General posts, including essays and discussions.
By Sunil Agnihotri Hockey analytics has become an important component of the participatory culture surrounding the game. Anyone within the hockey community, including fans and league managers, can use numerous tools and techniques to detect patterns in the data available, in order to follow and understand the game. The NHL as well as mainstream media…
Yahoo Sports recently released an article titled, NHL players on the move to Europe during lockout, touching briefly on the fact that with NHLers moving over to play in the KHL and other European leagues a debate has started about how many players are forced out of their day jobs. Jaromir Jagr is quoted in…
By Sunil Agnihotri Over the course of four years, Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz has gone from local hero to shady business man. Why the change in perception? One can easily point to his demands for a new arena, funded by taxpayer dollars. Or to his subtle threats to move the team to Hamilton, Quebec…
We are pleased to introduce the first Hockey in Society Roundtable, a new feature at Hockey in Society. Roundtables will present brief commentaries from Hockey in Society contributors on pressing or timely issues within hockey and its culture, with the aim of presenting a diverse range of critical viewpoints on the topic under discussion. Simon…
One year ago today, Hockey in Society launched with its inaugural post. The past 365 days have been a very exciting time on the blog, which has doubled from an initial writing crew of three to a group of six contributors and has seen 127 posts made. We hope to add to this writing crew…
By Sunil Agnihotri Background While NHL owners and the NHL Players Association (NHLPA) work towards a new collective bargaining agreement, a fan, Janne Makkonen of Finland, created and published a short video, entitled “Together We Can”, imploring hockey fans to work together to stop the impending lockout. The video serves as an excellent example of…
One year ago today, an airplane carrying the players, coaches, and training staff of KHL team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashed immediately after a failed takeoff. Of the 45 people on board, including the pilots and flight staff, 43 were dead on site. One surviving player, Alexander Galimov, died in hospital shortly afterward, leaving crew member Alexander…
By E. Martin Nolan No one ever put a poster of a professional sports team owner on their childhood bedroom wall and no one ever pretended to be Mike Illitch or George Steinbrenner when paying a bill (“the waiter hands over the bill–he signs, and payment is accepted! The table goes wild!”). That’s probably not…
By Sunil Agnihotri Within any form of entertainment lies numerous narratives, designed to engage the audience. Television shows, books and films are all examples of entertainment that utilize plot development and characters to develop a storyline and convey some sort of message to the audience. Traditionally, storytelling came across a single medium, like a book,…
It would seem that when the players take the summer off so too do the hockey bloggers. Well, while everyone else has been glued to the Olympics I have been combing through hockey literature in preparation for grad school applications. If you can’t watch hockey in the summer, reading about it is a close second.…
Hockey in Society / Hockey dans la société 