#hockey culture

[dvar-trek]

anyway. continuing to mull over an extremely long essay that exists in my head (and that nobody asked for) called "your favorite hockey player is a bad person. and so is mine." about how you can't try to pick through this sport and find only the players that are Good People (tm) because first of all it's impossible, and second of all you set yourself up for misery. and third of all you just. don't need to. that's not what sports are like. for.

yes it fucking sucks that there is a very high chance of any given hockey player being a "bad" person. in any number of ways. yes you get to set your own limits. yes there are players i will never like because of things they have done. but in my personal opinion. you can work to change the parts of hockey culture you can affect, but you also have to, in some ways, wrestle with and make peace with the fact that this sport you love. um. sucks.

[offsidenewsco]

"Moments like the 4 Nations Face-Off are when the glass cracks, the nets fall, and the pucks come hurtling at us at breakneck speed. There is no escaping the cries of nationalism, xenophobia, and fascism as they ring out from the stands."

Read Avery Beaumont's op-ed here.

[deathbysports]

i'm seeing team discourse on the tl. don't make me tap the sign

(Image IDs: Edited versions of the "you are not immune to propaganda meme", featuring an image of Garfield and text that reads "Your favorite NHL team is not immune to hockey culture and neither is mine" on the first one and "Your favorite player is not immune to being problematic and neither is mine" on the second one. End ID)

[annieqattheperipheral]

a facilitator from nhlpa's mental health first aid program First Line

One of the things I do with them, the teams that I work with, it's called The Mask of Masculinities and on the one side of the mask, we put, what does the world see? How does the world see me? And then on the other side, we put, how do you feel? What are you hiding?

And when we do that activity, it's incredibly powerful because not only do you have a bunch of male hockey players playing with glitter and feathers and things like that. But when they read the mask there's this shared story of having to be tough, having to be aggressive, having to be dominant, being the provider.

And on the other side, there's vulnerability, there's mental health, there's suicidal thoughts. Some even use the mask as a way to come out because they're bisexual or gay, but they have to hide it because of the narrative.

Every time I interview with men or with the players, we always ask, is there anything else you would like me to know? Anything else you would like me to say and, unanimously, every time they say, thank you for letting me talk. Thank you for letting me share my story.

Sorry, I'm starting to cry because it's just the pain is just so deep. Sorry. And there's no voice for them.

I think things are getting better. I think now we are having conversations that we never would have had before. You know so there are still entrenched narratives that they need to change because there is such a huge call you know, for people to-- how do I do this differently? How do I do this differently? Because it is a crisis in our sport.

Highly rec the entire vid. Also includes a couple of the 20 nhl players that volunteered for the program, including Joseph Woll and Ryan Strome.

As well as Corey Hirsch, former stanley cup winning NHL goalie who suffered with OCD while playing until he got help. His podcast Blindsided hosted with psychiatrist Dr. Diane Mclntosh is excellent.

[thighlerseguin]

I shouldn't be surprised the Stars admin had to limit commenting for the Pride Night post because bigoted mouth breathers can't handle being sidelined for once in their pathetic lives.

[smilingnightmare]

I'm just gonna pretend this is their third game. They always crush it for three in a row, so maybe this way the hockey gods will be tricked into giving us a fourth. Don’t mind me, just doing my part for the win streak.

GO DEVILS!

[st-louis]

Kenneth Colburn Jr. (1985), from “Honor, Ritual and Violence in Ice Hockey.” Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie, 10(2), 153.

[dvar-trek]

politely requesting that people tag their posts about hockey players supporting trump. it is difficult to overstate how much i do not want to know who the trump supporters are. i assume it's all of them and i hope to never have this confirmed 🙏

[jeynearrynofthevale]

There’s something really interesting to me about the role of the “rat” player and the way such a huge part of their job is getting into people’s heads and throwing them off their game. And doing that almost necessitates crossing lines. We talk about the way hockey accepts violence in a way broader society doesn’t but players also say things to each other that would never fly in most settings.

There’s of course the slurs and homophobic language but there’s also specific jabs. Brad Marchand telling Artemi Panarin that everyone in Russia hates him following him speaking against Putin. Matthew Tkachuk calling Stefan Noesen’s wife a whore. Anything to get a rise out of another player.

[offsidenewsco]

Have you ever seen someone in online hockey communities say that Vancouver Canucks defenceman Quinn Hughes has “eldest daughter syndrome?” Or heard people call Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner “the first male victim of misogyny?”

In this 3-part series, Avery Beaumont unpacks masculinity in #NHL hockey, how it's developed over the past decade, and how that has changed hockey fanbases forever.

Read Part I here.

[deathbysports]

currently thinking of how abusive some hockey coaches are and how players are supposed to act like that sort of stuff is normal

[annieqattheperipheral]

Woller volunteered to be a part of NHLPA's mental health first aid program First Line

part one:

I think maybe an unfortunate thing about mental health is I find a lot of people don't truly care about it until you go through a personal experience or personal experiences. So when I found out that there is a program to learn more about how to experience things on your own and then also how to communicate better with others it was kind of a no-brainer for me.

I think the program did a great job for me personally in bringing awareness to how important that peer-to-peer conversation is; again, another aspect of mental health, I think. And in hard times, it can be a bit of an isolating thing.

And I think it really opened my eyes to how important it is to be a conversation starter and also to be a leader just on the simplest way of asking someone how they're doing and actually caring about how they're doing and being able to listen well.

(part two)

more on the program

[error-corruptedfile]

I have these:

And I want to sell them. Anyone know how much I should sell them for?

[st-louis]

alexis n. peters, hegemonic masculinity and kaufman's triad of violence: elite male athletes' attitudes regarding male/female relationships. ph.d., university of western ontario, 1999.

[dvar-trek]

hey so. we all know hockey media is a game, right?

right???

like, brady tkachuk is playing the role of "tough guy, willing to put his body on the line for the True and Noble purpose of Firing Up The Boys" and brandon hagel is playing the role of "humble, selfless, Good Canadian Boy, who only fought because he was Challenged and had to Defend His Honor"

like this is a media-ass answer. this is kayfabe

they're famous hockey players and they all have An Image. they all have A Brand. sidney crosby is projecting an image to the media and on the ice just as much as brad marchand is. or matthew tkachuk. or pk subban. it's just that the sidney crosbys of the world will NEVER admit or acknowledge that they are playing The Character of Sidney Crosby. matthew tkachuk tells you he's playing the heel, and he's damned good at it.

it's a little bit. frustrating. to see people going "you seeeeeee, the americans are Doing Showmanship because they are Flashy, Egotistical Individualists. but the canadians are Selflessly Giving Themselves to the Country and the Game" like. NO! they're all showing you what they want you to see!!!! it's ALL showmanship!! it's ALL kayfabe!!! just. not everyone admits that that's what we're doing here!

[jeynearrynofthevale]

Hockey rumors are so crazy and misogynistic. Just listened to an episode of Decoder Ring with Jane MacDougall, who has been plagued for decades by a completely unsubstantiated rumor that Jeff Brown slept with Kirk MacLean’s wife in 1995 and that’s why the Canucks struggled that year and why Brown was traded.

The craziest part of this is that Jane didn’t even know MacLean at the time this all happened. MacLean was divorcing his first wife, Linda, because they had married too young and had outgrown each other. But when Jane married Maclean a few years later, she inherited the rumor. People would whisper behind her back at dinner parties, her son got into multiple fights with kids on the playground who would repeat the rumor from their parents. She was asked about it in work settings and on first dates. It’s been 30 years and it still gets brought up to her at least once a month.

And the men involved in this rumor are totally unscathed and fine. Jeff Brown has had it brought up to him maybe a few times in the last 10 years. Kirk MacLean and Jane divorced years ago and he hasn’t really heard about it since.

And this rumor is entirely based in the Canucks not making it back to Stanley Cup Final in 1995 after losing in 1994, MacLean seeming kind of depressed, and Jeff Brown being traded. They still were a playoff team and Brown was traded cause he didn’t get along with the coach. But Jane MacDougal is still always defending her honor against a rumor she inherited.