The NHL’s postseason tournament this summer included 24 teams that entered ‘bubble’ facilities in Toronto and Edmonton. Each team’s party was made up of no more than 31 players per team, in addition to 21 other team personnel. Party members were expected to stay in the bubble until their team was eliminated or the playoffs concluded.

This is old news, but ‘hockey in a bubble’ is an entry point and an apt metaphor for the way that male professional hockey players are trained to silo their personalities in modern hockey culture. For years now, after every intermission interview, pre and post-game scrum — or even worse — Zoom availability, I’ve audibly groaned at the rote answers, stock phrases, and sheer tedium of NHL players speaking about their profession.

Illness or hardship in a player’s life is one of the only topics that are sanctioned by hockey institutions to give insight into the basic humanity of male hockey players. As fans and observers, we don’t hear or see from the person who forgot to clean the gutters over the weekend, or got stuck in traffic, or made a nice meal for their family. To elevate the entertainer beyond the realm of quotidian tasks is by no means exclusive to hockey culture, but the erasure of the player as a human individual is systemic in the world of hockey.

The idea that there is a clear distinction between the game of hockey and everything else in life is silly. Hockey and the professional sports industry as a whole is entertainment, a pleasant distraction from the woes of the world, both personal and collective. Those who seek solace in this distraction understandably want to enforce that supposed separation for their own happiness and sanity. Likewise, for those who profit off of a relatively silent labour force, there is an economic incentive to keep those revenue streams uncomplicated by personal expression.

The narrative of the player who thinks, dreams, and acts only in the realm of hockey is patently false. Harm exists in the falsehood that to be great in one’s limited sphere you must not think or be anything else. This is a damaging idea not only to athletes but also to the health of our society as a whole, as constant laser-focus has become a moral expectation that almost no one can attain.

Now, to some players, anonymity in private life may be a desired feature in the current system rather than a bug. After all, everyone values their privacy.

However, this caricature of the single-minded male hockey player goes beyond protecting celebrities from preying eyes or maintaining a good work-life balance. In hockey, parlance to go off-script, voice a genuine opinion, or even take credit for success is coded as selfish, as going against the team, distracting from ‘what’s important’, or not being a ‘team player’. Boston Bruins star goaltender Tuuka Rask, for example, was lambasted by local media for leaving the bubble early to be with his ailing daughter.

The expectation of silence within hockey culture is structural and begins long before a player turns pro. Through a series of interviews with Canadian Hockey League players, published in 2013, researcher Kristi Allain found that “men’s elite-level hockey structures itself as a closed community allowing outsiders only restricted access to the institution and its players.”

Daniel Carcillo, who spoke to CBC News last year about the class-action lawsuit he is leading against the Canadian Hockey League, said that over 400 people, including many players, reached out to him with their stories and experiences of abuse at team facilities and events. “Do I think players are going to call into a [NHL sponsored crisis] hotline?,” Carcillo queried. “Absolutely not. Because there’s fear of reprisal, there always is… these organizations [the NHL, CHL, Hockey Canada], in my opinion, have shown us that they lie, that they cover these stories up, and they lean on victims.” In this way, institutional expectations of silence are complicit in allowing abuse and assault of players by teammates, coaches, and parents to continue.

The dearth of media and media availability in the Toronto and Edmonton bubbles led to players’ social media accounts becoming the go-to source for the day-to-day details that are usually provided through sports media. The resulting ‘coverage’ was lighthearted, relevant, and true to the players’ experience living and playing hockey in a pandemic necessitated bubble.

This unique situation offers a path forward for NHL marketing strategists to actively combat rather than enforce the homogenization of players’ personalities, which is unfortunately the current norm. Honestly though, these issues can’t and won’t be solved by an NHL marketing campaign. A cultural grassroots movement is what is required to humanize relationships between players and fans, and fundamentally shift hockey culture for the better of everyone involved.

Current and former players like Akim Aliu, Evander Kane, Mathieu Joseph, Mathew Dumba, Carcillo and Robin Lehner use their social media platforms to advocate against exclusive and harmful aspects of hockey culture. Notably, Aliu and Kane, among others, created the Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA) in June. The HDA decided to split from the NHL in October, stating, “the NHL focused on performative public relations efforts that seemed aimed at quickly moving past important conversations about race needed in the game.” It is a sad, though unsurprising, testament to the state of hockey culture that Black, Indigenous and people of colour are speaking out against exclusion and systemic prejudice, while the NHL and its majority white players stay silent.

Among others, Robin Lehner, PK Subban, and Tyler Motte use Twitter and TikTok to discuss serious issues like racial inequality and mental illness, while also giving fans some insight into their daily lives.

Meanwhile, Elias Pettersson makes memes and Adam Gaudette hangs out with gamers (and the occasional journalist) on Twitch. Gaudette and his wife Micaela run a loveable TikTok account, where not everything goes according to plan.

Calling on hockey institutions to encourage and promote more genuine expressions of players’ attitudes and personalities requires vulnerability on behalf of the individuals, and the institutions themselves. This means vulnerability from those who benefit from the current system, not just from visible minorities and others who get the butt end of the stick.

A distinct possibility also exists that fans will not like some of what they see being expressed. This is okay. While it’s not ideal for people in positions of prominence to espouse or support hateful figures and ideas, there exists a broad range of opinion that falls short of that mark, but may still draw criticism.

While opening themselves to criticism may not appear to be in the best interests of players or the structures they operate within, to continue to withhold and silence personal expression is worse. We now live in a digital world where controversy can spawn from the ‘likes’ tab of a player’s Twitter profile. Instead of focusing on the inflammatory — but soon forgotten — revelations of social media sleuthing, what if we normalized both freedom of expression and the unlearning of prejudice, wanton violence, and hateful rhetoric amongst the hockey community?

While these conversations are not easy, particularly in public forums like Twitter, having them is worthwhile. Lehner is an excellent example of someone who has publicly shared his personal thoughts and beliefs on a number of occasions and was one of the only white players (Tyler Seguin & Jason Dickinson being the others) to take a knee in support of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.

The fact is that hockey culture, on the whole, is conservative. This is not to make a political claim but rather is based on the observation that the culture surrounding hockey is resistant to change.

Hockey’s cultural institutions are slow to act, whether the topic of discussion is the mandating of common-sense protective equipment (first helmets, now visors,) the prevalence of concussions, the role of fighting and violence in the sport, the exclusion of non-male voices through gatekeeping, or widespread bullying and harassment perpetrated against players by teammates and coaches. As fans and customers, we cannot allow the arbiters of hockey culture to continue to bury their proverbial heads in the sand.

Part 2 of this series will dive into women’s hockey, including the barriers to inclusion faced by non-male players at a grassroots level, social and economic advocacy efforts by female professional players, and the future of the women’s game in North America.