#I'm just gonna stretch looking pretty with the puck

[tkachuktkaching]

Matthew Tkachuk #19 of the Florida Panthers warms up on the ice along with Brady Tkachuk #7 of the Ottawa Senators prior to the start of the game at the Amerant Bank Arena on April 9, 2024 in Sunrise, Florida.

(Photo by Eliot J. Schechter/NHLI via Getty Images)

[zukkacore]

I would fucking love to learn about hockeygate

I'm not the most involved in booktok but i was privy to this drama i don't know how but i did stumble upon it. To be fair. There's literally like articles and videos and stuff that probably explain it better than me, like this is actually getting mainstream coverage it's kinda wild.

Anyway it starts with the fact that there's this Why Choose (reverse harem) hockey romance book that blew up on tiktok called Pucking Around.

So it becomes a thing on tiktok for people who like this book to basically to do faceclaims for the characters with actual real hockey players—i'm not sure if this was independently inspired or if the author was like "yeah these fictional hockey players are totally inspired by [insert real hockey player here"]. One of said fancasts is this guy named Alex Wennberg who plays on the Seattle Krakens.

This booktoker named Kierra Lewis blows up really quickly and gets a pretty decent following mainly from, like, making comedic tiktoks that are basically thirsting over these real hockey players on the Seattle Krakens & how much they look like her book boyfriends which includes Alex. & im sure its like meant to be all in good fun & hornyposting online has its sphere as long as its not invading the lives of the real people involved (kinda like how everyone had the hots for Pedro Pascal which i get but contriving every interview so that he's bombarded with everyone's thirst tweets and comments feels like its devolving into harrassment guys) so i get that. A lot of the jokes are sexual & there's a pretty common one she makes about wanting Alex Wennberg to "crack her back" etc, its play on "break my back" i think? Or maybe its a kraken pun?? idk.

& a lot of the hornyposting about the hockey players involves like making fancams of the players groinstretching on the ice & in these poses that fans sexualize them in, etc etc. I wanna point out that like it's not just Kierra doing this, its a whole sphere of hockey romance booktok, but she is a pretty prominent figure in this story.

Anyway all this hornyposting about the seattle krakens gets the attention of the kraken's actual social media account, so they start playing into it too. Posting thirst traps of the players and stuff. So The Krakens were benefiting from the attention from Booktok, but at the same time, it feels pretty ridiculous to claim that a popular team in a well-loved longstanding sport was, like, "discovered" or made relevant by booktokers.

Kierra Lewis actually gets invited to a Krakens game, like she gets flown out, she gets like a Kraken's jersey that says "booktok" on the back etc etc. & she's posting tiktoks from the game. & i'm gonna editorialize more than i previously have to give more of my personal opinion here, but this is the part that I think is particularly just, inappropriate and in bad taste. b/c she's like filming the players on the ice while they do their stretches and making sexual comments, like shouting "crack my back" to them while they're on the ice, like it's very much the same thing she's doing on tiktok but online is one thing, that's at least worthy of a conversation of like what privacy really is online, but it's another thing to be making comments like that to their face while at a person's place of work.

After all this, the wife of Alex Wennberg, Felicia Weeren, makes a post on social media basically asking people to ease up on all the suggestive comments about her husband online, not just for her sake but b/c it makes her husband uncomfortable, too. She's basically asking for people to be more mindful of how they post, and im paraphrasing in her sentiment that people would view this behavior targeted towards her husband and the other hockey players and inappropriate if women were the recipients of the sexual comments.. It's been impacting their lives because their online presence now is basically just swarmed with people making suggestive comments, people in their lives irl are commenting on it & making jokes about it, etc etc.

(& i personally don't love when people make the "if the genders were reversed" arguments b/c that tends to lead to false equivalency & also b/c people broadly don't take harassment of women seriously, but tbh she has a point. While people don't take harassment of women seriously, i think broadly left-leaning people at least understand the shape of like, what a catcall is and why its bad. & part of the reason this went uncommented on for so long is part of the patriarchal stereotype that men always want sex which is used to dismiss male victims)

She was pretty measured about the whole thing all things considered, especially b/c she said she's all for female empowerment and sexual expression & she doesn't know if there is a simple answer to this stuff, but there has been boundary crossing with how extreme and vocal its getting & especially b/c its affecting her husband at his work.

In her post, some of the examples she included as inappropriate comments included posts made by Kierra. She didn't single out Kierra directly, but she did use her posting as representative of a larger trend in the hockey romance booktok fandom.

The post from Felicia was taken really poorly by booktok and people started harassing her and her family including their kid, and saying she was being dramatic, saying she wants to be the center of attention, fabricating rumors about her and Alex wennberg that they were having "marriage trouble" etc etc. This includes Kierra lewis getting pretty upset and taking the post as though she's being singled out personally. Mostly doubling down, deflecting, saying it's all just a joke.

And perhaps it does suck to be treated as representative of an entire group of people, and being the most prominent face of something, she would inevitably get the brunt of backlash. But also she was the one invited to the game and was making all those comments like shouting at the players and stuff, so I do think she has to take a larger ownership over her behavior than random people posting online.

During this time she also finds out the Kraken's social media unfollowed her, so she's also expressing resentment that the Krakens were playing into the thirst trap stuff but suddenly have turned against her.

And yes, it was all just probably meant to be in good fun, but from the wider internet outside of booktok, it just seemed pretty inconsiderate and crappy to double down after people expressed that they were uncomfortable with what is basically sexual harassment. Yes, the Kraken social media was feeding into the hype, but the social media account is not representative of the players and their attitudes, and it was clear that the players stopped being comfortable with what was going on. Tbh there was quite a bit of victim blamey rhetoric. Consent can be revoked at any time. (& i have seen some arguments that b/c its sexual harassment (& in the workplace!) and not just like, an encounter in the bedroom, it wouldn't even have been possible for Alex Wennberg to consent in the first place b/c you can't consent to harrassment. It was just harrassment the whole time.)

Anyway, the harassment toward Felicia got so bad that Alex Wennberg had to come out and also make a statement in support of his wife

But the reason that post is making fun of booktokers thinking they made hockey relevant was b/c that was a pretty funny and common argument from Kierra and other booktokers who were not backing down on their position that they did nothing wrong. They kept being like "well we made the Kraken's relevant", "we brought all this attention to hockey", "the Krakens would be nothing without booktok." it was all very bizarre.