Das Boo

It's an occasional custom in hockey for fans to boo a hated player whenever he touches the puck. There are numerous reasons why this can happen. Usually it's because the target has committed some sort of dirty play against a member of the home team.

But often, the booing has a mob-mentality to it that waters down its meaning. Years ago, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin was suspended for throwing a stock into the stands. Later, Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson broke his stick mid-play, and jokingly mimed throwing it into the stands. Leaf fans took offense, and gave Alfredsson the booing treatment for years to come. For one thing, the original act wasn't really offensive. But also, hockey is a sport where grave injustices are often left to stand, and booing is the only recourse for fans. It's depressing to think that the punishment given to an unstable cheap-shot artist is the same one given to a guy who did a mildly insulting joke.

Even more unfair is when the crowd turns on a member of the home team. One of the most embarrassing experiences I've had as a sports fan was when the Leafs "fans" decided veteran defenceman Larry Murphy was so personally responsible for the team's woes that they began going him everytime he touched the puck. It was one of the great justices of the game that he was traded to Detroit just in time to win a couple of Stanley Cups.

And this week, the Leaf faithful extended the booing treatment to Nashville's star defenceman PK Subban. Of course, that was a little awkward, booing a guy who's not known for dirty play, and happens to be the only black guy on the ice. To be fair, there's never been a clear, irrefutable explanation for why many people don't like Subban. He may be a different race than most hockey players, but he also differs in other ways: he's a very outgoing individual in a sport that usually values people who fit in. In the past, I've argued that is actually an interaction between the two causes: people cast an especially critical eye towards him because he's of a different race.

So was there an element of racism in the fans' booing? We can't say definitively, so instead, I'd like to look at a different question, which may also say some disturbing things about the sport's culture. I may think there is a racial component to the hockey culture's treatment of Subban, but for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say this is nothing to do with race. That still leaves the question: why do so many people in hockey hate PK Subban?

Like I said, he's not known for dirty play. He also seems quite friendly in interviews, and is famous for being very charitable. So the only way left to explain it is his personality. Or more specifically, we're talking about the way he expresses it. The hockey world is okay with players like Brent Burns, who are eccentric in ways that fit the hockey culture better, with beards and good-natured oafishness. But charismatic fashionistas are not welcome.

This could be a problem for the sport in the future. For all its dominance in Canada, you can see that the powers that be in hockey are worried, given how many ad campaigns are trying to encourage kids and their patents to get into the sport.

If Subban's treatment is racist, that's bad news for these recruitment drives. We're talking about a sport that's hugely white, in a country that's becoming less so. It's clear that hockey's long-term health requires getting more diverse. But if Subban's treatment is not racist, that may be less bad morally, but it would actually be worse for the sport. If kids don't perceive the rejection as being about colour, they'll see it as being about personality. The lesson will be that if you want to be your own person, then you're not welcome here. To generations that will grow up with more and more avenues of self expression, we'll be selling a sport where your individuality may only be expressed through degrees of aggression.