This is a weekly feature that takes an uncharitable look at the Senators’ upcoming opponents.

Me, bringing the heat (not pictured: you, mad)

Thursday, Oct. 22 – Senators vs. Devils

Times are tough in New Jersey, where the Devils, a team with a long history of being good without ever being entertaining, are now neither. An aging core and years of bad drafting have made the Devils a collection of old spare parts and young non-prospects; the team’s architect, GM Lou Lamoriello, directed them into long-term mediocrity so effectively that he has now been scooped up by the Leafs. When season previews for your team contain sentences like, “if all goes well, the Devils will get goals from Stempniak,” well, see you at the draft I guess.

It was easier to hate the Devils in years past, when they won Stanley Cups and concussed their rivals and were the second-most interesting thing in Newark after the airport. Now the Devils are just kind of there, like an old Dodge Caravan. Sure, it’ll get where it’s going eventually, but there’s nothing exciting about it and everyone on board seems tired and a little disappointed. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2015-16 New Jersey Devils: a high-mileage Dodge Caravan where Mike Cammalleri is a first-line winger.

PREDICTION: The Senators have four days off to prepare for this game, which is sort of like getting six months of MMA training in order to put a six-year-old to bed. You just try not to psych yourself out first. Look for Mark Stone to score 22,000 points. Senators 5, Devils 0.

Saturday, Oct. 24 – Senators vs. Coyotes

The Coyotes only have six fans, but they all seem passionate. They are the kind of people who storm council meetings in cities they don’t live in and dress down municipal officials who aren’t supporting their team with other people’s tax dollars. They are the kind of people who believe in making ice in the middle of the most inhospitable landscape imaginable because they’re already diverting half the Colorado River to play golf. They look like the kind of people who have Crossfit-themed weddings where the couple screams their vows at each other, swinging kettlebells the entire time.

The Coyotes are bad, but apparently this is the plan. This year’s first overall pick is expected to be Auston Matthews, another one of those teenage hockey phenoms with a typo on his birth certificate, but in this case one with the added benefit of being from Arizona. Matthews is exactly the type of hometown star a struggling franchise in a non-traditional market needs to build around, which is exactly why the Coyotes will never win the lottery. They will try, though, sending out reheated cobbler like Steve Downie, John Scott, and Boyd Gordon, even trading for the $4.9M cap hit of a Hall-of-Fame dirtbag who hasn’t played in five years in order to reach the league salary floor without retaining any actual talent. The upshot is that the Coyotes have the second-lowest team payroll in hockey, with a roster put together like a home filled entirely with scratch-and-dent floor model furniture; you can see the scuffs and burn marks everywhere but the guy won’t shut up about how much money he saved. Then he spent it all on a cruise and stayed in his cabin puking the entire time.

PREDICTION: You know how it is when you’re a budget team with stupid uniforms being kept afloat by a franchise Swedish defenseman. Sometimes you have to go on the road and get your ass kicked by the Ottawa Senators. Senators 5, Coyotes 0.

Season prediction record: 3-2-1

Next week, two games against the team no Senators fan could ever hate: the Detroit Red Wings.

This is a weekly feature that takes an uncharitable look at the Senators’ upcoming opponents.

Me, telling you (not pictured: you, in your feelings)

Wednesday, October 14 – Senators @ Blue Jackets

I am told that the Columbus Blue Jackets are an NHL hockey team, but I have yet to see any actual proof. Yes, NHL.com has a few blurry photos at a distance of what looks like a hockey team, playing in the generically-named “Nationwide Arena” and wearing some kind of star-spangled logo that looks like it was mocked up for NHL 15 “Create Team” mode, or maybe a conservative think tank. But it all looks faker than the moon landing, and sure enough, my own Google image search for “Columbus Blue Jackets” only returns this picture. Now, I’m not saying the Columbus Blue Jackets aren’t real, even if they only turn out to be a collection of ex-Rangers in slightly different uniforms, but I can’t find any record of people discussing the Columbus Blue Jackets online, whereas I can find all kinds of people discussing, say, Microsoft Powerpoint. And any allegedly-real NHL club that only prompts you to think about Microsoft Powerpoint suggests, at a minimum, a real failure to street-team.

In fact, even though Wikipedia tells me Columbus is the “largest city in Ohio,” I’ve never heard of it either, and if you told me Columbus, Ohio was in fact a fake city invented as a corporate headquarters for some conglomerate like DuPont, I’d believe you. My point with all of this is that it’s very hard to actually hate the Columbus Blue Jackets, which seems at best to be like hating a vague and mostly improbable concept, like voting rights for dogs, as opposed to hating a real, tangible thing, like Powerpoint, which keeps changing my fonts when I start the slideshow and – there you go, they’ve got me doing it again.

PREDICTION: We all know what’s going on here. The Senators will travel to the same central Ohio warehouse where the moon landing was filmed, where, under the watchful eye of the NHL and the DuPont corporation, they’ll participate in a series of passing drills against the same plastic mannequins the Leafs practice against/employ on their blue line, which Sportsnet will then church up with some CGI and audio from a 2011 Senators-Rangers game and air, assuming you’re too drunk to notice the difference. And you probably will be. You may ask why the league would go to all this trouble to orchestrate a vast conspiracy around a fake eastern conference franchise, to which I’d ask if you’d rather go to Quebec City. Didn’t think so. Senators 5, Blue Jackets 0.

Thursday, October 15 – Senators @ Penguins

A lot has been made about how the Penguins (team motto: “Complaining: A Tradition of Excellence”) now have Sidney Crosby AND Evgeni Malkin AND ol’ hickory ham Phil Kessel, as if all these guys can score at the same time in some kind of pinball-style multi-puck bonus round. But they can’t, and as talented as the Penguins may look on paper, we don’t play hockey on paper, PIttsburgh, we play it on ice. And last time I checked, ice, though white like paper, is also colder, wetter, and harder. If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the Penguins complaining about this. It’s fine, this is normal.

I’d also like to point out that outside of its top six, this team has less depth than a Twilight novel. The next time you’re waiting in line at the bank or the bait shop, thinking about whether the Senators, who finished ninth in league scoring last year, can match up against a team like the Penguins, just repeat this phrase: “third-line centre Nick Bonino.” Feel better? Yuengling sucks, by the way.

PREDICTION: You may recall that during the last game between these two teams in April, the Senators rallied from a 3-0 deficit behind two Mark Stone goals to win 4-3 in overtime and keep their miracle run to the playoffs alive. The Penguins will certainly remember, so expect them to try to make sure this week’s game isn’t nearly as close. They’ll succeed, although that will mostly consist of following every Mark Stone takeaway by making the same faces to the referee as you’d see from a five-year-old being forced to eat a hard-boiled egg. Senators 5, Penguins 0.

Saturday, October 17 – Senators vs. Predators

The hack joke here is to suggest that Predators fans are a bunch of know-nothing hill people who only show up to watch foreigners shoot a puck they can’t even follow because they couldn’t get tickets to Clem T. Possumhole’s Biscuit Time Revue at the Opryland Casino BBQ, or something. This is incorrect, and shame on you. Most Nashvillians who follow the Predators are just like fans of any other non-traditional, out-of-market sport: knowledgeable, enthusiastic, even evangelical. In other words, they are exactly the type of hockey fans most Canadians pretend to be. Of course Nashville is going to win a Stanley Cup before any teams in Canada do.

That said, there are still a lot of valid reasons to hate the Predators. For God’s sake, their career points leader is David Legwand, or as he’s currently known in Buffalo, “the best part of the Robin Lehner trade”. Their first-line centre might be the biggest creep in the league, which is saying something, and the Predators are venal enough to employ him while simultaneously celebrating the character and humanitarian work of second-line centre Mike Fisher, as if this balances everything out. Their uniforms resemble the contents of a baby’s stomach. And Shea Weber, talented though he is, looks like a man who has probably eaten horse. Don’t worry, everybody. We can still hate our way through this.

PREDICTION: This game is in Kanata, which means there will likely be just as many country songs, faded Wranglers, and pickup truck-related arguments as if the game were held in Nashville. On the plus side, there will probably be fewer frosted sideburns. In any event, the Predators are the kind of western conference team Bobby Ryan used to dine out on, so if he doesn’t have five goals by the time this game rolls around, expect the rest on Saturday. Senators 5, Predators 0.

Season prediction record: 2-1-0

Next week: the fetid hellscapes of Glendale and Newark!

After two games Ottawa has two wins over division opponents ahead of tonight’s home opener against the Canadiens. There’s a lot to be thankful for on this holiday weekend but there’s also a few things to talk about. I have some thoughts that are by no means comprehensive (admittedly I was drawing during both games) but are worth a mention. Opinions on why the Turris-Stone-Hoffman line should only be used as a last resort, why the way the second line has looked means Ryan and MacArthur both need to be in and stay in the top six, and why Curtis Lazar isn’t ready for an increased role yet, but to simplify things, this will be about Patrick Wiercioch.

As much as Wiercioch’s play and Cameron’s faith in him have seemed to resolve the issue of whether he should be in the lineup (he obviously should and not just because of the Senators other options), with regular playing time comes increased scrutiny. Cameron elected to go with Wiercioch’s partner Cody Ceci on the second powerplay unit with Erik Karlsson in the third against Toronto (EK was on the point with a combo of Turris/Ryan on the first unit) and with Ceci as the second defenseman for 3-on-3 overtime. Ceci’s skating ability makes sense for the fast pace of OT (Methot too), but the powerplay time is more interesting. In the season opener, Ray Ferraro talked for some time about Wiercioch running a powerplay during his career and PW’s proven to be a good possession player, so why wasn’t he on the powerplay in the third?

I don’t think one period in the second game of the season is indicative of a larger trend or a sign that Dave Cameron has somehow lost faith in PW. More than most coaches, I get the sense that Cameron connects these mini demotions with actual coaching and development unlike some of his contemporaries who make quizzical decisions that seem vindictive or committed to various antiquated ideas in the game (the code, deferential to veterans, styles of play etc.).

If I had to guess what was problematic about PW’s game last night I would say it was his soft play. Calling PW soft isn’t meant to suggest that he should play a hard, physical game like Jared Cowen tries to play or hit like Mark Borowiecki. Rather, Wiercioch is a kind of defenseman increasingly valued in the game: one who facilitates possession and transition while having the passing skills to excel in a more fluid understanding of offense and defense. PW doesn’t need to hit, but he needs to play harder. By any definition, EK is a small man in the NHL, but his size doesn’t mean he’s easy to play against. He’s deft at using his stick; in lanes but also as part of a checking repertoire that leads to turnovers. Moreover, he’s able to absorb contact while maintaining possession of the puck. He also uses natural gifts like his speed and vision to keep the puck away from opponents and generate offensive opportunities. PW doesn’t skate like Karlsson (few do) but he does have some natural advantages he’s not using right now and that was on display against the Leafs. On the Leafs first goal, PW was hit behind Ottawa’s net and turned the puck over in front of his own net. He wasn’t the only player who deserved blame on that goal but he was part of the problem. There were also a few examples in the first two periods of PW turning the puck over. Turnovers happen and they’re not the end of the world and just part of the business of generating offensive in the NHL. But I think turnovers bother coaches more when they’re not part of something creative, or taking a risk to generate offensive, but when they’re the result of soft play. Wiercioch is 6’5” and while he’s a wiry 200 pounds, his size does give him leverage which he wasn’t using when the puck got taken away from him a few times with little more than a stick check. Focusing on this isn’t focusing on the negative, Wiercioch’s skills are fairly well documented at this point. But drawing attention to the holes in his game makes sense if you want him to take the next step.

He doesn’t need to be Scott Stevens, but he needs to be harder to beat in 1-on-1 battles when he’s in possession of the puck.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading!

This is a new weekly feature that takes an uncharitable look at the Senators’ upcoming opponents.

Me, shining (not pictured: you, seeing me shining)

Thursday, October 8 – Senators @ Sabres

Buffalo. People are saying Buffalo will be better this year, as if Buffalo could ever not be Bad, even when it’s better, as if God had never said “You know what, Buffalo, it is just not ever going to happen for you,” before going back to pummelling Buffalo with lake-effect snow. The only source of suspense in any Buffalo team’s sporting campaign is whether it will be honest with itself and lose immediately, or whether it will delay the inevitable right up until some kind of “wide right” or “skate in the crease” moment, as if this is somehow preferable. Yet Buffaloans (Buffaloafs?) persevere in the face of this abject loserdom, believing against all available evidence that their “star-crossed” history will only make eventual victory all the sweeter. This is asinine. Buffalo should never be an object of sympathy; it exists solely as a cautionary tale, reminding us of the universe’s inescapable nihilism.

Worst of all, I have heard tell of Senators fans with a soft spot for rival Buffalo, as if a common history of losing engenders some kind of kinship. This is the sort of weakness that’s supposed to be bred out of a species as it climbs the food chain. Any Senators fan that feels anything other than enmity for Buffalo is essentially telling you they’d think twice about climbing over a corpse to rescue themselves from a hole. Do not rely on these people.

PREDICTION: Some say that Robin Lehner has spent his summer gearing up to take revenge on the Senators in this game, presuming that the Robin Lehner Buffalo has traded for is some new version that never falters or melts down during emotional moments. I would say that if you liked the Robin Lehner that glowered at the Senators’ C-list defensemen after giving up yet another soft goal he may have been partially screened on, you’re going to LOVE this year’s Robin Lehner. Senators 5, Sabres 0.

Saturday, October 10 – Senators @ Maple Leafs

Okay, these guys already. You and I, we’ve developed a rapport at this point, right? So let me be real with you – ain’t nobody care about the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2015. The only people still making Leafs jokes in 2015 either need to fill four hours of drive-time radio or refer to Twitter favs as “paying the bills”. Except that a Leafs joke in 2015 is less like paying the bills and more like making rent by doing something unsavoury with your landlord. You immediately feel bad about yourself and think about going back to school. The rest of us recognize that the Leafs are just another long-mediocre hockey team whose last relevant game with the Senators took place when Ulysses S. Grant was still alive. We generally ignore them, just like we do the Florida Panthers, or HPV.

I will say this: the general sarcastic pessimism adopted by modern Leafs fans is a cunning defensive strategy, but make no mistake – deep down, they still believe that their Scrooge McDuck vault, nerdy front office, and new “Jack-O’-Lantern on November 15”-headed coach will eventually break the fifty-year wizard’s curse on their franchise as long as they secretly pretend it isn’t happening until the very last minute. In their defense, though, it used to be the last ten minutes.

PREDICTION: The Leafs are now officially “rebuilding” – technically, bulldozing a pile of old cinderblocks counts as “rebuilding” – which basically means this year’s team picture is a copy of last year’s but with leading scorer/ol’ hickory ham Phil Kessel crossed out and like six guys named Brad photoshopped in. Look for the Leafs to set the tone early in this game by showing off the medium energy of a team that’s determined to juuuuust play itself out of a top five draft pick. The only outstanding question here is which of Joffrey Lupul and Nazem Kadri will have the more convincing “Wait ’til I tell my Dad about this” sneer after getting punched in the face by Mark Borowiecki. Senators 5, Maple Leafs 0.

Sunday, October 11 – Senators vs. Canadiens

You wanna #actually hate somebody? Here you go. The Senators play the Habs three more times this year, which affords me several future opportunities to skewer the no-account dirtbags that comprise their roster and spend a moment speaking to you now about their entitled, dim-witted fans. No, that’s unfair, “entitled” is too strong; Habs fans are only entitled the way that a weird tinpot dictator trying to assert rule by divine right atop some disputed-zone trash heap is entitled. Hey Habs fans, you know what it’s called when you’re constantly taking credit for something that happened before you were born? Having a trust fund. You people are why Occupy happened.

They come by it honestly, though. Unlike the Leafs, who at least occasionally demonstrate some grasp of the concept of shame, the Habs try to obscure the fact that they haven’t won a Stanley Cup since Olden Tymes by doubling down on concepts like “tradition” and “heritage”, as if having fans that are actually in their seats before the puck drops is somehow reason enough to make their pre-game ceremonies longer every year. Living in such a high-gravitas enviroment year-round leads to strange decisions, though. Like, imagine if your team’s leader was a young, charismatic, Norris-winning, All-World defenseman that set an example on and off the ice, and then you didn’t make him captain? Crazy, right? But I guess that’s heritage for you.

PREDICTION: You may recall that the last time these two teams met in a meaningful game, the Senators were eliminated from the playoffs following a disallowed goal from Jean-Gabriel Pageau. Have you ever seen the movie Falling Down? Remember the scene where Michael Douglas takes a fast food restaurant hostage until he gets his G-D breakfast? Jean-Gabriel Pageau is Michael Douglas, and this game is that breakfast. Senators 5, Canadiens 0.

Next week: a bunch of mid-western teams with dumb-ass jerseys.

(Content warning: post and links discuss harassment, assault, sexual assault, rape, murder, domestic violence, and sexism)

For as long as I can remember, there was just one answer: Bobby Orr’s defense partner.

Like most little kids, I wondered what my parents had wanted to be when they grew up. My mom repeated over and over that she wanted to be Bobby Orr’s partner. Not Bobby Orr, the superstar, but simply to play the game she loved in the presence of greatness. Now as an adult who eagerly anticipates every Erik Karlsson shift, I have a better understanding of that desire.

My mom never played organized hockey of course. Born in the late-50s, she played road hockey but was of an era of girls who were forever on the sidelines when the teams started keeping score and using real equipment. Not only was organized hockey too expensive for my grandparents, a little girl playing minor hockey with the boys was unthinkable in the small town and time she grew up in.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved hockey, just like my mom. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to play hockey, just like my mom. I accepted that I couldn’t because there were no girls’ leagues anywhere near my hometown. In fact, as a little girl, I had never seen women’s hockey. The inaugural world championship was held when I was six years old and again two years later, but we had limited TV options and it wasn’t exactly on anyone’s radar. Girls weren’t in commercials about hockey and my love of the game was deemed unusual by more than one elementary school teacher and by many of my classmates.

When I was nine, the region got its first girls minor hockey league and my parents signed me up.

It was glorious.

But it wasn’t easy. Less than 300 girls played in that first season and several municipalities around the region were at best skeptical of the possibility of success and at worst actively contributed to its failure. In the local paper some openly questioned what we were trying to achieve. Women would never make the NHL or earn a living from hockey so what was the point of trying? As if potential millions or a chance at stardom were the only reasons to play or as if Manon Rhéaume hadn’t just played a preseason game for Tampa Bay. What they meant, and some actually said, was why are we wasting even a small amount of resources on girls’ hockey if it’s not going to lead to significant male achievement. I’m sure there were girls who wanted to play whose parents felt the same way. We were on the fringes.

Ice time was hard to come by as towns, boys’ leagues, and men’s leagues refused to share the ice or offer times appropriate for children. They argued that they should receive preference because they had seniority. And they had a point, the boys’ league in my hometown had been running and using rinks in town since the mid-50s and men’s beer leagues were common. But to use that as part of their attack required these men to ignore the systemic issues which prevented girls from playing and organizing for decades. As I look back as an adult more than 20 years later, I find myself even less sympathetic to their concerns. Men’s leagues who refused to give up post-dinner playing slots and municipalities who bowed to their wishes resulted in eight-year-olds playing well into the night. The preferential treatment they received would have been fine if those towns consisted solely of adult men, but they didn’t and still don’t.

We live in society with one another. Ideally, this means we consider how our actions and needs impact others. When I’ve played sports as an adult, I understood the late night time lots. As an adult I was able to make it to games on my own and didn’t need supervision. Yes, there are constraints on adults’ time too, but there are only so many hours in a day and so many sheets of ice available. Equitable solutions aren’t without some sacrifice. Children, so often seen as a burden and inconvenience by society deserve the same considerations as the adults who pay the bills.

The resistance to sharing arena space was about sexism, plain and simple. Couched in arguments about fairness and loyalty, men who saw hockey as their past time and theirs exclusively, did what they could to make girls know they weren’t wanted. There were occasions when men’s league teams found out a group of girls would be using the same dressing room after them and they made their feelings known. On many occasions we entered dressing rooms soaked in alcohol, or with urine all over the floor and benches, or with waste smeared on the walls. More than once with all three. We were jokingly told to “enjoy the room” when this happened. At the junction of arena corridors and dressing room doors, sometimes our two different groups would intersect. Lewd comments, explicit gestures, and mocking laughter were common greetings. This didn’t happen at every game and every practice but it wouldn’t have happened at all if we’d been more like them.

It didn’t last, but we did.

These things just seemed normal about playing hockey, but quickly we experienced them less and less. There were a few reasons for the change. Our numbers kept growing. More and more girls signed up to play and loved it. Our little sisters joined us. Our towns got used to us. Women’s hockey got a boost of both visibility and credibility in the mid-90s when the IOC announced women would play for gold in Nagano in 1998. Scholarships to colleges and universities followed. What seemed destined for failure in the early 90s was a sure thing several seasons later.

In a few short years, girls’ hockey became naturalized.

For a long time, hockey had been a defining feature of Canadian boyhood. Hockey’s cultural centrality in Canada still remains, but now reflects the experience of being any child in this country. The connections between Canadian identity and hockey can be problematic and still exclude some but it’s been opened to a lot more kids in the two decades since I started playing. It’s much harder to ignore young female fans now; however, to know that there have always been girls who have liked hockey, I need only ask my mom. Girls are featured in commercials about hockey, as part of the introductions on HNIC, and stand with NHL players on the ice before the anthems. We see them on Hockey Day in Canada broadcasts. There are still challenges facing girls who want to play hockey and yes, some are gendered. Others are issues of discrimination also faced by boys, like the economic cost of playing the organized game. But there are clearly defined roles for girls in hockey and these roles include playing the game and watching as a fan.

But what happens when those girls become women?

We’ve had a few generations of girls who have grown up playing hockey, cheering for female hockey stars, and advancing their careers by playing in college. The game continues to grow among girls and women. In Canada, female registration in minor and rec hockey has grown almost 1000% since the 1990-91 season, about the same time I started playing. Even after the 90s onslaught of new teams and leagues, female registration still increased 59% between 2001-02 and 2012-13. And yet mainstream hockey culture still actively discourages female fandom and resists cultivating spaces of inclusion.

The reasons are many. For starters, it’s a matter of representation. There are still not enough female sports reporters and women in sports broadcasting fewer still. Privileging male experience and frequent and extreme harassment of women in sports media contributes to keeping women out. Hockey’s contempt for women is seen in the NHL’s (and minor and junior leagues) atrocious handling of issues of violence against women and sexual assault. It’s illustrated plainly in hockey marketing and media.
Many men who love hockey hate what they perceive as the intrusion of women into their domain.

We continue to brand fandom space as male. Male fans create “man caves,” male-only bastions of fandom that suggest sport is the sole purview of men. Perhaps most insidiously, these spaces imply that women are to be escaped from and that the place to do that is in sports fandom.

Hockey culture reinforces the centrality of men at the expense of women. Women exist on the fringes, the periphery, marginalized by the toxic masculinity that is pervasive in fan culture.

The fact that there have always been women who love hockey is frequently erased. The strides girls have made in hockey have not translated to greater visibility for women. The rise of women’s leagues like the CWHL and NWHL, which have led to an increase in online coverage of the women’s game, haven’t altered how these same networks cover issues impacting women in the larger hockey world. The rise in girls’ organized hockey has not corresponded with an increase in or diversified roles for women in the sport.

The girls who feature in TV ads, whose perspectives and love of the game are centered as children are pushed to the periphery of advertising as women. Beer commercials seen during hockey games show women in crowds or as sexual objects, but rarely as the focus of the ad. Gambling commercials depict men hanging out and joking with other men, as the sources of hockey expertise and the possessors of sports guts. Women are pushed to the fringes.

The most visible female labour in NHL hockey are the female-dominated ice girls/crews, which also represent the margins of employment in hockey. Ice girls aren’t valued as labour, and labour, both paid and unpaid, impacts the extent to which women can participate in the sport, both as players and fans. While both men and women do valuable, unpaid work every day, the division of this labour is still unequal. The demands of raising children and running a household impact our fandoms. Many women just want a break to watch the game too.

When hockey appears in a novel, on a TV show, or in movies it’s rarely about a woman playing or a women who are fans. This kind of representation continues to grow for girls but remains elusive for women. Women are often depicted as secondary characters, such as wives are girlfriends, without the same depth and agency afforded the male leads. A lot of the time, women are typically depicted as hockey moms. There’s nothing wrong with that role and women who volunteer their time to coach, as team moms, and to drive to every practice and game help keep minor hockey going. But the stereotype just doesn’t capture the many ways women enter hockey and the diversity of ways their love of hockey manifests. There are parents at the rink who behave in negative and detrimental ways, but hockey moms in particular are singled out and endlessly mocked as intense and crazy. Not only is this ableist, it plays into dated tropes of the hysterical woman. It also serves to marginalize both the contributions of women in hockey and also their love of the game. Women who love the game are crazy, men who love the game are passionate fans, so the belief goes. When female points of view are present and central in media like novels and movies, these works are derided and their importance minimized. Romance novels featuring hockey plots and players are dismissed in part because they disrupt the belief that the male gaze is the default perspective of hockey fans. Good romance novels are, at their core, explorations of consensual female sexual desire and are mocked, in part, because of this fact. Again, women are pushed to the perimeter.

Existing on the margins of a sport is dangerous. When that existence replicates the marginalization experienced in life more generally, it’s threatening, hazardous, and deadly.

Many male fans think discrimination in the game has decreased in recent years. To think discrimination is slowly leaving the game, one must ignore the gendered discrimination that’s rampant in the hockey played by boys and men. Many male fans see objections to the NHL’s handling of cases of domestic violence and sexual assault in its midst as abstractions and secondary concerns. Some refuse to acknowledge domestic violence and sexual assault at all. But violence and sexual assault are part of the lived experience of many women and many female hockey fans. Domestic violence and sexual assault are taking many women who love the game from us.

When I was a teenager there was one girl I played with for a few seasons in a row. She was an average player but an exceptional person. A positive force in the dressing room, she was always smiling and friendly. She volunteered at tournaments and was always at the rink. She continued playing in women’s leagues and added coaching to her volunteer commitments in adulthood. She mentored young girls and older women who were learning the game. We played hockey together and worked at the same store. We were friendly but didn’t hangout outside of those spheres and I lost touch with her when high school ended. She continued to live in the area, playing hockey and volunteering. Several years later her ex-boyfriend stalked and harassed her before murdering her. She was 27.

I want so much for her death to be an example of an extreme, but it’s not. It’s the tragic end of a straight line which begins in our society and our game with the erasure of women. The line is shorter than you think. That we resist seeing every day, common examples of sexism as examples of discrimination and as contributing factors to this violence helps perpetuate it and obscure solutions. She was unique in life and we are lesser for her loss but in death she joined a vast sisterhood of women terrorized by men.

When I think about what happened to her and some of the other girls – now women – that I played with, the violence they experienced from the men in their lives, it’s hard to draw a line separating the toxicity of hockey’s masculinity from that of the country’s. Hockey’s masculinity is synonymous with Canadian masculinity. Both versions of masculinity erase women and jeopardize their safety. It happens at our rinks and in our communities. The stereotypical good Canadian boy loved by Don Cherry and his cohorts, plays a physical game, through pain, adheres to an antiquated code designed to humiliate and eliminate difference, and above all, he is a character guy. But with shifting attitudes and the pervasiveness of social media, it’s getting harder and harder to hide the criminal, violent behaviour of hockey players.

They’re not all good guys. Some abuse, some assault, some rape. Virtually all the others stand with their teammates. Sometimes we characterize NHL and NHLPA inaction as silence on the issues facing women, as silence on violence against women and sexual assault. But inaction is anything but silence, inaction loudly proclaims that goals, wins, and television contracts are more important than women’s safety and women’s lives.

The issues hockey fans are now beginning to confront aren’t new but it’s the first time many male fans have received any pushback on attitudes and behaviours that harm women. Girls deserved space and a role in this game and hockey and its fans have adapted. That some men who refuse to make space for women have accepted girls because they want their daughters to have every opportunity seems likely. It’s not the respect girls deserve, but it has resulted in increased acceptance. That these same men can’t acknowledge women who love hockey is due at least in part to the changes that reality requires. It would require acknowledging women as people deserving of respect because they’re people and not because they are daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, girlfriends, sexual objects, or because they have a relationship of some kind with men. When girls started to organize, our leagues were peripheral parts of hockey culture and as a result we were subject to abuse. Until women’s experiences are recognized as central to hockey culture, they will continue to exist on the dangerous margins of the sport with serious consequences.

1. Sing Pageau’s name when he scores a goal
2. Make a donation to the arts and ensure the money leaves your bank account.
3. Watch a game at one of the many restaurants and bars of Sens Mile.
4. Come in hot at least once.
5. Go on the California or Florida road trip with the team.
6. Go to a costume party dressed as Cory Clouston.
7. Decorate for the playoffs.
8. Eat a burger before an Andrew Hammond start.
9. Work Radek Bonk’s name into conversation daily.
10. Make a homemade gladiator costume out of aluminum foil.
11. Take a 400 series bus to and from a home game. Make it a true Senators Daily Double and do it for a Leafs game.
12. Forget to attend a Spezza rally.
13. Stand by the door at the end of the day and fist bump all your co-workers as they leave like Chris Phillips.
14. Shout Alfie’s name when the game clock hits 11:11.
15. When you visit Montreal, sing out Pageau’s name just for fun.
16. Giggle awkwardly.
17. Live everyday like a Mark Stone celebration.
18. Mock all team slogans but secretly enjoy them.
19. Watch a game in a different city with Ottawa ex-pats.
20. Experience the joy that is exiting the largest parking lot in eastern Ontario after a game.
21. Watch a Battle of Ontario game at the ACC.
22. Drive to a playoff game at the CTC and enjoy how some fans have shown their support for the Sens by decorating the sound barriers and fencing in their backyards.
23. Spit water through the gap in your teeth like Chris Neil.
24. Paint your nails in team colours or better yet, go gold.
25. Watch Erik Karlsson live at least once in your life. Tell everyone else about it for the next 75 years.