Wildly Untrue Hockey Urban Legends

On a recent visit to snopes.com, I noted that the hockey section of their website is woefully underpopulated by hilariously fake urban legends, crazy rumours, and weird myths. Indeed, the site only has three hockey-related entries, with two of them boringly true. This is incredibly disappointing and, frankly, a disgrace. It's especially disgraceful when a bland sport such as baseball has 20 total entries, the vast majority of them patently false, none of them related to steroids.

To rectify this awful, terrible situation, we at Pass it to Bulis have come up with some wildly untrue urban legends that we encourage you to e-mail to your dumbest and loudest friends. Feel free to add, twist, or distort any of these into whatever form you wish: that is the mark of a good urban legend.

Here presented for your enjoyment and dissemination are 10 Tru Fakts.*

• Famed enforcer and all-time NHL penalty-minute leader David "Tiger" Williams got into his fair share of scraps in his day. This was back before mouthguards were common, and he would often knock out a tooth or two from his opponent. He had a standing arrangement with the crew at each arena to collect the teeth from the ice after each fight and give them to him after the game, usually slipping $50 back their way. He strung the teeth on a necklace that he wore under his sweater.

Darren Pang, With the Most Unfortunate Verbal Gaffe Ever

In case you missed it, this is Darren Pang from last night on TSN. In the clip, Pang lands perhaps the most unfortunate slip of the tongue since that time Lorraine Baines tried to park with Marty McFly, when he compares Alex Pietrangelo's quiet class to P.K. Subban's chirping, declaring that Pietrangelo plays "the white way."

Obviously, he meant to say "the right way." I feel terrible for him. I'm laughing a little too, of course. But it's a gentle laughter.

Now I've been holding my tongue on the P.K. Subban issue, but I'll take this opportunity to talk about it (sorry, Panger). The furor around P.K. Subban isn't going to go away. First, because P.K. Subban is a very, very good player, and second, because Subban is a completely different breed of hockey personality. He's flashy and arrogant in a way few are, and it doesn't help his cause that he's black. Other hockey players play with swagger too, but when P.K. Subban sports that swagger, it's hip hop. As a result, it's hard to put Subban's blackness aside-- it's a major element of his playing style. Worse, it's hard not to consider the role that plays when people talk about how he needs to earn respect.

Subban's blackness will continue to be an issue in the same way that Ray Emery's was. These are black athletes with hip hop swagger in hockey; they stand out like a sore thumb. Worse, they're stars in Canadian markets, where the coverage is vast, and, frankly, most hockey fans and media guys aren't really sure how much they're allowed to notice what's so plainly evident.

But worst of all, they're both jerks. It's hard to point that out without being labelled a racist. There was a brilliant episode of 30 rock on this once.

Anyway, as a result, coverage of Subban has become very, very sensitive. (Crap like this doesn't help). Nobody wants to be the racist. As Greg Wyshynskhi pointed out:

[This incident] does speak to some hypersensitivity in coverage in Subban, who is quickly becoming one of the most prominent black players in the NHL.

For example, CBC analyst Glenn Healy's words were scrutinized in the Globe & Mail after he said Subban was having "none of this monkey business" during a scrum. Columnist Bruce Dowbriggin wrote: "the incident illustrates the new sensitivities of modern broadcast etiquette in Canada’s multiracial culture."

Very true. But the Panger incident is different. He didn't break some sort of modern etiquette rule; he just had an Elmer Fudd moment. Later in the show, the panel briefly addressed the issue. Panger: "I feel terrible. I've got a knot in my stomach; it was an honest mistake, and I mixed up my words, obviously." Darren Pang is no racist. Heck, he's the star of the Urban Dictionary. Urban! But seriously, he's no more a racist than Ron Maclean is the grand marshall of Mardi Gras.

Edit: For a different take on this, check out Angie Lewis at All We Do is Puck, who takes issue with the things Pang said leading up to the gaffe:

Well, notice how Pang, and of course everybody else comments on Subban's behavior, need of "settling him down." The same conversation has happened with Russian Alex Ovechkin's personality and party-boyish ways. While it is understandable in the case of Subban in a community where everyone else doesn't act the way he does that he should be mindful of this for the betterment of his team, it is still troublesome that he has to do so.

This all goes under this concept of "conformity"... the idea that the right, proper way to do everything is to assimilate by conforming to the Anglo-Canadian style of play, attitude, training, etc. And this concept appears in many forms in our daily lives, and it is hard to detect by others on the outside because of the idea of privilege... unfortunately, this is All We Do Is Puck and not sociology class, so I won't explain all of it here, but it is something to be aware of.

There's definitely something to this, though I don't entirely agree with Lewis. To my mind, conformity is a team sports convention. I don't like it (it's partly why weirdly adorable Kyle Wellwood is playing in Russia and, as Lewis points out, it's certainly caused Alex Ovechkin undue grief), but it's not solely racial. Conformity attacks difference of all sorts.

That said, I've spoken to Angie Lewis on Twitter, and we both agree that no one seems quite sure what to do with P.K. Subban, and where his personality and his blackness intersect. This won't be the last we hear of this issue.

The Atlanta Thrashers and Black Players: A Follow-Up

This photo is here because its colours incidentally match our header--not because Johnny Oduya is in it.

A month ago, I wrote an article discussing the Atlanta Thrashers' acquisition of black players over the past year and a half. I argued that, not only had they built a roster with the largest percentage of black players in the NHL, but they had done so intentionally, with marketing in mind. Needless to say, it was a contentious thesis, and I got some heat.

I expected heat. Race is a topic that makes people oversensitive, accusatory, defensive, unreasonable, and blind, among other adjectives. Many people don't engage it near enough to talk about it reasonably. For example: people don't understand that perfect equality is a little harder to accomplish when one group is trying to claw its way up from years of oppression and the other is reluctantly ceding ground when it wants to. People don't realize that active, blatant racism--segregation, racial epithets, full-on hatred--is still very much alive in some parts of North America, because they don't live there. Some people don't even understand how the racial lines are drawn. Commenters told me the Thrashers' black players aren't even black--they're half-black. "Unfortunately, they have white moms," one said. Please. Good luck telling that to the doorman at a segregated nightclub. I'm only half-black. Why can't I go halfway in?

Furthermore, far too many conversations about race end with one person being labeled a racist. People are so afraid of this dangerous accusation that they avoid the subject altogether. Previous attempts to point out the Thrashers' strategy fizzled in silly accusations of racism simply for noticing, because that's unfortunately how racism works now. Color blindness is the recommended policy, and while it's not a good one (ignorance is never the cure), those who don't adhere to it are often run out of town for seemingly adhering to its presumed opposite: super duper racism to the max. It's a false dichotomy. Is it really so difficult to notice, and then not hate?

Apparently, yes. As such, race is a thorny issue. The Thrashers' story is fascinating and engaging, but it's difficult to discuss without using conversation-ending buzzwords like "exploit," as Thrashers GM Rick Dudley did in denying everything. I felt that mainstream writers and hockey people would have a hard time even broaching the subject unless they were responding to somebody that had already made the necessary explicit claims. Then you're just reacting, not noticing. If it sounds stupid, that's because it is. But consider the title of Jeff Klein's article: Thrashers Don't See Race, Just Opportunity. How did they see opportunity if they didn't see race? The line the race conversation forces people to toe is not only ridiculous, it's outside the realm of common sense.

Sidenote: Klein called us "the blogosphere," but don't feel bad we didn't get named. Feel bad for the other bloggers who thought they were part of the blogosphere. Sorry, guys, it's only us now.

This is the way the Thrashers have to play it. I never claimed that they were getting black players without considering their talent or their fit in the lineup. That would be "ludicrous," another word Dudley used. But, if a player happens to be black, and they just happened to acquire him, and this just happens to happen more frequently than at any other time in the history of the NHL in one of the blackest cities in America and the soulless marketing department just happens to notice, well, that's just happenstance. No racism here. Just a happy coincidence. Right? The nature and prevalence of the colour blindness argument forces the Thrashers to feign ignorance at the same time they're so conveniently savvy to start advertising on urban radio stations and magazines. Are you going to tell me the Thrashers just found out about their Atlantan African-American media? No, they knew about it beforehand, and they also knew they didn't have the personnel to utilize that stream of marketing. Incidentally, they acquired 20% of the black players in the NHL.

I don't mind Dudley's refutation. More than anything, it's unfortunate that what he said was what he had to say. I got heat and I'm nobody. Imagine the heat he'd get. The Thrashers would be finished if somebody inside their camp were to admit that, as seems apparent to me, this plan was hatched shortly after they realized they were going to draft Evander Kane. Their social awareness would be misconstrued as racial "exploitation" at a time when colour blindness is policy, and suddenly, they'd be alienated by the very community they're trying so hard to reach. Rick Dudley did the right thing in denying everything.

But forgive me if I think he just winked.


Other notes: you should really be following us on Twitter; and thanks to Puck Daddy for actually naming us in his piece on the subject.

Why Are the Atlanta Thrashers Actively Acquiring Black Players?

"I think we're going to try to stick with more Western Canadian kids [...]" -- Canucks GM Mike Gillis

In July of 2009, the Atlanta Thrashers signed prospect Anthony Stewart, formerly of the Florida Panthers. In the 2009 entry draft, they selected center Evander Kane fourth overall. In a trade deadline swap, they acquired Johnny Oduya, among other pieces, from the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Ilya Kovalchuk. This past summer, they picked Sweden's Sebastien Owuya in the sixth round of the 2010 entry draft, acquired Dustin Byfuglien and Akim Aliu in a 9-player trade with Chicago, and signed Nigel Dawes to a two-way deal just prior to the beginning of training camp. Why are these moves significant? All of these players are black.

That's seven black players (six if you discount Owuya, who has not yet signed an NHL deal) that the Thrashers have acquired in just over a year, in a league that only has about 30 active black players. To put it another way: in the last fourteen months, the Atlanta Thrashers have acquired 20% of the black players in the NHL. On purpose. Considering the sensitivity around racial discourse in North America, one might be hard-pressed to find any member of the Thrashers' organization foolish enough to admit that they are intentionally acquiring black players, but this is a conspicuous trend. Considering that active acquisition of visible minorities is an unprecedented organizational mandate in the hockey world (both for political reasons and the availability of such players), a discussion of Atlanta's seemingly race-conscious roster-building is warranted. There are two major questions that need to be answered. First: why are they doing it? Second: is it an acceptable practice? In this article I will explain the uniquely African-American market in Atlanta, and why the Thrashers' strategy is a good one.