General posts, including essays and discussions.
By E. Martin Nolan A month ago, when it became clear that The Winter Classic would be played in Ann Arbor and not Detroit, I argued that the NHL was wrong to deny Detroit the opportunity to host the game, all for the cash incentives offered by the use of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.…
“The Corporate Construction of Hockey” is an occasional feature on Hockey in Society that examines and critiques the ways in which corporations construct the social meaning of hockey through their marketing efforts. If you have suggestions for future features please contact us. Tim Hortons has, over a period of decades, established itself as a quintessentially…
Along with all of the All-Star weekend hooplah came the most recent installment of the NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone campaign. Canadian Governor General, David Johnson, with Gary Bettman and former Boston Bruin (and first black NHL’er), Willie O’Ree were on hand at Rideau Hall to announce the introduction of the H.E.R.O.S program in Ottawa.…
It is an annual tradition that various US-based championship teams get invited by the President to visit the White House to be honoured for their accomplishments. I am not certain how far back this practice dates, but at least can confirm that it was already an established tradition as early as 1985. Usually these visits…
I was fortunate enough to attend the annual Vancouver Canucks Dice and Ice fundraiser dinner this past week. It is an event that I have wanted to attend since I was a child. The whole team is in attendance for a casino and auction gala and the players work all the casino tables. You can…
By E. Martin Nolan There was downtime before the meeting. I asked, “Leafs for real this year?” His response was tentative, but cynical as he was, you could clearly sense the relief he felt for even being able to seriously answer this question. Someone else chimed in, “you’re from Toronto?” My co-worker affirmed this third…
Over the weekend Torontoist published an excellent article by Kevin Plummer that provides an overview of a 1928 hockey tour featuring two teams made up of Ojibway and Cree First Nations players. The article is well-researched and historically/socially contextualized, and I highly suggest giving it a read. While I do not want to simply rehash…
By Simon Darnell When Kanye West dropped a bomb on the musical world in 2010 with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, music critics lost their collective shit trying to process, internalize and communicate what they had just absorbed. So sprawling and epic, so contradictory, so unabashed in its assessments was the album that it could…
Brian Burke, the General Manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs, has never been one to shy away from the media spotlight or to hide his emotions. Nor has Burke made any secret about his view that a good NHL team requires a solid dose of toughness on its roster, famously declaring upon taking the Maple…
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…
Hockey in Society / Hockey dans la société 