Exploring critical social issues in hockey
April 3, 2013 Leave a comment
It is the NHL’s trade deadline today, an event that not only sees players moved from city to city and team to team but that has also become a major television (and new media) spectacle on Canadian sports networks like TSN and Sportsnet. Hockey in Society writers have written about a number of relevant posts about this event and two of these are highlighted after the jump.
March 23, 2013 2 Comments
Source: UBC
Hockey analytics is an excellent example of fans getting immersed in the game and changing the way they consume professional sports. Along with watching games, and following the narratives that surround teams and players, fans can use various software applications to apply their own ideas and models to analyze the game.
Hockey analytics is also gaining prominence among professional hockey teams to make key decisions regarding player acquisitions and team strategies. The continued growth of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which is attended by teams and managers from various sports, as well as academics, indicates the growing importance of data analytics in the professional sports industry.
Questions have arisen recently about why some NHL teams are not conducting any hockey analytics, as well as why some teams refuse to get into too much detail about their current analytic methods (Friedman, 2013). Questions have also arisen as to why hockey analytics have not reached mainstream status on television broadcasts, such as Hockey Night in Canada (Dowbiggin, 2013).
To answer these questions, the activity of hockey analytics needs to be dissected by first understanding its relationship to information and knowledge development as well the environment is requires to flourish and reach its potential.
February 11, 2013 1 Comment
Image from: http://tv.fally.ro/showinfo/83923/83923-1.jpg
In 2006, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired a 10-part series entitled Hockey: A People’s History (HAPH). Adopting the approach used in its popular 2000 miniseries Canada: A People’s History, the CBC focused in this series on the experience of Canadians with the sport of hockey for over a century. Beginning with early ball and stick games played in various societies over human history, the documentary quickly moves on to introducing European ball and stick games played on ice and First Nations baggataway (the forerunner to what became institutionalized as the sport of lacrosse) as the predecessors to modern hockey. After this very brief homage to hockey-like folk games, the documentary discusses the early organization of ice hockey by amateur athlete in Montreal and proceeds from there to focus entirely on the development of hockey in Canada over a roughly 125 year period.
January 4, 2013 13 Comments
Starting next week, I will be teaching a third year course to undergraduates in University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education. The course is called “Hockey in Canadian Society” – and yes, I realize that the title is incredibly similar to the name of this blog! I am extremely excited, if a little nervous, about starting the course. I do not have nerves about public speaking or about the course preparation – I have been excited to teach this course for months and so have already spent quite a lot of time on its design – but rather whether I can successfully impart the complexities of hockey’s social construction in Canadian society to undergraduate students.
This post simply offers an overview of the course, my thoughts about engaging students critically with a sport many of them love, and presents a list of sources that students will read. I hope that it may provide a useful resource for other scholars teaching about hockey and more generally provide a useful list of some good academic and online sources about the sport. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions please let me know!
July 22, 2012 Leave a comment
Welcome to Hockey in Society’s Weekly Links post. This feature highlights articles or blog entries that are related to Hockey in Society’s areas of interest and that may be of interest to the site’s readers.
Hockey Links
General Sport Links
July 7, 2012 Leave a comment
Welcome to Hockey in Society’s Weekly Links post. This feature highlights articles or blog entries that are related to Hockey in Society’s areas of interest and that may be of interest to the site’s readers.
Hockey Links
General Sport Links
July 5, 2012 5 Comments
Image from: http://www.talkhockey.ca/Sundin,%20Sakic,%20Bure,%20Oates,%20Hall%20of%20Fame%202012.jpg
Last week, the Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF) announced the four men who would be the Hall’s 2012 inductees. The four, who will all enter in the Player category, are Joe Sakic, Pavel Bure, Mats Sundin, and Adam Oates. Surprisingly, despite prominent figures such as former coaches Pat Burns and Fred Shero remaining outside the Hall, no person was selected in the Builders category. Sadly and not surprisingly, given that the HHOF has seen fit to elect just two women since finally opening the honour to females in 2010, no women were selected.
The HHOF selection is process is always controversial and each year there are both surprising decisions and snubs to seemingly deserving people. A major criticism of the HHOF’s selection process is its opaqueness – decisions are made by the selection committee behind closed doors, and no information about the process is made available to the public. Furthermore, reflecting the socio-demographic characteristics of hockey culture, the committee is typically composed of white males, leading to questions about its commitment to diversity. Adam Proteau summed up many of these criticisms when he wrote, in 2008:
In an era where transparency is a valued and an often-demanded approach to virtually all aspects of society, the HHOF allows its most important decisions to be made by a group of middle-aged (to be kind) white dudes who aren’t required to make the thoughts and opinions that went into their decisions available to the public.
That’s just not right – and it’s definitely not the way other modern sports’ halls of fame operate. To be sure, there are some good people who are on the HHOF’s selection committee, people whose judgment and character are beyond reproach.
Nevertheless, so long as those people allow the Hall’s induction process to be held out of view of the general public – you know, the people they depend on to pay admission to the place – they do themselves and the men (and I do mean only the men) they induct a huge disservice.
Given its problematic and political nature, the HHOF induction process offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on the concept of legacy in hockey. In particular, it raises questions about who is remembered and why; about the political and social circumstances that impact the construction of hockey legacies; and about the way in which greatness in sport is selectively constructed by certain people at certain times. After the jump, I explore three issues in the construction of hockey legacies: the power of the media; the power differentials between the hockey establishment and players; and the lingering and ongoing impact of social inequalities. Read more of this post
July 1, 2012 6 Comments
At noon EST today, the NHL’s free agency period opens. At a basic level, this means that players whose contracts have expired or been bought out, and who are eligible for unrestricted free agency (UFA), can begin fielding offers from NHL teams and are free to sign contracts as of 12:00 PM. But over the past number of years, this deadline has taken on increasing significance to teams, fans, players and media. TSN labels July 1 the “Free Agent Frenzy” and has a full studio panel of its hockey “insiders” breaking the news as signings go down. Sportsnet will offer a similarly hyped TV spectacle.
Back in February, Matt Ventresca wrote a great post that labelled the trade deadline “The Great Canadian Pseudo-Event.” Matt described the importance of media, in particular TSN, in making the trade deadline and other events into spectacles:
The trade deadline is a logistical technicality that passes virtually unnoticed in other sports, yet TSN (here is the marketing genius part) has transformed this non-event into one of the most anticipated days on the NHL calendar and has forced its competitors (most noticeably, Rogers Sportsnet) to follow their model of relentless, wall-to-wall coverage. In many ways, the trade deadline has eclipsed other hockey media spectacles like the NHL Draft and the All-Star Game (although TSN is also trying to change that with their “All-Star Fantasy Draft” gimmick) as must-see TV – or at least as a reason to spend 9 hours continually refreshing tsn.ca.
Free Agent Frenzy similarly smacks of a corporate-produced, over-hyped, pseudo-event. It feels as though TSN executives thought “Hey, let’s take a routine part of the NHL’s labour process and turn it into a massive TV spectacle. People will totally eat it up!” While I certainly feel that Canadian media networks like TSN, along with Sportsnet and the Score, were driving forces in the creation of the Frenzy, there are a variety of factors that have contributed to its massive surge in popularity. It is thus a bit of a “chicken and egg” scenario when attempting to determine the influence of the media and the mass spectacle of a psuedo-event. Read more of this post
June 30, 2012 Leave a comment
Proposed Markham arena (Image from: http://www.cbc.ca/)
Welcome to Hockey in Society’s Weekly Links post. This feature highlights articles or blog entries that are related to Hockey in Society’s areas of interest and that may be of interest to the site’s readers.
Hockey Links
General Sport Links
June 4, 2012 1 Comment
When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced that it would be launching a new online feature for the Stanley Cup Finals, a feature called While the Men Watch (WTMW) that provides alternative “girl talk” commentary to the Hockey Night in Canada play-by-play, it was met with outrage by many bloggers and media members. The show has been nothing if not controversial, generating huge amounts of discussion before it even debuted during Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils. So what have hockey writers been saying about WTMW?
Before exploring this question, first read the description of the feature from CBC:
Longtime friends Lena (Sutherland) and Jules (Mancuso) host an alternate live online game broadcast offering a distinct female-centred, fun, provocative and entertaining perspective on the 2012 Stanley Cup Final. Available for each game of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals, WhileTheMenWatch Hockey Night provides a different view on a traditional game.
Seems straightforward and inoffensive enough, right? Leaving aside the name of the show, you could read the description and view WTMW as a good-hearted attempt to engage and inform novice female fans who may face challenges gaining acceptance in traditionally male-dominated sport fan cultures. However, the description of WTMW from its website (Sutherland and Mancuso launched the online commentary during the Super Bowl and provided commentary for a variety of sporting events) provides a different understanding of the show:
WhileTheMenWatch is a first of its kind, live sports talk-show for women. An overnight sensation, hailed as Sex in the City meets ESPN. . . . Hosted by real-life girlfriends in New York and Toronto, the female-friendly commentary keeps women entertained. . . . The lively discussion follows sports from a woman’s point of view including everything from interpreting the rules of the game to coaches in need of a makeover.
Borne out of frustration with their sports-addicted men, Co-Hosts Lena Sutherland and Jules Mancuso created WhileTheMenWatch doing their own version of sports commentary that women actually want to hear.
This description highlights many of the issues that angered hockey fans, including the assumption that women do not like sports and would rather gossip about the players than watch the game; and the essentialist understanding of the relationship between men and sport fandom. After the jump, you can read a sampling of the many reactions to WTMW. Read more of this post
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