Kent Parson is honestly a minor character, but he showed up right before the hiatus in a way that implied there might be a lot more, plus he was really fucked up but in a way that might be fixable, which is like catnip to slash fans.

&kent; I think you're right, Kent's a great way to get out feelings of "want to write a fixable hockey dude dealing with the NHL whilst being queer and having an Angsty Backstory but also, if you write about real NHL players, you deal with the fact that these are real NHL players". I also get some of those feelings out in the Superstition 'verse but, alas, that has no enemies-to-lovers for you, it's just childhood bffs-to-married-to-lovers.