(no subject)

[olivermoss]

This is just a disorganized ramble on some of the hockey discourse going on. I keep seeing people talk like hockey players aren't responsible for their actions because they all come from 'the same system' and 'have no education'. And that's just bullshit. All this 'they are all the same' stuff is weirdly doomer, but also not true.

I also hate all the 'that's just what hockey is' shit.

'That's just hockey' or 'they are all the same' <- I am sick of both these statements.

Hockey is an abstract concept. Hockey didn't do anything, people did things. Players are people, not avatars. We can absolutely hold people responsible for their actions. They didn't all come out of the 'the same system', and even if they did, grown men can be responsible for their own decisions.

Someone on my team recently talked about how, as a hockey player, his life is managed by other people in ways he's no longer comfortable with. Also, he has holes in his education. His current off-ice project is fixing that. Because he's an adult with money and free time he can just do that. I don't know for sure, but there is a high probability he's among the players who didn't even get a full high school education. But, that doesn't mean he's cooked.

Again, these are people. The pressure to conform that most of them are under is intense, but they are still people who can make choices.

This idea that fans who are upset at recent events are ignorant of how hockey juniors works is just so condescending. You can be both aware of the problems and upset at what happened. The problems are important context, but not an excuse. And people don't need to be resigned to it, learn to accept 'that's just how hockey is. Hockey will never love you back'. No, that is how parts of hockey culture is and what people are choosing to allow.

A player who I follow, who did come up through juniors, runs a hockey school. His school's goalie coach is CJ Jackson and he genders them correctly. They are friends and training partners, and publicly support each other. People from 'the system' are fully able to run projects like hockey schools and respect trans people. They don't all come out the same.

I am not naming names because I don't want any of this to be taken as 'here are the good ones'. No team is 'the good team'. The Kraken only exist because Jerry Bruckheimer wanted a toy, that's why KHN's production quality is so good. I knew all this, and that teams are companies, going in.

I assume all players are more conservative than me. They are mostly from rich backgrounds. There are many reasons that make it likely they mostly lean conservative. (actually, I think the events in The Russian Five are relevant here, but that would be a long explanation and this post is long enough) When I say 'they are not all the same' I do not mean 'these over here are The Good Ones'. I just literally mean they are not all the same. And yes, they have free will and can be held accountable for their actions.

I could go on. Without even needing to look players up, I can give more examples - like a player who runs a charity for sports and music education... that's mostly pivoted to food support because he and his wife (a teacher) realized that the biggest barrier to kids getting that sort of enrichment is food insecurity. Their politics might be awful, I don't know, but whatever their politics are, they don't came from a place of ignorance or isolation. If their politics suck they literally have no fucking excuse.

My favorite player has an actual college degree. He also got accepted into some very good schools, but they didn't want him for hockey. He wound up going to the one school that would give him a sports scholarship and actually had a really interesting NCAA career.

They aren't all blorbo himbos with the same tragic backstory that excuses all their actions. <- I've restated the same idea about a million times, but I like this phrasing of it.

All this 'that's just hockey' is just such a pile of crap. Hockey doesn't begin and end with the NHL or competitive play. There are a million reasons why that sentiment is people just saying 'here, eat the same shit sandwich I swallowed, or get out'

Comments

[rekishi]

Good essay!

Also honestly, largely applicable to North American players. Western European players all have left school with degrees. All the Russian players born from the 80s onwards actually have higher education unless they actually served in the military. There is no "this man is an athlete" exception to the draft, which is actually pretty often repeated. The military draft in Russia applies to all males aged 18 unless they are enrolled in university (or bought their military card, which is a different type of corruption). (That also means Russian players generally finished school, even if they started playing professionally at age 16, which is the fact at least for anyone born before the year 2000, my background knowledge on the kids is fuzzy.)

So... Malkin, Ovechkin, Kucherov, Michkov? Are either actively in long distance education/complete their in person requirements during the summer or have university degrees. (Actually, Ovi has a PhD, but that still breaks my brain so let's not go there.)

Anyway. I think especially in North America, professional sports in general and hockey in particular attracts a certain demographic. Funnily I just talked about that with someone else and also did a bit of a thing in the fic, but essentially for a North American, it's hard to impossible to really break into professional hockey without a pretty robust familial support network. Someone who will take you to 6 or 7 am practice and then take you to practice again after school, who has the money to buy equipment and a car to cart it around etc. Who has TIME to do that. And that generally often attracts families with one stay at home parent...usually the mom. And often those demographics are often more conservative.

And specifically Russian players also face challenges at home that we might not actually know about. Yes, some (a lot?) are probably queerphobic etc. But just because Panarin feels brave enough to speak but it doesn't mean that NOT doing that is agreement. Life is more complicated than that, even for rich people with more money than they know what to do with.

It doesn't mean they all suck. But it does mean we, also as fans, are moving in a specific system where change is...well, slow. Also because sometimes and often, teams are located in maybe not the most progressive cities and no matter what the players themselves think, those are the people who put money into tickets etc. That's who the front offices have to cater to. (And don't get me started on front offices and team owners, that's a mess.) A lot of change is and will be grassroots efforts, which I do think is okay and might actually stick better. And things have already changed compared to 15 years ago.

[dine]

yeah, PhD-haver Ovi breaks my brain a little as well

[rekishi]

I have that unfortunate soft spot for him, but that man makes no sense and I hope we get to learn what he even wants to do with it (though my guess is he'll pack up the fam and will vanish to Russia never to be heard from again after he's done in the KHL)

[olivermoss]

Thank you!

Yeah, on one level it's all BS because there isn't any one system. There are a lot of Russians and Fins, etc. And Canadian juniors isn't all one thing. There was a horrifying article a few months about a U14 Canadian team and how bad that is needs to be taken seriously, but some people seem to go 'this bad thing exists so all teams are like that, all players dealt with that'. And it's like, they could have? But this overly simplified 'this is how everything is' take people have is bizarre.

Yeah, for the US, being able to get into hockey or most sports is dependent on a massive family commitment and sports moms. That's why, when my family was approached by scouts twice regarding my skiing, my parents laughed the idea off. Rich, conservative, already with a connection to hockey, etc. And it's getting worse. Private equity companies have been buying rinks and jacking prices, especially in Texas. It's becoming even more for rich families only as companies maximize what they can get out of those families. That is not good for US hockey.

Every country has it's own problems. The homophobia is Russia is intense.

You're right, life is more complicated than all that. But people adopt this somehow-overly-bleak worldview and want others to do the same. It's a very weird cope, to see them as all poor tragic backstory woobies.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you.

[olivermoss]

Thank you!

[muccamukk]

I think because I'm mostly hearing about the Canadian Juniors, I'm still pretty much "burn it down" on the NHL. Without saying that all of the players are bad people, I do think the system is pretty poisoned, and has been for a long time.

Given that it's not that likely to burn down, so much money involved, I guess the best I can hope for is pressure around the culture to change. Which at least on the Canadian side doesn't really seem to be happening. We're just doubling down on being really horrible to young men, and then making excuses when they turn around and do horrible things. It's incredibly depressing.

[olivermoss]

I don't disagree with you. That's part of why I hate that whole attitude of blaming a concept and not the people who do bad things, it both accepts and reinforces the status quo.

[mistressofmuses]

"That's just how [blank] is" is such a crappy, cop-out answer. "Boys will be boys," just maybe a little more narrowed-down. It's excuse-making nonsense, because no, it is not an intrinsic fact that hockey (or men in general, or engineers, or idk bus drivers, or any other category) MUST behave badly. They are humans, capable of being better, and they *should* be. Absolving them of all responsibility by shrugging and saying that it's just an inherent behavior is a shit response.

There are valid points to be made about the system that produces athletes, and often does pull them away from a full education, and steeps them in a certain culture, and manages their lives in very controlling ways... but that does not mean that none of these autonomous humans have any control over their own lives and choices and what they say or do.

(And I think it's very correct not to solely divide "these are the Good Ones" and "these are the Bad Ones." People are people, and mostly good people can do shitty things, and mostly shitty people can ultimately decide they should be better.)

[olivermoss]

Hockey culture has had an influx of people who are very 'bitch, you live like this? What do you mean people who work in your face franchise earn less than minimum wage? Y'all really okay with these juniors programs?'

(ECHL - the minor, minor league of hockey, went on strike over players making less than minimum wage. Every NHL team has an ECHL affiliate for roster management reasons)

There are a lot of people who want us to stay precisely because of how we react to that shit.

There are a LOT of valid points about problems in the training programs. I vividly remember waking up one day, going online and seeing a horrifying about a U14 team. I really didn't want 'U14 team' to turn out to mean 'under 14 team', and sadly it did.

I am also sure there are individual players with terrible politics who POV would be understandable if I knew how they got there, still doesn't mean they get a pass. Giving them a pass makes things worse. They are people, not woobies.

There's a lot of nationalism in sports, just due to how everything is set up. Sports are very political. I mean, I am currently reading about people who defected from the USSR and I am pretty sure my fave hockey player grew up knowing them personally. NHL basically went on a buying spree of players who needed to be snuck out of their countries. Their experiences being part of NHL history is going to have at least some impact

[mistressofmuses]

So much of what goes into sports is deeply fucked up. It IS a deeply fucked up culture in so many ways. Those wages are obscene! As is how young it starts for so many kids... U14? Yikes. Child athletes have to deal with so much, and can wind up in such a weird mix of sheltered/exploited/pushed to mature.

I CAN understand how people, especially brought up in those environments, can wind up with weird or bad politics. Many of them likely haven't gotten much exposure outside of those bubbles.

That is STILL not a get out of jail free card. They are still people. People who have in some cases been through some shit, but they're people. They still have agency and are responsible for their own actions. A lot of people have been through some shit, but it's not a free pass.

Nationalism is certainly a huge streak through sports. And yeah, that's a lot of history for hockey specifically. Defecting and escaping and having that be somewhat contingent on your ability to perform? That's certainly a mix o' baggage.

[olivermoss]

Canadian juniors leagues trade players at age 17, though interestingly more and more top talent is opting out of Canadian juniors and going the NCAA/college route.

There was a U14 hazing scandal that I'll spare you the details of.

The Kraken have a player that people got emotionally invested in as the next Sidney Crosby back when he was 15. He's not, he didn't even go top 3 overall when finally in the draft, but the people who wont let go of their emotional investment are out there, and creepy AF

Giving them a free pass is making the bubbles worse. Not that I have any idea that yelling at people on twitter does anything, but they aren't fictional characters, we can't treat them the same as liking a problematic fave. (Unless you are in an RPF server where people are aware that there is framing and separation going on or something like that, but not when talking about the actual players or in public facing spaces)

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, and of course it was hazing in the U14s. Terrible, even without details.

It sucks that people get weird about how they expect kids to do. It's cool that young teens may show a lot of promise or be really into a sport, but the pressure of people deciding what your future should look like when you're too young to even drive... Yuck.

Exactly! It's good to understand the culture that surrounds and produces a lot of these athletes... that's not the same as deciding that they no longer bear any responsibility for how they behave. They are not fictional woobies! They are not part of a plotted growth arc! They are not simply written that way. They are grown adults who should be held to standards!

(And sure, RPF might have a bit of a weird bubble around that, but that should still be understood as the "F" in the name. They may be real people, but using them in a fictional context is different than their real lives.)

[olivermoss]

Yup exactly. Understanding what we can of the situation is important to help break it down, not excuse it. And also to be able to have reasons conversations with people in it / influenced by it

(Also newest squid, the one we acquired today, is college route and has studied contemporary dance. This whole 'they are all the same' narrative is just so insanely fact-free)