10 Best Hockey Romance Boyfriends (Ranked by Someone Who Reads Far Too Many Hockey Romances)

A few years ago I couldn't have told you what icing was if you'd paid me. And yet here I am, several dozen hockey romance books deep, fully radicalized, unable to pass a rink without a small, private feeling.

This is what the genre does to a person. This is what it's done to all of us.

So consider this my completely unqualified, extremely biased ranking of hockey romance's best book boyfriends: the captains, the grumps, the golden retrievers, the ones who ruin real men for you a little bit. Some of these guys exist in books you can buy right now. One of them is my book.

Let's go.

10. Nate Hawkins — Icebreaker

Nate is the hockey romance equivalent of a golden retriever who has somehow also memorised your coffee order and your therapist's name. Captain, protective in the "shows up with your favorite snack" way rather than the "picks a fight in a parking lot" way, and just soft enough underneath the charm to make the forced-proximity setup actually land. If you're new to hockey romance and want the gateway drug, this is it. Everyone recommends this book for a reason, and the reason is Nate.

9. Shane Hollander — Heated Rivalry

Shane is buttoned-up, image-conscious, captain of a team that cannot know his secret... and somehow all of that control makes it hit harder when it cracks. While he's not the loudest guy in the room, he is the one holding everything together so quietly you don't notice how much he's carrying until the book makes you notice. Enemies-to-lovers purists, this one's for you.

8. Ilya Rozanov — Heated Rivalry

And here's the other half. Ilya is cocky in the specific, delightful way where you know it's partly armour and you let him have it anyway. He's chaos where Shane is control, which is exactly why they work: a genuinely great rivals-with-benefits-to-lovers dynamic that earns every bit of its hype.

7. Wes (Ryan Wesley) — Him

If you haven't read Him, you're missing one of the genre's most devastating slow burns. Hockey camp best friends, a lot of unresolved history, and Wes carrying a secret that costs him more than it should. He's funny, he's a mess in the way that's endearing rather than exhausting, and the friends-to-lovers ache is real.

6. Jamie Canning — Him

I'm giving Jamie his own entry because he deserves it. Steadier than Wes on the surface, quietly working through what it means that his best friend was the one thing he never let himself want. Good-hearted heroes who actually communicate are rarer than they should be in this genre, and Jamie's one of the good ones.

5. Luke Ryder — The Graham Effect

Six-foot-five, rude, opinionated, and somehow still the guy you're rooting for by chapter three. Ryder is proof that the grumpy hockey captain trope isn't going anywhere, and honestly, why would it. Grumpy-sunshine works because it works, and this one works.

Right. Those are the guys you can go and read about tonight. Now for the part where I get a bit self-indulgent. These are the guys from my own hockey romance, Stranded with the Hockey Team about a college hockey team, a journalism student who wrote a hit piece on their captain, and a plane that doesn't quite make it to where it's going. It's an ensemble book, which means there's a whole roster of guys currently living in my documents folder who I am, frankly, a little bit in love with. So here are three of them, ranked, ahead of the guy who currently has my whole heart.

4. Boone

Boone is the steady one. Young single dad and calm. He's not trying to be the hero of the group. He just quietly is one, which is somehow much sexier.

3. Rourke

Rourke will absolutely throw a punch for you and would rather eat glass than say so out loud. Tattooed, hot-tempered, the loudest guy in any argument and the first one there if you actually need him. Grumpy-sunshine energy, but the grump has real teeth.

2. Zane

Zane is chaos in the best possible way: the guy who keeps morale up because it's easier than sitting still with anything heavy. Reformed playboy energy, except the reforming hasn't happened yet, which is going to be a problem for exactly one person on that island.

1. The captain

Okay. Here he is. Our gorgeous Stellan. He's the team's captain, the guy who arrived on campus as a complete unknown and made himself essential through sheer, quiet stubbornness, because nobody had ever stuck around long enough to watch him do it the easy way. Dark hair he's always a little overdue for a cut, and blue eyes that do most of the talking his mouth won't. Funny before anyone else in the room can get there first, especially at his own expense (shhhh, insider secret: this because it's easier to hand people the joke than let them find the thing underneath it themselves).

He's not a bad boy. I made a conscious decision not to write another bad boy, and I'd like a small round of applause for that, please. He's not broody, he's not possessive, he doesn't communicate exclusively through jaw-clenching. He's warm. Genuinely, uncynically warm and makes an entire team feel like it belongs to something because he knows exactly what it costs to grow up without that.

And then the plane goes down, and the charm has nowhere left to hide behind, and the girl who wrote eight hundred words about him being a fraud gets a front-row seat to finding out he wasn't lying. He was just never asked the right question.