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…
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 Detroit native E. Martin Nolan had a busy week! In addition to his post considering the Toronto Maple…
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…
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 Easily the best thing I’ve read this week: a first person (dare I say ethnographic?) account of the…
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…
Hockey Links Two more great post from the Hockey in Society writing team this week: Matt Ventresca on the World Junior Championships and Courtney Szto on the forthcoming film “Goon.” An excellent critique of selective Edmonton media coverage and how it shifts public perception of specific players, and thus takes heat off of management by…
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…
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