Hockey is the most beautiful sport in the world. It’s fast, difficult, spectacular, demanding, unifying and robust.
• Read also – Gang rape in 2018: where have the Junior Team Canada players gone?
Hockey is also one of the most retrograde, dangerous, macho, homophobic and violent sports.
Once again today, we were treated to a day that showcased the willies of hockey. The tatas who think with their crotch and who, too often, are hockey players.
There are the junior players from the 2018 edition who ultimately risk paying for what they would have done to a young woman. Instead of it being my money, when I register my sons for hockey, which is used to hide the affair.
There is Mike Riberio who is on trial for sexual assault.
We learned this week that Milan Lucic will undergo a jury trial in February. He allegedly tried to strangle his wife while he was drunk.
And there, I hear some who want to answer me: “Let’s see! We must not get carried away and generalize either. There aren’t just bastards in hockey. It’s not because there have been these stories that all of hockey is sick.”
Inlaid
Actually no, hockey is not sick. But there are way too many sick bad guys in hockey. And that’s a question of culture. It’s well embedded. It looks like it’s immovable. In hockey, you give yourself the right to be stupid.
It’s like that.
If you play in a garage league, you know what I’m talking about. There are always one or two per team. At one point in the year, these players lose their temper, want to fight, break their hockey on you, punch you in the gate because you crashed into their goalie.
You have others who treat the referee as a drain. Others who give you a double-check in the neck or who stamp you in the gang because they take all the frustration of their bad day at the office or their marital problems on you.
And that’s without counting all the blows that everyone gives each other after a goalkeeper saves.
It’s a free show that you can see in almost every arena in Quebec at the end of the evening.
Why are we like this? It’s crazy though. Why do we allow ourselves to lose our minds from time to time when we step on the ice to play hockey?
When we get angry at the office, it’s pretty rare that we push our colleague against the wall to defend ourselves. Or that we catch anyone who insults our friend by the collar, even if it is insignificant.
As if, when we put on our hockey gear, even if it’s in a garage league to keep in shape, we are someone else. We defend our goalkeeper as if he were the messiah. We jump in if things get rough in front of the goal.
And most of the time, soon after, everyone is laughing about it. The players who bickered apologize and everyone thinks it’s cute. We all admit and accept that we are weirdos.
And in the next match, we start again.
Culture
No, there is no connection between sexual assault cases and two idiots punching each other in a garage league. But all that is only to illustrate what hockey culture is.
The fight debate is a good example of this too.
For what? Because, precisely, there is a debate. Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies fighting gear in hockey. The stories that it prevents other dirty tricks, if you want to comfort yourself by thinking that it’s true, so much the better.
I think it’s nonsense.
The only argument for keeping fights is because people like it watching two guys try to beat each other up. Nothing else.
Hockey would be less fun if we took them away. It’s culture again.
As if, in hockey, it was okay to do things that would be completely insane outside of hockey, like fighting with your bare fists.
We can also talk about NHL pride evenings, where several players refused to participate, citing religion. Or when Marc-André Fleury was not allowed to wear a helmet in homage to the First Nations. Or when the League decided this year that the rainbow ribbon was banned for players’ palettes.
Hockey is the most beautiful sport in the world. But boy, sometimes it starts to get awkward being a hockey player or fan. It’s about time we made it happen.