This past Sunday night, the CBC’s investigative news program, The Fifth Estate, broadcast a report in which the wives of three former NHL enforcers shared moving stories of their experiences with the long-term consequences of brain injury. The half-hour segment, titled “Hockey Fight: Wives Reveal the Cost of Concussions,” was hosted by Bob McKeown and…
By Matt Ventresca Last Friday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was deposed in a private hearing in New York as part of the substantive legal action regarding the league’s mishandling of head injuries. The lawsuit is on behalf of at least 60 former players who sustained concussions during their pro hockey careers. This list includes some…
By Matt Ventresca Upon hearing the news of Jean Beliveau’s passing a few days ago, I was immediately taken back to my most enduring and endearing memory of Le Gros Bill. In a past life, a time when I thought a career spent toiling away in academia was for suckers (and yet here I am),…
By Matt Ventresca When the big news broke over the weekend, media and sport organizations across North America began mobilizing their teams of journalists, marketers and social media gurus with a “War is Over”-type fervour. The company line, uttered in places as far reaching as Toronto, Detroit and Carolina, was that Sunday was a “great…
By Matt Ventresca And now for something completely different… If we are to believe Roch Carrier’s assertion that “hockey is life in Canada” (and that’s a big if), then it only makes sense that we explore how the game materializes in art and culture. In my last post in this space (co-written with the illustrious…
By Matt Ventresca and Marty Clark I had the pleasure of writing this review with my friend and colleague at Queen’s University, Marty Clark. Marty is an emerging scholar in the field of Hockey Studies and a hell of a nice guy in his own right. His research focuses primarily on conceptions of whiteness within…
By Matt Ventresca I think the powers that be at TSN are going to start wondering about me. It may seem to some readers that I can’t make up my mind whether to praise the Canadian sports broadcasting powerhouse or criticise them. In my last post about the World Junior Hockey Championship, I applauded the…
By Matt Ventresca “It’s a holiday tradition!” says TSN’s Bob McKenzie in this year’s edition of the network’s marketing campaign for the World Junior Hockey Championship (WJHC). This year’s advertisement features a number of former WJHC competitors from Eric Lindros to Theo Fleury to Darcy Tucker to Andrew Ladd exclaiming “I was there in [insert…
By Matt Ventresca “Hey man, nice moustache.” Throughout the month of November, this male-to-male greeting appears more common than any other simple platitude, salutation or secret handshake. It has become so ubiquitous that it almost needs no introduction: for the past month, countless men across the globe have grown moustaches to “raise vital funds and…
Hockey in Society / Hockey dans la société 