WHAT’S INSIDE THE GUIDE

🏒 Discussion questions
🏒 Character breakdowns
🏒 Emotional themes & trope discussions
🏒 Playlist inspiration
🏒 Snack & drink pairings
🏒 Bonus book club activities
🏒 Hockey terminology for non-sports readers
🏒 Behind-the-book notes from Kristen
🏒 Friends-to-lovers & emotional healing discussion prompts

PERFECT FOR READERS WHO LOVE…

❄️ Friends to lovers
❄️ Long-term mutual pining
❄️ Quiet emotional tension
❄️ Divorced heroes rebuilding trust
❄️ Found family dynamics
❄️ Deep emotional intimacy
❄️ Slow-burn relationship development
❄️ Protective hockey heroes
❄️ One kiss that changes everything
❄️ Character-driven romance with emotional depth

ABOUT THE BOOK

Playoff Beard is one of the most emotionally intimate stories in the Shots on Goal universe.

At its heart, this story is about friendship, trust, timing, and the terrifying vulnerability of realizing the person who already feels like home might also be the love of your life.

This isn’t just a hockey romance about chemistry.

It’s about history.
About loyalty.
About years of choosing each other in quiet ways before either of them are brave enough to risk wanting more.

Will and Jordan’s story unfolds through familiarity, emotional safety, and the kind of connection built over countless moments that never looked romantic from the outside — until suddenly they become impossible to ignore.

The emotional core of Playoff Beard explores what happens when two people who have spent years protecting their friendship are finally forced to confront the feelings living underneath it.

Within the Shots on Goal universe, this story represents emotional maturity, healing after betrayal, and the quiet realization that love is sometimes built slowly over years instead of arriving all at once.

A NOTE FROM KRISTEN

Creating the Playoff Beard book club guide felt incredibly special because Will and Jordan’s relationship carries so much emotional history inside the Shots on Goal world.

This story is about quiet love, emotional safety, second chances, and finally allowing yourself to want the future you’ve secretly been hoping for all along.

Thank you for continuing to spend time with these characters and for loving this world as deeply as I do.

— Kristen Hope Mazzola

READ NEXT

Loved Playoff Beard?

Continue your hockey romance binge with:

🏒 First Last Kiss
Fake dating tension, emotional vulnerability, and deeply layered romantic history. (Another emotionally intimate story centered around trust and complicated feelings.)

🏒 Off Duty
Forbidden workplace romance, slow-burn longing, emotional restraint, and partnership-driven chemistry. (Perfect for readers who loved quiet tension and emotional build-up.)

🏒 Public Enemy #91
Fake dating chaos, forced proximity, emotional vulnerability, and explosive hockey romance tension. (A modern continuation of emotional hockey chaos inside the Shots on Goal universe.)

READING WITH YOUR BOOK CLUB?

Tag your photos, annotations, snack spreads, and hockey romance chaos:

@khmazz

#ShotsOnGoal
#PlayoffBeard
#KHMazz
#HockeyRomance

© 2026 Kristen Hope Mazzola. All rights reserved.