Superstitions

Hockey players are deeply superstitious on a personal level and it bleeds over into the team level. 

Common personal superstitions/rituals include:

taping the stick. Using the right tape and wrapping it in the exact right way. If for some reason they couldn’t tape their own stick and another guy did it for them that would be more intimate than sex

special pre-game meals. Eating the same meal before every game

Not stepping on the crest. Every dressing room has a large team crest taking up the majority of the floor space and it cannot be stepped on. 

Not washing some piece of equipment

the lucky jock

The amulet

Naptime

Building on naptime, hockey players are extremely routine oriented. They take the nap at the same time every day, they build a schedule and stick to it. Tying into superstitions maybe they do that out of magical thinking, maybe it’s to maintain consistency, your pick.

Traditions

What is the line between a superstition and a tradition? When you love it ♥️

Not to be confused with curses, which are real and are afflicting your fave. When other teams lose it’s because they are terrible, when it’s your team it’s the Curse and the correct sacrifices must be made.

Traditions are, instead, ways that hockey teams create a shared sense of identity with the team and with the barn (arena) in which they play. Hockey is a deeply insular in-group based culture and there are many signs and signifiers to help mark the in-group. Hockey uses specialised language in the form of slang, there’s a hockey accent that hockey players acculture to. There’s certain expectations around standards of presentation and deportment like suits for game day and being as bland as cardboard—that is cultivated and prestige. This is not a sport about being different. This is a sport about fitting in.

The height of fitting in is the locker room. Gotta to contribute to a good vibe in the locker room. Players have been traded for not fitting the locker room vibe, so it’s critical especially for new players to fall in. There’s lots of mechanisms that teams use to help that including hazing and the common practice of rookies living with vets. 

Some famous team traditions:

fines. It’s the captain’s job to collect the fines. This is a totally non-official but widespread thing where the team has some rules and if a player breaks them they have to pay money of differing amounts. Like a swear jar but flexible. This is administered through ‘kangaroo court’ which is an informal mechanism for fining players for off ice infractions. Some are fun and minor but it’s also leaned on to attempt to manage serious player issues and crimes that should probably be handled through more serious disciplinary measures

team dinners, usually hosted by the captain 

Sewerball warm ups

the team having a favourite song. For example, the oilers adopted Pink Pony Club and played it in the dressing room after every playoff win

Pranks! 

If two players want the same number, the veteran or more star studded player will usually get it. The guy who gets to use the number will “buy” it from the other, often by getting him a rolex.

Not quite a tradition so much as it just happens - players on entry-level contracts (aka rookies) share hotel rooms on the road. Sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s a sleepover

Other notable traditions

Playoff beards - my god there’s a whole wikipedia article

Flow - players want the sweetest flow so it can billow out behind their helmet like they are the world’s most majestic pony. Flow is the name for hair.

MAJESTIC. PRANCING.

Collectivism

V brief sidebar here. Hockey shuns individual achievement and acclaim except in specific circumstances that are all a little embarrassing for the players. 

Being a hockey star is a bit gauche. Sidney Crosby makes up for being a star by advocating for the other hockey players. When everyone else went to Europe to keep playing during the lockout, he stayed to help negotiate terms, giving up a hockey season. He and McJesus (Connor McDavid) are also lauded for taking a salary hit so they could stay with their team. Let’s contrast this with flashy football (soccer) star lifestyles. In hockey it’s better to have a small personality and subsume it to the club.

We see this in play as well, it’s honourable and good to pass instead of going for the shot. Especially pass to captain. That’s being a good hockey.

Our watchword here is ‘ferda.’ For the club, for the sport, for the boys. 

There’s a powerful loyalty and brotherhood but as we all know about insular communities built on machismo and a culture of shame, it has its dark sides. 

The kangaroo court fines, for example, might be applied to situations where players should have faced more serious disciplinary actions, but hockey tries to handle everything quietly and in house.

Hockey has to come first. You have to want it more than anything—show that grit, show that drive.

The lifecycle guide touched on the idea that hockey isn’t a job to these guys, it’s an identity. It’s an identity they’re raised in and comes with a ton of expectations for what it Means To Be A Hockey Player. There is a package of ways of being that a hockey player must conform to in order to be a hockey player and be accepted by the locker room—and remember if you aren’t in the locker room, you’re out. It’s the way of talking, the way of dressing, it’s the language, the unwillingness to admit pain or weakness, it’s playing through an injury. It’s about grit, determination, hard work, acting humble, showing loyalty to teammates. 

The identity slot is taken, no hyphenates. 

You can see other ways in which this can make the world extra difficult for players with other marginalisations. And, the culture of conformity and silence makes it difficult to criticise and push for change.

If there’s interest, we can do expanded notes on the big four isms (homophobia, racism, classism, sexism) but we’d be remiss without at least noting the deep-rooted issues in the NHL with all of these. 

The NHL is a very white organisation. The top decision makers, the staff, the most famous players are white. In this guide we’ve pointed to many expectations for deportment, presentation, and personality that place expectations on players to fit into a mould of behaviour that is also white. Being a person with flash and style is very unhockey. It makes it easy, then, for pundits and coaches to censure a player for acting in ways that are in keeping with their ancestral culture, when that heritage isn’t settler white without considering the ways they are forcing an expectation onto a player that separates them from their culture. The billeting system has to be taken into account as well, with families having to agree to send their 16-year old to go live with a white family and experience that cultural dislocation. That’s especially an issue for First Nations, Metis, and Inuit families.

The NHL is culturally homophobic. As a culture, not necessarily as individuals. When there’s been 108 years of the NHL, 8000 players, and not a single openly queer one, we have to grapple with knowing that there is a reason for that and it isn’t down to individuals. There’s that strong cultural pressure to subsume identity to the sport and not stand out and well, being gay would stand out, it would separate them from the core identity of hockey player.

Also, because of the insular nature of the hockey community and the way that social norms are passed down by these tight generational conveyances like billeting and hazing, the culture changes really slowly. Hockey is like 30 years behind. If we rewind 30 years like Ellen just came out. Will and Grace hasn’t even started airing yet. That’s where we’re at. 

This is not intrinsic to hockey the sport! It’s the culture around the NHL and the junior hockey feeder structure. In Women’s hockey the players get married and have adorable babies and still play against each other on their respective national teams; Julie is American and Caroline is Canadian. This true hockey romance has happened MORE THAN ONCE. still complexities but like it dont gotta be like this.

Wives Julie Chu and Caroline Ouellette and their baby.

And there is a vibrant and active National Aboriginal Hockey Championship which gives space and good competition for players who are overwhelmingly excluded from the NHL.

WAGs and Puckbunnies

Hockey players gotta get married! If you’ve read this far you’ve probably noted a ton of things like hosting team dinners, billeting rookies, and moving a lot. Critical to have a wife to manage that. Someone has to pack up that whole house and ship it across the continent on short notice. Someone has to manage the money and the schedule. WAG of a hockey player is a full-time job with responsibilities. In addition to raising the hockey children WAGs also organise charitable events for the team and help host team events. The Avs Better Halves (their name) does a charity auction every year. WAGs in hockey are slightly less marketing forward than in some other sports but they are also representatives of their players and one of the traditions is that of the playoff jacket. The team wives all wear matching ones (conform to the group!!). Some are nicer than others. 

actually when you see them lined up it’s kind of terrifying.

WAGs are also organised along similar lines as players, with a head WAG for the team as basically captain who directs things like the charitable auction and also makes sure everyone has their jacket. The Head WAG is usually the captain’s WAG but not always, but that expectation also reflects on whether a player is ready to make captain—do they have a WAG to co-lead the organisation? Money to organise all of this comes from the WAG Fund which every WAG is expected to pay into. It’s an official Relationship Step for a hockey player to have his WAG inducted into the group, and to pay her membership dues to do so. You are not real until the dues are paid, literal.

This is another way in which hockey makes being a gay player disadvantaged, how are you gonna advance through the stages of hockey player without a wife? And specifically a wife due the gendered nature of this labour.

Since this is such a specialised job and they need to lock ‘em down, how do hockey players find their WAGs? This is where the humble puckbunny comes in. Puckbunnies are women who want to be hockey wives and get into the hockey world for the purpose of snagging a husband. It’s very Bridgerton actually. 

Like it’s great when romance happens but it’s also goal-oriented jobseeking for both parties. 

Rookies are not expected to be married, slightly weird to be living with an older vet while married, but it can move swiftly after that. We can get David Attenborough mating cycle of the hockey player about this. During the juvenile phase hockey players learn and observe the proper standards for the hockey household. Then during the exploration phase they go out attempt the mating dance within the puckbunny pool. But also a huge number of hockey players marry their high school sweethearts as well. But they don’t get married, usually, until the career has slightly developed. After that, it’s marriage and hockey players only rarely get divorced.

Hockey players settle down young.

Not all of them are doing it like the Edmonton captain and alternate captain who married a pair of best friends and went on a joint honeymoon with them but since that is a thing that happened I have to mention it.

I need to be clear and specific these women did not marry each other. 

If you would like to know more about hockey culture, here is further media to explore.

Hockey Media:

hockey sweater: a short story about how it’s not ok to like the maple leafs, a sentiment featured on our five dollar bill

goon: 2011 comedy film about a bouncer who becomes a hockey enforcer in the minors

indian horse: novel or film set in the 70s about a child in a residential school who pushes his way into hockey

shoresy: comedy about a AAA team in Ontario

we breed lions: non-fiction journalism about hockey culture

hello destroyer: film about the aftermath of an incidence of violence in a youth hockey game

Alright! If you have any questions, happy to answer but as always real questions should go to @amailboxlemur who knows things and jokes to @phneltwrites 

many thank yous for consultations on this one: freilie, defractum, ofgeography, brofisting, and hockeywithhannah

post on the attitude towards queer people in the nhl feat. the collectivism and some actual quotes by leguin: here