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 must be protected at all costs.

Storrie, who is one-half of the breakout twosome that emerged from the gay hockey romance, is set to make his Saturday Night Live debut this weekend. But what began as unbridled, feral excitement devolved into dread after it was reported that Team USA’s Quinn Hughes would also appear on the episode. Many fans were distressed to learn that the Minnesota Wild defenseman is scheduled to be a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this Monday.

The news, which was first reported by the Athletic, has sparked an impassioned response from Heated Rivalry fans who, before last week, might have welcomed a Storrie-Hughes collab with open arms. Whatever goodwill Hughes had built with the dedicated fandom seems to have dissipated following Team USA’s gold medal win last Sunday.

American hockey enthusiasts had every reason to celebrate after defeating longstanding rival, Team Canada, in the gold medal game. The occasion was significant as it marked the first time the USA had won Olympic gold in men’s hockey in over 40 years. But the unifying moment was sullied for Heated Rivalry fans after FBI Director Kash Patel was seen partying with the guys in the locker room after the game. Coupled with a controversial phone call with Trump and a seemingly excited response to an invitation to the White House, athletes like Hughes came under fire from the fan base.

Hughes, with an American flag draped over his jersey, was among the Team USA hockey players seen celebrating with Patel and laughing at Trump’s remarks about reluctantly having to invite the women’s team. What was doubly troubling to Hughes’s former fans was that he’d find such remarks amusing, given that his mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, was an integral member of the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team in 1992, and also helped coach this year’s women’s team to Olympic gold.

At this point, it’s common knowledge that Heated Rivalry is a global phenomenon. The Jacob Tierney-created show, adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers book series, has been widely praised for its candid and heartfelt depiction of the emotional strife closeted athletes endure. Storrie plays Ilya Rozanov, the bad-boy Russian captain of the fictional Boston Raiders, who falls in love with Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, the soft-spoken captain of the beloved Montreal Metros. Their years-spanning fling evolves into something deeper and more complicated as they balance their on-ice rivalry with their off-ice romance.

Heated Rivalry fans have taken to social media to share their thoughts on NBC’s decision to uplift and market Hughes rather than, say, Hilary Knight, the captain of the USA women’s hockey team that also won gold in Milan. Knight will, however, appear on The Tonight Show with both Quinn and his brother, Jack Hughes, on Monday. Some members of the fandom are even calling for Sidney Crosby, the Team Canada captain who Shane Hollander is supposedly based on, to appear on SNL instead.

Yahoo reached out to NBC for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.

One X user wrote, “SUCH a bad idea. They should have the women’s team on,” while another 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 exact reason behind Hughes’s inclusion on Saturday Night Live isn’t known, some fans are speculating that it has to do with a long-running joke in the online hockey community that he “sees ghosts.” The former Vancouver Canucks captain is widely recognized for his signature vacant stares while sitting on the bench in between shifts. Hughes even weighed in on the now viral joke during 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 also cited quotes from Storrie himself to further illustrate how tone-deaf this link-up with Hughes is. Storrie has openly spoken about the difficulties of growing up as an artistic 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 appearance remains unknown. But to them, the facts are undeniable: Hughes is the antithesis of what Heated Rivalry, an uplifting, celebratory gay hockey series, stands for — and spotlighting him the same night as Storrie’s hosting debut feels icky.