read!
As a lover of all things romance and data, I decided to research recent best hockey romance book lists to determine which books appeared on the most lists—i.e., received the most recommendations.
The Rise of Hockey Romance
It’s no secret that hockey romance books are very popular these days. While this romance subgenre isn’t new—some of its most popular books were published more than 10 years ago—there has recently been a significant uptick in popularity.
For example, from 2022 to 2024, there was a 193% increase (from 247 to 723) in the number of books tagged as hockey romance on romance.io, the largest romance-only book website and database (see graph above).
If we look at a breakdown of just the 2024 figures of books tagged with specific sports on romance.io, we get a sense of the current popularity of different sports in the romance genre (see pie chart above):
Hockey (52%) 🏒
Football (31%) 🏈
Baseball (8%) ⚾
Other: Basketball, Fighting, Skating, Soccer (9%) 🏀🥊⛸️⚽
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Top 20 Hockey Romance Books
In total, I analyzed 35 best hockey romance book lists published in 2023 or later, including lists by Book Riot, BookBub, and People. This translated to 519 rows of data and 192 books nominated (appeared on at least 1 list). Books scored a point for each list they appeared on.
Based on my analysis, 20 books rose to the top and appeared on 7 or more best hockey romance book lists.
The top two books, The Deal by Elle Kennedy and Icebreaker by Hannah Grace, appeared on 25 and 22 of the 35 lists, respectively. Not surprising when you consider that:
The Deal has been topping lists since it was published 10 years ago and the author Elle Kennedy is often considered the Queen of Hockey Romance.
Icebreaker is a New York Times Best Seller and TikTok sensation that has sold over 1 million copies.
Given that there are numerous ties on the list, the books are ranked alphabetically by title within each tied group for the sake of simplicity.
Note: This list has been compiled based on research and should not be considered my own personal recommendations or endorsements.
Here’s the full list!
The Deal by Elle Kennedy (2015) – 25 lists
Icebreaker by Hannah Grace (2022) – 22 lists
Pucked by Helena Hunting (2015) – 15 lists
Him by Elle Kennedy & Sarina Bowen (2015) – 13 lists
Mile High by Liz Tomforde (2022) – 13 lists
Always Only You by Chloe Liese (2020) – 11 lists
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid (2019) – 11 lists
Consider Me by Becka Mack (2022) – 10 lists
Offside by Avery Keelan (2019) – 10 lists
A Favor for a Favor by Helena Hunting (2020) – 9 lists
Iced Out by CE Ricci (2022) – 9 lists
Pucking Around by Emily Rath (2023) – 9 lists
Unsteady by Peyton Corinne (2023) – 9 lists
Behind the Net by Stephanie Archer (2023) – 8 lists
Collide by Bal Khabra (2023) – 8 lists
Puck Me Secretly by Odette Stone (2018) – 8 lists
Taking a Shot by Jaci Burton (2012) – 8 lists
The Graham Effect by Elle Kennedy (2023) – 7 lists
Right Man, Right Time by Meghan Quinn (2023) – 7 lists
The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen (2014) – 7 lists
Analysis
I’ll cover a few different categories in the analysis, but the top two trends are how many of the 20 best hockey romance books are indie published and written by Canadian authors.
Indie Published
This list is dominated by indie published books, defined as books published outside of mainstream publishing. I determined that 60% (12 of 20) of the books on the list are indie published.
This figure is quite high compared to other lists I’ve compiled. For example:
Only 18% (11 of 60) of the books on my Best Fantasy Romance Books list are indie published.
Only 5% (2 of 40) of the books on my Best Romance Books of 2024 list are indie published.
Canadian Authors
As a Canadian myself, I noticed that there seemed to be a very high number of Canadian authors in this category. I found that 55% (11 of 20) of the books on the list are written by Canadian authors.
Again, this figure is quite high compared to other lists I’ve compiled. For comparison:
Only 5% (3 of 60) of the books on my Best Fantasy Romance Books list are written by Canadian authors.
Only 8% (3 of 40) of the books on my Best Romance Books of 2024 list are written by Canadian authors.
Representation
In terms of representation, the hockey romance subgenre is very white. This isn’t too surprising given that the NHL’s first-ever diversity and inclusion report showed that 83.6% of employees across the NHL and its teams are white.
BIPOC
I found that only 10% (2 of 20) of the books on the list have any BIPOC representation among the main characters, only one of which is an actual hockey player (UPDATED: Thanks to reader
for pointing out that Shane from Heated Rivalry is part Japanese).This is lower than a previous list I compiled—18% (7 of 40) of the books on my Best Romance Books of 2024 list have BIPOC representation. (I won’t compare to my Best Fantasy list, as it was difficult to identify the race/ethnicity of fantasy characters).
LGBTQ+
There is more representation in terms of the LGBTQ+ spectrum as gay hockey romance books are quite popular. I found that 20% (4 of 20) of the books on the list have LGBTQ+ representation, mostly male/male relationships.
This is higher than the Best Fantasy list, but lower than the Best of 2024 list:
10% (6 of 60) of the books on my Best Fantasy Romance Books list have LGBTQ+ representation.
20% (8 of 40) of the books on my Best Romance Books of 2024 list have LGBTQ+ representation.
One book on the list (Pucking Around by Emily Rath) includes both queer relationships and an exploration of polyamory.
With the continued growth of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, I wonder if we’ll see more lesbian hockey romance books and/or more women hockey players featured in general?
For BIPOC representation, I used the definition of at least one of the main characters being identified as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour) on the page.
For LGBTQ+ representation, I used the definition of at least one of the main characters is identified as LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, or another diverse gender identity) on the page.
Duplicate Authors
Elle Kennedy managed to score a hat trick with three books on the list (one co-written with Sarina Bowen), while Helena Hunting and Sarina Bowen each scored two books on the list. (UPDATED: I originally forgot to count Elle’s co-written book to make a hat trick of books on the list for her).
Decade Published
Since hockey romance is a fairly recent subgenre, it’s not surprising that the oldest book on the was published only 13 years ago in 2012. I found that 40% of the books on the list were published in the 2010s and the other 60% in the 2020s.
Series
Series are definitely the norm in this subgenre as 100% of the books on the list are part of a series!
Fun Fact
As I was doing research for my Best Hockey Romance Books list, I noticed that a number of hockey romance series featured Vancouver-based hockey teams. Upon further investigation, I found 6 Vancouver teams!
You can filter the list by these different categories in the directory version of the list.
Data and Lists
To be included in the analysis, the lists had to be:
Focused on hockey romance books at large.
An all-time list and not specific to books published in a certain year.
Relatively recent (published in 2023 or later).
Free from obvious bias (for example, lists from specific publishers were not included).
To see the 35 lists included, go to the methodology overview.
Keep in mind that best-of lists are generally based on personal opinions and/or vague methodologies; however, I still think they are an interesting data source worthy of analysis.
Happy reading!
I’m a Sarina Bowen fan and two of the books in her Brooklyn Bruisers series feature women hockey players as the FMC who play for the Brooklyn Bombshells (Bombshells and Shenanigans).
unless i'm remembering wrong, Shane from Heated Rivalry has East Asian heritage, so that's one BIPOC hockey player on the list!