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There are two disparaging sides to Canadian hockey
“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner
Op-Ed Commentary
The timing couldn’t have been better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.
On the one hand, there was victorious Team Canada deliriously celebrating their narrow victory over a never-say-die Czechia team that almost stole the game from them in the latter stage of the third period with two quick goals.
But Team Canada prevailed early in overtime scoring a “golden goal” that won them their 20th World Junior Hockey Championship, enabling Canadian hockey fans to sleep that night after numerous bacchanalian celebrations from coast to coast to coast. An especially sweet celebration because the hard-working Czech team had defeated Canada in the first game of the series.
However, on the other side of the country New Year’s eve there was another hockey game in Canada that was no cause for celebration.
In this Junior B game, the Beaver Valley Nitehawks were playing the Nelson Leafs in Nelson when all hell broke out just one second into the second period. Yes, you read that correctly. The referee blew the whistle immediately after dropping the puck for the second period because a “line brawl” had broken out. And for you more civilized souls who don’t know what a line brawl is, I’ll explain.
A line brawl is a staged fight where the players agree to pummel each other prior to the game. The agreement is usually made sometime prior to the game itself and arises out of some kind of a violent incident where a player was hurt and injured in a previous game violating the players’ code. Yes, “code” is the correct word like in the Mafia’s code where revenge is ordered by the boss or “don” in retaliation for an earlier incident that could even have involved death. Fortunately, hockey players don’t go as far as that, but many players have been seriously hurt in line brawls.
Line brawls are not as common today as they used to be. But the Nelson incident shows they still occur even though hockey officials are trying to reduce them and in the Nelson case the coach of the team was suspended for the rest of the season and 43 game suspensions were dished out to players on both teams.
Not a pretty spectacle.
But as sad as this kind of Medieval behaviour is it pales in comparison to the sordid Hockey Canada scandal in which organization officials admitted to paying out almost $8.9 million in legal damages to women that alleged they’d been sexually abused and raped by Canadian Junior Hockey team members going back to 2003. Tim Skuce, an associate professor at Manitoba’s Brandon University, a former hockey player himself who has researched hockey violence, tells CBC more investigation is needed into the scandal.
“I think it’s a serious misstep if we take the success of the World Juniors this year and say all is good just based on the performance of the game and on the ice,” Skuce, who has researched hockey culture including homophobia, hyper-masculine ideals, sexism and excessive violence, says he doesn’t like what he has seen. “It’s often dismissed as just a couple of bad apples . . . but  it’s not a one-off. There’s something systemic that’s embedded itself in hockey culture,” he says.
Many critics agree calling Canadian hockey a “toxic culture” that has a negative influence on the players, the fans and many who come into contact with it, especially young women such as the ones now suing Hockey Canada. Ironically when played in a civilized manner, hockey is a great game of skill, speed and physicality. Unfortunately, this is not seen often enough on the ice and off the ice it only gets worse.
Why should a brilliant, young Canadian hockey player with the class and skills of Connor Bedard be forced to display his talent in a crap culture like this? The answer is simple. So many Canadian fans seem to like it this way.
– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who has just about kicked his hockey habit.