Crave has announced that Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie have been cast as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett respectively for season 2 of Heated Rivalry.

— room 1221

bonus versions (scanned):

It doesn't even cross Kip's mind that hate crimes exist when he asks Scott what's the worse that could happen, because that's not a consequence possible in regency romance. A demand to choose a partner over hockey polite society happens all the time in regency romances. The privileged partner not understanding the dark side of hockey classism, check. A partner caving to the societal expectation of his station and staying the closet is framed as an act of selfish cowardice that he needs to overcome to be worthy of love.

And usually in regency romances, like Pride & Prejudice, the solution to this barrier is for the couple to just choose each other and declare their love and it all works out (due to the man's extreme privilege shielding his wife, which doesn't map to homophobia) or for the couple to happily leave the nasty gossip-mill of polite society (Montreal) to more comfortable country social circles (uber-supportive Ottawa). This could be why the Russian issue is waved away, because regency stories usually end with the couple either winning over dynastic acceptance or with them in a more powerful position than their disapproving relatives. Neither of which can be applied to this situation, so there is no roadmap for Reid to continue the issue.

This could explain why Reid feels that coming out publicly is imperative to a happy ending. If homophobia is positioned by the writer as the modern take on romance novel classism, then remaining in the closet--in any capacity--functions as an adherence to social hierarchy, which the regency genre demands their love interest grapple with and reject.