‘Icebreaker’: Paul Wesley Joins Netflix’s Hockey Romance Adaptation!!

Anastasia Allen transferred to Maple Hills to get closer to the Olympics, and Nate Hawkins is trying to make it to the NHL. Both have good reasons to be territorial about practice time, which is exactly what makes their first problem so satisfying. An accident leaves the figure skaters and hockey players with one rink between them, and two people used to getting their way have to agree on who gets the ice.

Netflix has already cast Daisy Jelley (Geek Girl) as Anastasia and Connor Simos (Subversion) as Nate. The latest addition is the person who has to keep the hockey team focused while its captain gets increasingly distracted. For that, Netflix turned to an actor who’s spent the last few years figuring out how to play a young James T. Kirk before he becomes the man everyone expects to take charge.

Netflix has cast Paul Wesley as Coach Neil Faulkner in Icebreaker, its adaptation of Hannah Grace’s bestselling hockey romance. The Vampire Diaries star joins the series as production gets underway in Vancouver, British Columbia. The cast also includes Auliʻi Cravalho as Lola, Gabriel Tierney as Aaron, and Aidan Shaw, who also appeared in Heated Rivalry, as Russ. Netflix has yet to announce a premiere date.

Who Is Paul Wesley Playing in Netflix’s ‘Icebreaker’?

In Grace’s novel, Faulkner is a former NHL player whose career ended after he was hit by a drunk driver, giving his strict approach to coaching some weight with the perfect actor in the role. Nate is still chasing the career Faulkner had, and every practice that turns into a fight over rink time is a practice his team could have spent getting better. Netflix has confirmed Wesley’s role, with the specifics of Faulkner’s story on screen still to come.

Icebreaker also comes with an audience that has had years to decide what it wants to see from Maple Hills. The novel spent 70 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide, according to data supplied by Netflix. Readers will recognize a couple of names in the supporting cast that could matter well beyond Nate and Anastasia’s story. Russ and Henry, played by Shaw and Devin Craig, go on to lead their own Maple Hills books, Wildfire and Daydream, respectively. The series in production adapts the first book, with Gossip Girl alum Amanda Lasher as showrunner and Jade Halley Bartlett as creator.