MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives was cancelled by CBC a few months ago, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the TV schedule. The first season will start airing on the US network SOAPnet – a cable sibling of ABC - starting June 19. Then ABC itself will air the first episode following the Daytime Emmys on June 20. Not to be left out, CBC is re-airing season one starting June 13, so Canadians who missed it the first time around can catch it. Plus, the DVD is being released July 15 with loads of bonus features.

"We're enjoying the overtime, that's all I can say," quipped Mary Young Leckie, co-creator and executive producer of the series that won't die, during an interview on the TV, eh? Blogtalkradio show.

Depending on its success on SOAPnet, MVP just might score a second season. But for that to happen, more people have to get hooked on the glitzy primetime soap's first season.

Reading a Hello magazine on the plane home from London a few years ago, Young Leckie found herself wondering why Canada didn't have something like the UK's Footballers' Wives. "Hockey's like a religion here, and we don't get a chance to see behind the scenes," she explained. "The private lives of hockey stars are very private."

Using informants including hockey wives and even a player, and drawing on the real-life world of "puck bunnies" who share information online about their trysts with NHL players, the MVP writers were inspired by gossip about "who's sleeping with who and who's had twosomes and threesomes and foursomes and sixsomes," she laughed.

Besides the messy personal lives that provoke the twists and turns of the plots, fans might recognize traits of Wayne Gretzky and Sidney Crosby in a couple of the characters on the fictional Mustangs, and one incident is reminiscent of the controversial Todd Bertuzzi hit on Steve Moore.

Young Leckie is full of praise for the cast who bring those characters to life. "There is some really fine acting in it. Soap could be considered a dismissive term, but in this instance it just means there's lots and lots of plot and lots and lots of character."