Rachel Reid’s Common Goal is the fourth novel in the Game Changers series, which follows interconnected romantic narratives involving professional hockey players and people within their social and professional circles. This structure, common in the romance genre, creates a shared world where characters recur across books, building continuity and a sense of familiarity for the reader. By the time the events of Common Goal occur, the team captain, Scott Hunter, has already become the National Hockey League’s first openly gay player in the series’s first book, Game Changer (2018), which introduces questions of identity, disclosure, and public visibility within professional hockey.

Subsequent novels expand this framework through different character experiences. Heated Rivalry (2019) presents a long-term relationship between two rival players who keep their personal lives private due to professional pressures, and Tough Guy (2020) engages with themes of mental health and emotional vulnerability within the sport. Across these earlier novels, the series shows how same-sex relationships exist in professional hockey under different conditions, including secrecy, personal hesitation, and gradual openness. By the time Common Goal takes place, openly queer identities are already part of the series’s world, particularly through Scott Hunter’s public relationship.

This position within the series is important because it shifts attention away from introducing queer identity into the sport and toward how individuals navigate it within their own lives. As a result, Common Goal engages with identity in a setting where the possibility of openness already exists, but personal responses to that possibility still vary.