Netflix has found its Maple Hills couple. Daisy Jelley and Connor Simos will play figure skater Anastasia “Stassie” Allen and hockey captain Nate Hawkins in “Icebreaker,” the streamer’s adaptation of Hannah Grace’s 2022 bestseller, Netflix Canada announced.
It answers the one question the project left hanging when Netflix greenlit it in June at the Banff World Media Festival. Back then, Grace told fans there was “zero casting news” and that she’d share updates when she was allowed to. That gate has now opened.
For Jelley, the role extends a run with the streamer. The British actor appeared in Netflix’s “Geek Girl,” adapted from Holly Smale’s YA novel, and has another Netflix original, “Poser,” coming; her film credits include 2023’s “How to Have Sex.” Simos, by contrast, lands his first credited television role.
The source material arrives with receipts. Icebreaker spent 70 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold nearly five million copies, translated into 24 languages. It’s the first of Grace’s Maple Hills trilogy, followed by Wildfire in 2023 and Daydream in 2025.
Behind the camera, Amanda Lasher — whose credits include “Gossip Girl” and “Riverdale” — serves as showrunner, with Jade Bartlett (“Road House,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”) writing and executive producing after penning the pilot. Alex Cooper, Matt Kaplan and Mina Lefevre executive produce through Unwell Productions, the company Cooper founded with her husband Kaplan in 2023.
Netflix is betting on a genre that has been running hot. Crave’s “Heated Rivalry” became a breakout, winning a Peabody Award, while Prime Video’s “Off Campus” pushed the college-hockey romance further into the mainstream. Netflix already has one entry in the adjacent ice-skating lane: “Finding Her Edge,” renewed for a second season.
Grace’s plot is built for the format. Anastasia is chasing an Olympic berth, Nate is chasing the NHL, and an accident forces their teams to share a single rink. “Discipline gives way to obsession,” the official logline reads, “because the only thing more dangerous than wanting to win is wanting each other.”
No premiere date has been set, and the rink won’t fill until cameras roll.
