I just finished playing an extremely dirty recreational playoff game. It was the kind of game that makes me dislike hockey. The hockey I play is as recreational as recreational gets. No one is going to get a college scholarship. No one will play for the Olympics. No one is even going to make a…
By Sunil Agnihotri The field of hockey analytics took a big step with the recent release of Hockey Abstract, a book which aims to provide a guide to statistical analysis in hockey. As more and more people, including fans and professional teams, seek a deeper understanding of the game, hockey analytics continues to grow and…
By Sunil Agnihotri Hockey analytics is continuing to gain prominence, both as a tool for professional teams to make on-ice decisions and for fans who want to better understand the game. The online fan community has really been the driver of hockey analytics as they seek to answer questions and contribute to the information and…
The (North American) hockey world was shocked yesterday to learn that superstar winger Ilya Kovalchuk was retiring from the National Hockey League and, according to subsequent reports, planning to sign with SKA St. Petersburg of the Kontinental Hockey League. Today, it was announced that he has signed with the KHL club for four years. Kovalchuk’s…
Before I left on vacation I visited my local library to pick up some ‘summer beach reads’. Naturally, as an academic geek and hockey fan I left the library with Adam Proteau’s Fighting the Good Fight: Why on-ice violence is killing hockey and Sheema Khan’s Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman…
By Alvin Ma “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than…
Last month, I attended the annual conference of the North American Society for Sport History in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Not surprisingly, with hundreds of sport scholars gathered in a Canadian city, the sport of hockey featured prominently on the program. It was an interesting and intellectually stimulating weekend. One paper was particularly interesting for the…
On Saturday and Sunday, the 5th annual Canadian Sport Film Festival (CSFF) is taking place in Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox. As usual, the festival will feature a variety of sport-related documentaries that cover a range of topics. Notably, this year’s program includes two films that focus on hockey: Lace Bite and The Uluit: Champions…
By Sunil Agnihotri As the Oilers headed into their seventh straight off-season without a playoff appearance, the Edmonton Oilers announced the replacement of General Manager Steve Tambellini with former Oilers captain and coach, Craig MacTavish. At the press conference, John MacKinnon of the Edmonton Journal pointed out that the same management team that was in…
Roundtables are an occasional feature on 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. On April 11, the NHL and NHL Player’s Association announced…
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