{"id":85397,"date":"2023-05-08T12:18:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T16:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=85397"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:34","slug":"opinion-taylor-mckee-discusses-canadian-hockey-allegiances-and-national-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/05\/opinion-taylor-mckee-discusses-canadian-hockey-allegiances-and-national-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Taylor McKee discusses Canadian hockey allegiances and national identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article written by Taylor McKee, Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, was originally published in\u00a0<\/em>The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 30 years since a Canadian NHL team has won the Stanley Cup. The last team to bring home the trophy was the Montr\u00e9al Canadiens in 1993, but\u00a0the long drought\u00a0might finally be over with two Canadian teams in the second round of the NHL playoffs: the\u00a0Edmonton Oilers\u00a0and\u00a0Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n

Canadian hockey fans are left with the familiar, yet fascinating, decision regarding whether or not to temporarily suspend their regular season allegiances and support one of these two franchises, strictly on the basis of their national residency.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a familiar debate among many Canadian hockey fans: if one\u2019s team is no longer in contention for the Stanley Cup, does their allegiance switch to any remaining Canadian team \u2014 even one they usually hate? A\u00a0sizeable sector of Canadians yearn\u00a0for a Stanley Cup parade in a country with postal, and not zip, codes.<\/p>\n

Hockey allegiance<\/h2>\n

The sentiment to support a Canadian team, or more accurately\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0Canadian team, doesn\u2019t appear to be a recent creation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s plausible that fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators and Montr\u00e9al Maroons were relieved when the 1930 Stanley Cup was won by the Montr\u00e9al Canadiens over the heavily-favoured Boston Bruins.<\/p>\n

In fact, W.A. Hewitt, Sporting Editor of the\u00a0Toronto Daily Star<\/em>\u00a0noted in 1930: \u201cMontr\u00e9al\u2019s Canadiens today returned the Stanley Cup to Canada, birthplace of hockey \u2026 the Stanley Cup is returned home after a two-year sojourn in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while it might seem natural for Canadian fans to seek an oasis in a time of drought by rooting for any Canadian team, the question remains: Why do many Canadian hockey fans feel the urge to support teams they would ordinarily delight in rooting against?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the answer lies within the connection between Canadian national identity and the National Hockey League itself.<\/p>\n

Hockey and nationhood<\/h2>\n

While\u00a0hockey is undoubtedly one of Canada\u2019s national pastimes\u00a0and passions, the NHL occupies an outsized presence in our collective cultural imagination.<\/p>\n

Although the league is a business that straddles the Canadian-American border and draws from an international talent pool, the NHL\u2019s seven Canadian teams loom large over the landscape of Canadian culture, dwarfing almost any other institution.<\/p>\n

Canada is not the only country with a keen interest in its teams,\u00a0but our shared investment in the performance of our teams throughout Canadian history\u00a0\u2014 despite the existence of other leagues, sports and other cultural touchstones that represent us on the national and global stages \u2014 sets us apart.<\/p>\n

This unusual dynamic led author Ryan Edwardson to argue the following in his book\u00a0Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada provides a fascinating case study in which to explore how nationhood has been defined and pursued through culture.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

While sport plays a role in many nations\u2019 cultural identities, Canada\u2019s symbolic identification with hockey culture, and chiefly the performance and reputation of our NHL representatives, leaves our sense of nationhood vulnerable.<\/p>\n

When our self-conception becomes too closely tied to the fate of our NHL teams, their performance is a direct reflection of our own national quality and character.<\/p>\n

Americanization of hockey<\/h2>\n

As the\u00a0NHL has expanded beyond six, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22 and eventually 32 teams, a new encroachment emerged in the minds of some Canadian hockey fans: Americanization.<\/p>\n

Throughout the mid- to late-20th century,\u00a0an influx of American popular culture into Canada\u00a0caused genuine concern about hockey being subsumed by the voracious economic appetite of America after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

For many Canadians, national identity was found by clinging to our NHL teams.<\/p>\n

Sports management professors\u00a0Craig Hyatt and Julie Stevens note: \u201cCanadian hockey fans view Americans as villains whose aggressive changes to \u2018our\u2019 game show that they care little for the importance and meaning of hockey within Canadian culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

This undoubtedly contributed to Canadian sensitivity around the absence of the Stanley Cup during the 21st century and has been exacerbated by the recent drought of Canadian teams failing to win the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n

With aggressive and repeated American expansion, hockey itself has changed with it. Rules, playing styles and equipment all changed as the number of NHL franchises expanded. With it grew the sense that\u00a0the game was becoming less and less Canadian.<\/p>\n

Canadian rivalries<\/h2>\n

Regardless of this perceived American encroachment into hockey, there are still Canadian fans unwilling to let go of their rivalries \u2014 even if it means rooting for another Canadian team.<\/p>\n

Canadian national hockey includes many\u00a0historical, geographic\u00a0and even linguistic rivalries against other Canadian teams. An example of this is seen in Roch Carrier\u2019s\u00a0renowned story The Hockey Sweater<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The story\u00a0recounts an incident from Carrier\u2019s childhood\u00a0where a department store mistakenly sent him a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey instead of a Montr\u00e9al Canadiens jersey. The residents of his town don\u2019t react well to him wearing the sweater of the Canadien\u2019s biggest rival, and the experience nearly ruined hockey for him.<\/p>\n

The story doesn\u2019t end with the protagonist accepting his Toronto Maple Leafs sweater and fearlessly adopting Leafs fandom in the heart of French Canada. It ends with a desperate prayer for insects to devour his sweater.<\/p>\n

The sentiment expressed by\u00a0The Hockey Sweater<\/em>\u2019s main character is familiar to many segments of Canadian hockey fans as well. For every desperate fan looking to align themselves with neighbouring Canadian teams, there are still those who would prefer that the moths win instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor McKee Assistant Professor of Sport Management recently published a piece in The Conversation about the role of national identity in the shifting allegiances of Canadian hockey fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,6],"tags":[7488,57,10657,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85409,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85397\/revisions\/85409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}