Not-so-smol Hockey Children

things might end up better! they might end up worse. you can’t actually count on anything playing out as you remembered, or getting the opportunities to change the things you wanted to alter. the things you wanted to preserve might be lost to you. you can’t know!!! you can guess, absolutely, but you can’t know for sure, and there will undoubtedly be weird surprises of every kind.

you’ll be perceived differently, for sure. you’ll react differently, too. people who originally treated you kindly might pick up on a strangeness they find distasteful or threatening. maybe you’ll notice ugly flaws in the adults you once admired. maybe your mom had struggles you never knew about and reacts to her three year old firstborn having the consciousness of a thirtysomething by falling down a rabbit hole of mysticism or radicalization and one day she runs off with you to join a cult. or maybe some adult in your life decides that your affect is evidence of psychopathy and you are psychiatrized in new and different ways. maybe your adult knowledge of germs gets you labeled with contamination OCD, or maybe it just means you get sick less because you actually wash your hands now, which means your mom doesn’t stay home as much, which means she’s at work the day Barbara is there and they hit it off and they have an affair and your parents divorce and your dad becomes a homophobe and starts hanging out in conservative spaces and then becomes antivax and won’t get your family vaccinated and then your brother dies of measles and your family is on the news and the trajectory of your life is unrecognizable.

or maybe you can’t relate to the kids you were friends with as a child, because you’re 36 years old and they are seven. you crave the company of your peers, but your parents catch you sneaking onto the computer to chat anonymously with other adults, and now they think your friend Evelyn who you write fanfiction with is a pedophile who’s been grooming you for months and they get the police involved…

or maybe your shitty and abusive childhood is still shitty and abusive but now you’re even more aware of it because you know exactly how bad and unfair it is in the moment but you’re still only five years old and your little hands are too small to pull the trigger of your stepdad’s gun and you can’t reach the shelf where the rat poison is kept and now you can’t even escape into books or stories or video games because you finished them all a hundred times twenty years ago…

From Peter Lutz on Vote Hub

You just finished reading every queer hockey story available to man—and holy Wayne Gretzky—you're a newly minted hockey fan. You love the gays; you want to watch the sexy men zoom around in the boy aquarium, and it's Friday night. So you tune into an NHL game.

You're a brand new hockey fan and you can see that there's twelve men on the ice, a bunch of others on the bench, there's coaches, assistant coaches, goalie coaches, retired NHL players who are doing analysis and color commentary. You scan the faces and all are consumed by the reason for tonight's gathering: working together to get a vulcanized piece of rubber in a goddamn net. We've left the outside world behind; color, creed, orientation, immigration status, and gender matter not. All that matters is the effort these athletes put out on the ice.

Yet, as a new, leftist hockey fan, pick any one of these people, and flip a coin—and there's a decent chance that this player has conservative politics. If they're American and registered to vote, there's a 43.9% chance they are registered as a Republican and if they voted, they voted for Donald J. Trump.

And I'm sure if you asked the other 38.5% of NHL players, they'd say something alone the lines of "I don't really do politics." You know, the type of "uh...I think everyone should stop fighting" response that people offer when you bring up genocides.

Oh man. Oh gosh. That's so weird. You got into hockey because of the myriad of stories that celebrate queerness and marginalized identities and intersectional feminism—so what is up with this league? Why is so different from the stories that use it as an athletic backdrop? Has it always been like this? And how did you end up here? Why are so many other fannish/bookish left-leaning people like yourself finding solace in a league where there are millionaires who will gladly win it all and shake hands with a self-proclaimed fascist?

If you're at all like me, a leftist Black woman, it's a simple cycle.

You discover the world of hockey and the NHL which is strange and fascinating. The blood, sweat, and tears compel you. Yes, it's filled with white people—like it's mostly white people whatthefuckisupwiththat—but they're a different sort of people because this niche underground culture is...strange and fascinating! They have slang and enormous asses!

It is very gay. The homosociality of hockey breeds a male repression unmatched by any other form of physical exertion. You feel safe here now; you feel justified. Nevermind the fact that toxic masculinity is the thing you're actually observing. You were born with slash goggles on. If these men can't untie the bow on their unconscious desires and unrealized tenderness, you can do it for them.

Reality strikes. A good rule of writing is that characters are what they do. And whenever you peek into the real world of the NHL...you see what the league and its players do—or don't do. Time after time again you're presented with political inaction from the league, racism, misogyny, transphobia, and apathy towards the things you really care about. You learn slowly, that the NHL is a league that moves at glacial speeds, pun intended. It is, simply, not progressive.

Well, at least you have a hockey romance that is progressive! You don't need professional men's hockey! You can make a difference! Yay!

...But oh good God, now you've spread the tainted gospel of hockey to hundreds—maybe thousands of people with your hockey book. They may never make it to step three! (Picture me running from laptop to laptop, closing the Word documents of various hockey romance writers. I kind of sound like Jimmy Stewart: "Stop! St-stop it now! We're spreading it! Dontcha know we're spreading it, huh? You're sending 'em down to the boy aquarium; that's no boy aquarium! These people think Bernie Sanders is crazy!")

Am I saying that watching an NHL game is like buying a signed copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—no. (But someone do the math on that.) Any time we engage with any of the major sports we put money in the coffers of billionaires. (The PWHL is owned by billionaire Mark Walters, who is the owner the Lakers, Dodgers, Sparks. He donated to Obama and the DNC and is always happy to visit the White House—even if it's to hang out with Trump when his sports team does well. Do NOT get me started on the MLB)

All I am saying is that, you, new hockey fan, can save yourself a lot of time and frustration by enjoying the league, but by also knowing the league that is being marketed to you. You will be disappointed with player politics. You will be lulled by rainbow capitalism. 43% of American NHL players are registered Republicans. You will find yourself accepting the bare-minimum. (I was way too proud of Sidney Crosby for like, knowing a gay person?)

The players' reaction didn't really come as a surprise to me, largely because I'm Canadian and well aware of the conservative nature of the sport and its culture. But what did surprise me was how surprised other people were by the players' reaction. I mean, come on, I thought to myself. Isn't this common sense? A group of straight white men whose biggest political priority is lowering taxes so they can hoard as many of their millions are possible are, by nature, not going to be drawn to liberal/progressive politics.

In line with OP's post, I think the most important thing for new left-leaning NHL fans to know is something I read on a hockey Tumblr back during the 2016 election shitshow regarding the players and the wider league:

These people are not on your side. It's likely never even occurred to them to be on your side.

I take my AUs and crossovers seriously okay

before, on the ice, he was a rough player who would run over anyone who tried to stop him from scoring. he made a beeline for the goal whenever he got the puck, and yeah, he made passes, but always with the intention of the puck returning to him. he had to be the best. he was the best. off the ice, he was solemn and quiet and looked much older than his seventeen years. during interviews, he gave short, clipped answers and finished up as soon as he could. when fans met him, he kept up general, polite conversation, but it sounded rehearsed and he never smiled. he’s just serious about his game, they thought. his hockey attitude follows him off the ice. it’s what makes him so good.

but as he makes his presence known in the nhl, years older and grown comfortably into his skin, they realize that they were wrong. they didn’t know jack zimmermann at all. they knew a boy on the verge of breaking, who was barely holding himself together for years. because this, the real jack zimmermann, looks nothing at all like that boy in the minors. jack is smart about the way he plays, and uses his speed and strategy over his strength in order to get the puck in the goal, even if he’s not the one that puts it there. he knows that he’s part of a team, not just one man on the ice. jack is serious on the ice, but not overtly so. he smiles and shakes his head with a laugh when a teammate bumps or chirps him. during interviews, he still seems a bit uncomfortable because press just isn’t his thing, but when he’s asked a question, he gives thoughtful answers and never rushes to finish. he gives them his respect and his time.

and when he meets the fans, he gives them wide smiles, asks them how they liked the game, or how their day is going, or if he sees that they have another team’s jersey on, he’ll give them a few chirps. he signs things and spends too long high-fiving kids and taking pictures after an away game, so long that someone more times than not has to come and drag him to the bus.

I wanted to make a QUICK edit out of the most recent webtoons rerelease of Check, Please!, so I asked @montrealmadison for a song. She gave me mitski's First Love / Late Spring.

Then I thought about an 18-year old Bittle trying desperately to act older than his age to fit in with the hockey team he isn't sure he feels like he belongs on, THE TEAM HE WANTS TO QUIT, but relies on to pay for college and doesn't want to disappoint his dad. There's Bitty's pressure, and we see Jack really start to pressure him here, immediately followed by how the justification for Jack's intensity is Bad Bob ™. Then I blacked out for two hours and woke up in a sweaty haze and this was open on my canva.

we joke about how jack will eventually be bitty's trophy husband and be thrilled about it, but it definitely has a giant grain of truth in it. it's how they're characterized. bitty is an extrovert; jack is an introvert. bitty reached out and built himself an online audience to deal with his trauma; jack shut himself out and started avoiding the public to deal with his.

bitty finds comfort in being able to talk to others and (as seen in spotlight on eric bittle) considers being a public figure a sort of healing experience: coming out and being a public person (in every manner of speaking, not just sexuality wise) and putting himself in the limelight is such an important part of his journey because he sees it as a way of helping others who were in his situation.

jack grew up in the spotlight as the only son of two prominent figures. he grew up as a child with anxiety with the media's eyes on him as he was compared to his father. he grew up as an overweight teen featuring in trashy gossip columns as he was compared to his mother. he got into rehab in part because of this attention and it only attracted more attention to him. a lot of jack's anxiety stems from the notion of people looking at him and thinking about him and talking about him and judging him, and it's unfortunate because jack's dream is to play hockey, and that comes with even more attention.

but that's the thing: jack and bitty's story is (once again) a demonstration of two people making each other's lives better.

jack's fame thrusts bitty into the spotlight post-cup, and it's a giant push forward in helping him reach a bigger audience and thus grow his independent fame. bitty's growing fame slowly overshadows jack, to the point where ngozi says they'll one day be Eric Bittle and his Athlete Husband. and that means jack gets to play hockey, and win cups, and achieve fame in his own field, but the media's attention slides off him to his husband, and the fans on the street gradually approach bitty more than him, and jack is free to have his success with less of the personal scrutiny.

Lol Mal, that isn’t even the weirdest thing you can bone in this game 🤣