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Sociology of Sport Journal, 2015, 32, 248 -265

© 2015 Human Kinetics, Inc.

Sociology of Sport Journal, 2015, 32, 248 -265 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2014-0092 © 2015 Human Kinetics, Inc.

‘If You Don’t Want to Get Hurt, Don’t Play Hockey’: The Uneasy Efforts of Hockey

Injury Prevention in Canada

Stephen Adams University of Ottawa; Bishop’s University

Courtney W. Mason Thompson Rivers University

Michael A. Robidoux University of Ottawa

Ice hockey is known for its speed, skill and aggression. This paper uses an analyses of injuries in boys’ minor leagues and primary documents to examine competing discourses that surround participant safety which give meaning to broader hockey practices. We problematize a prevailing discourse that preserves the physicality of Canadian hockey and an emerging reverse discourse that prioritizes player safety. Theoretically informed by Foucault’s concepts of discourse, knowledge and power relations, we interpret the relationships between these two competing discursive streams which have created a public controversy, particularly concerning body checking, and intensified a polarizing national debate. Ultimately, we argue that these discourses impact the implementation of progressive injury prevention initiatives in minor hockey and youth sport.

Le hockey sur glace est réputé pour être rapide, technique et violent. Cet article utilise une analyse des blessures et documents de ligues mineures masculines afin d’examiner les discours qui circulent à propos de la sécurité des participants et qui sont reliés aux pratiques plus générales du sport. Nous mettons en évidence un discours dominant qui préserve la physicalité du hockey canadien et un discours contraire émergeant qui priorise la sécurité des joueurs. En nous appuyant au niveau

Adams is with the Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society, School of Human Kinetics, Univer- sity of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and also the Psychology Department, Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Mason is with the Tourism Department at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Robidoux is with the Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society, School of Human Kinetics, and also the Indigenous Health Research Group, School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Address author correspondence to Stephen Adams at [email protected].

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théorique sur les concepts foucaldiens de discours, savoir et relations de pouvoir, nous interprétons les relations entre ces deux courants discursifs en compétition qui ont créé une controverse publique, particulièrement en ce qui concerne les mises en échec, et intensifié un débat national polarisé. En bout de ligne, nous avançons que ces discours influencent l’implantation d’initiatives progressistes de prévention des blessures dans le hockey mineur et le sport pour les jeunes.

Ice hockey1 is a sport celebrated for its speed, skill and intense physicality. These qualities, however, also make it a high risk sport where players at all levels experience injuries, most notably head injuries, which scientific evidence suggests is having serious and at times debilitating effects (short and long-term) on players (Caron, Bloom, Johnston, & Sabiston, 2013; Harmon et al., 2013; Johnson, 2011). As a result there are increased efforts by researchers to document the extent to which injuries are occurring in hockey (Emery, Hagel, Decloe, & McKay, 2010; Yard & Comstock, 2006) and understanding the impact they are having on players’ health (Cusimano et al., 2011; Post, Oeur, Hoshizaki, & Gilchrist, 2013). Little of this research focuses specifically on injury prevention. There are even fewer studies that conceptualize injury prevention beyond the ice and examine it within its broader sociocultural contexts. For example, it has been proven repeatedly that body checking is the leading mechanism of injury in youth hockey (Emery et al., 2010; Emery & Meeuwisse, 2006; Macpherson, Rothman, & Howard, 2006), yet efforts to entirely remove body checking from the sport are refuted and deemed impractical if not heretical in some hockey circles2. This is in spite of virtually every nonprofessional or semiprofessional adult league playing nonbody checking hockey due to unnecessary risks of injury. The example of body checking reveals that there is an adequate amount of research telling us how and why players are getting injured, but not enough studies demonstrating why there is such resistance to changing the sport to reduce what is universally understood to be the primary cause of injury.

In this paper, we offer a critical reading of the complexities of youth sport injury prevention by looking at the debates circulating around risk and injury in Canadian ice hockey3. These debates swirl within a conservativist framework that situate physicality and violence to be the essence of Canadian hockey. Any changes to the game that have the potential to diminish a physical and aggressive style of play are seen as a threat against Canada’s national winter pastime (Cormack & Cosgrave, 2013; Gruneau & Whitson, 1993; Robidoux & Trudel, 2006). In contrast, there is growing popularity around the idea that health and safety should be prioritized over hockey traditionalism and that the sport’s governing bodies should be focus- ing on injury prevention initiatives, grassroots programs and mass participation. By drawing on Michel Foucault’s theories of power, knowledge and discourse, as well as his nuanced tools to interpret competing streams of discursive flows, we critically analyze the situated and shifting meanings around Canadian hockey. Here we examine the tensions between cultural conservatism and safety advocacy as trajectories of knowledge that produce their own discourse creating “cleavages in a society that shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings” (Foucault, 1978, p. 96). We argue that this reinforces prevailing hockey discourse and in turn inhibits the development and implementation of effective injury prevention strate- gies in minor boys hockey.

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Theoretical Framework The sport of hockey holds important cultural and symbolic value in Canada, to the point that it serves as a Canadian myth, a creation tale that is constructed as shaping Canada as much Canadians shape it (Gruneau &Whitson, 1993; Jackson, 1994; Kidd & Macfarlane, 1972; Laba, 1992; Robidoux, 2001, 2002). Due to its privileged cultural position, the sport’s evolving regulations are highly contested in Canada. Practices associated with hockey are commonly cited as evidence of a Canadian national identity and any critiques of the sport, or efforts to alter it, are often met with resistance (Adams, 2006; Cormack & Cosgrave, 2013; Gruneau & Whitson, 1993; Lorenz & Osborne, 2006; Robidoux & Trudel, 2006). The issue of safety in hockey is an ongoing, yet intensifying, source of contention for those involved in the sport, whether as organizers, coaches, participants, parents or fans. The debates, along with the emotions fueling them, are generating a complex array of discursive flows. The individuals and groups producing such discourses, often with diverse meanings and objectives, are claiming legitimacy to establish some authoritative position to influence the direction of the sport. These discursive struggles are precisely what Foucault describes in his enduring work The History of Sexuality Vol I. (1978) through his theoretical formulations on the complex relation- ships between knowledge, power and discursive productions. As outlined in detail by many scholars contributing to sport studies (Andrews, 1993; C. L. Cole, 1996; C. L. Cole et al., 2004; Farnell, 2004; Hokowhitu, 2004, 2013; Markula & Pringle, 2006; Shogan, 1998; Sloop, 1997; Mason, 2012), Foucault’s seminal research forward new directions on power relations by thinking beyond Marxist-based or critical discursive arrangements of power, which are possessive and hierarchical. Accordingly, Foucault (1978) argues that power relations are multidirectional and omnipresent, positioning it as a “multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate” (p. 92). Once again distancing himself from Marxist- based approaches, Foucault conceptualized power relations as a productive, rather than solely a repressive, force. Critically, this speaks not only to how individuals and groups negotiate operating power relations in any society, which has been the predominant way that sport scholars often invoke this aspect of Foucault’s produc- tive power, but also to the relationships between acting or competing discursive flows (Markula & Mason, 2013). Equally important here, however, is Foucault’s (1978) conception of resistance, or refusals as he described it, which are situated within force relations rather than in external opposition to some state or organizational entity. From such a theoretical vantage point, it is possible to discern the relations of power at play in prevailing discourses of Canadian hockey and the oppositional forces that through multiple iterations and “ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them” (Foucault, 1978, p. 92).

The notion of reversal is key in that as much as Foucault departs from Marxist and neo-Marxist analyses of power, there remains the possibility for hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces. Foucault (1978) argued that in power relations there is always the possibility of resistance. He stated that “where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (p. 95). Foucault (1980) makes it clear that he is not as interested in end points—state or institutional power—but is mostly concerned with the forces of power and forces that resist them. He finds that:

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One impoverishes the question of power if one poses it solely in terms of leg- islation and constitution, in terms solely of the state and the state apparatus. Power is quite different from and more complicated, dense and pervasive than a set of laws or a state apparatus. (Foucault, 1980, p. 158).

It is the relation of power that changes in that resistance, which is both neces- sary and intrinsic to power, is polyvalent, derived and expressed in a multiplicity of forms. These forms are made evident through discourse, which as Foucault (1978) states is an expression of knowledge and power combined, within the oppositional framework of power. He writes:

Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are. We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (p. 100-101).

Therefore, at any one time, there is a multiplicity of discourses present com- peting for authority and the legitimacy of specific meanings and practices. As a consequence, not all discourse is valued equally or are afforded equal status and, as a result, equal authority (Foucault, 1978). At any point in history, a certain dis- course is prevailing while others are marginalized or excluded. The discourse that is afforded dominant status is the result of power relations and a “whole series of mechanisms operating in different institutions” (Foucault, 1978, p. 33). Certain knowledge is produced and known while simultaneously constraining what is possible to know of other subjects, objects and practices. In this way, individuals face multiple, and often competing discourse that create diverse meanings while informing particular cultural practices (Foucault, 1978).

In referring to the complexity of theorizing resistance or refusals in a sporting or any other cultural context, it is necessary to recognize that disciplinary practices continue to function when there is resistance. Describing this aspect of the resistance in power relationships, Foucault (1978) asserts:

Their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network. (p. 95).

His specific concept of strategic elaboration (1980) demonstrates this point which is integral to interpreting the relationships between competing discursive flows. In contrast to Marxist-based analysis, which often celebrates resistance, in strategic elaboration Foucault concentrates on how resistance produces new corri- dors for the exercise of power (Butchart, 1998; Mason, 2014). In this model, expres- sions of resistance facilitate a shift in the balance of power in processes that can reinforce prevailing discourse. As a result, resistance can encourage the formation of new and strategic currents of disciplinary power and can consequently reinforce prevailing discourse. This analysis recognizes the resistive strategies employed by groups, but also how these points of resistance fit into broader discursive flows

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informing practices that either cause, or prevent, potential injurious situations in minor hockey leagues.

For the purposes of this paper, we seek to understand how discourse, within this oppositional dynamic, shapes and determines the availability of practices and the meanings and understandings ascribed to them. In other words, discourse is carried out through regulated practice or patterned behavior where the meanings associated with these practices are produced, reproduced, transformed and ultimately contested (Foucault, 1978). As stated above, this is not to suggest that a reverse discourse merely runs counter to a dominant one, but through its polyvalent iterations car- ries with it its own authority which demands that its “legitimacy or ‘naturality’ be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was. . . disqualified” (Foucault, 1978, p. 101). How stylistic patterned behavior produces knowledge and related discourse is well-documented in sport and physi- cal activity contexts using a Foucauldian lens (Hokowhitu, 2005; Johns & Johns, 2000; Markula, 2004; Markula & Pringle, 2006; Pringle & Markula, 2005; Pringle & Pringle, 2012; Giles, 2004; Mason, 2014; Shogan, 1998, 2002). However, no studies relate this to ice hockey or to effectively theorize youth injury prevention.

Similar to any discursive field, Canadian minor hockey is constituted by a multiplicity of discourses that give meaning to and inform practices. Although there are multiple acting discourses at any moment in history and it is difficult to isolate any one prevailing discourse, for this paper we identify at least two compet- ing discourses at play in Canadian minor hockey. The prevailing discourse that we focus on is based in Canadian hockey conservatism which celebrates a physically dominant and aggressive style of play. Conversely, the emerging reverse discourse that we selected to examine is about prioritizing participant safety. This point of view argues that, under its current direction, minor hockey is placing Canadian youth at an unnecessarily high risk of injury and the safety of participants must be the priority. As Foucault (1978) asserts, both discourses circulate and gain force through various institutions and are in turn reconstituted by them as they construct, disseminate and reinforce certain knowledge claims over others. For example, pro- fessional hockey (specifically the National Hockey League) and Hockey Canada4 are institutional authorities that benefit and are hindered by these oppositional forces, while simultaneously reproducing discursive flows through league rules and policies. At present, the conservative hockey discourse is often reinforced by Hockey Canada in that as player safety and enjoyment are formally articulated as priorities, the emphasis is still on player development, international dominance and producing a particular type of “Canadian” hockey player (Bernard & Trudel, 2004; Hockey Canada, 2012). The legitimacy of this discourse is contested by medical practitioners, academics and parents who are concerned with youth safety and the perceived dangers of the sport. The circulation of this body of knowledge produces the reverse discourse that is of central importance to this analysis. Although not identified as such, evidence documenting this reverse discourse in hockey has been well-researched by scholars (Cusimano et al., 2011; Emery et al., 2010; King & LeB- lanc, 2006). Ultimately, these competing discourses are embedded in the ongoing public debate concerning safety in Canadian minor hockey. Subsequently, to avoid falling into a dichotomous binary of power relations, but instead to demonstrate their contradictory and complex interplay, these discourses warrant close examina- tion. As Foucault (1978) argued, it is better to understand these discursive flows as

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“tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations” and discover “what reciprocal effects of power and knowledge they ensure…” (p. 101–102). It is with this particular understanding of discursive flows, including the tactical uses, meanings and practices that inform them, that we engage in our analyses of the production of competing discourse on the sport of hockey and problematize their dissemination in Canadian society.

Methods, Methodologies and Context

Before examining the specific discourses at play, it is important to indicate how this paper emerged. It stems from a multiyear injury study involving researchers from our research team at the University of Ottawa. The study had researchers and volunteer research assistants attending league games, observing and documenting game play, and working with training staff to fill in Post-Game Injury Assessments to get more detailed injury information. Over the course of the 2009–2010 season, 25 Minor Peewee AA games were observed (732 athletic exposures5 and 1200 playing minutes). In the 2011–2012 hockey season 62 games were observed; 33 games from Minor Peewee AA (1116 athletic exposures and 1728 playing minutes) and 29 games from Bantam BB (825 athletic exposures and1392 playing minutes). All teams consisted of 12–17 male skating players between the ages of 11–14; no injury data were collected for goalies. All games were 48 min in length.

Over the course of this project and observing firsthand the issues teams and leagues faced in attempting to ensure the safety of participants while gaining competitive advantages over opponents, it was apparent injury prevention must not be solely understood in terms of on ice play. In fact, as more primary sources were analyzed it became apparent how contested injury prevention strategies are embroiled in larger sociohistorical tensions. To further our understanding of the current state of the game, this paper uses primary information to examine the public discourse pertaining to both hockey practices and safety initiatives in Canada. Since the articulation of discourse is often played out through news media, a Google News alert system was set up for recent news articles using any combination of the key words “hockey” + “body checking” + “injury”. Only articles since 2009 were considered. The search yielded 69 articles from the following popular press sources: Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald, The Canadian Press, The Hockey News, Montreal Gazette, Sports Illustrated, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Primary sources from Hockey Canada (31) and USA Hockey (7) were also reviewed. This included all promotional materials for their safety programs, history, mission and mandate, as well as annual reports and press releases. Particularly useful were the meeting minutes from Annual General Meetings and Provincial hockey associations from 2002–2013.

A form of discourse analysis was used to identify the ways that discourse was structured, organized and produced through the collected texts we interpreted. Foucauldian-informed discourse analyses (FIDA) aim to distinguish the discourse operating in a certain area of life and to examine the implications for subjectivity, practice and power relations. This approach recognizes that power relations are embedded in and being produced by prevailing discourse. This also includes how discourse may be refused and transformed in various human interactions. FIDA is

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not hierarchical as it stems from Foucault’s productive and relational conceptions of power. The objective is not to challenge the hegemony of a certain group, but to map how power is used through discourse to produce and define practices in certain fields. Our approach was shaped by the in-depth models provided by sport studies scholars (Barker-Ruchti, 2009; Liao & Markula, 2009).

Conservative Hockey Discourse: Preserving the “Essence” of the Sport

The prevailing discourse informing minor hockey is one based in its historical imaginings (Lorenz & Osborne, 2006; Robidoux, 2002) and maintained through a physically dominant and aggressive style of play at elite and grassroots levels. These discursive formulations of hockey have been critical to the development and popularity of professional hockey in Canada and in the United States, in that intensely physical qualities of the sport are marketed and very much part of the National Hockey League (NHL) brand. The success of the NHL, the leading profes- sional hockey league in the world, produces its own authority and discursive force that influences particular attitudes, behaviors and playing styles in Canadian minor hockey. Listed as an affiliated organization and partner of Hockey Canada, the NHL contributes to the production of conservative hockey discourse and places consid- erable pressure on minor hockey leagues and players to conform to professional demands and expectations (Allain, 2008; Bernard & Trudel, 2004; Kissick, 2007). For example, player selection by coaches, particularly in competitive environments where body checking is permitted, has the tendency to prioritize the attributes of size, strength, toughness and hyper-aggressiveness over other qualities such as skating and shooting. This type of player selection has remained unchanged for decades (Gruneau & Whitson, 1993; Loughead & Leith, 2001; Vaz, 1982). The former characteristics are deemed necessary for players to achieve success at the professional level. This inevitably results in minor hockey players learning to play NHL style hockey (Allain, 2008; Bernard & Trudel, 2004; Kissick, 2007) where the actions of hockey players, such as body checking, illegitimate acts (rule viola- tions), violence, and aggression, produce and reproduce institutionalized behavior; that is learned and are a structural part of a larger system (Weinstein, Smith, & Wiesenthal, 1995). As a consequence, Hockey Canada is being forced to revisit its approaches to player safety. Due to the rash of head injuries in both professional and minor hockey leagues, as well as advancements made in understanding the short and long-term effects of concussions by medical researchers, public pres- sure regarding youth safety is mounting (C. Cole, 2011; Johnson, 2011; Harmon et al., 2013; Tator, 2012). Considering that professional hockey is often viewed as the pinnacle of success in the sport and the close relationship between the NHL and the sport’s governing bodies in Canada, it is unsurprising that, until recently, minor hockey systems followed the standards modeled by professional leagues.

The professionalization and commodification of hockey only partly explain the transmission of the professional hockey value system to the minor leagues. Rather than viewing hockey as a site where competing ideologies are contested or as a cultural terrain where the struggle for meaning between dominant and sub- ordinate groups takes place in the everyday lives of people, hockey is constituted

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by a multiplicity of profound and pervasive discourses that give meaning to and produce hockey practices. The struggle for the authority to shape legitimate hockey knowledge and practices between competing discourses is exercised through power relations. Instead of imposing its ideology from the top-down through class power, the NHL plays a substantial role in the production and diffusion of conservative discourse through its uneven power relations with Hockey Canada. Since discourse circulates through institutions as they produce, disseminate and reinforce their own operating strategies, the NHL benefits from its historical and economic positioning and lays claim to what constitutes players and the sport through the production of prevailing discourse on hockey. Accordingly, the NHL takes part in the formation of conservative discourse through the establishment of a system that legitimizes, disperses and controls knowledge and the threshold of acceptable behavior.

Reverse Discourse: Prioritizing the Safety of Youth Participants

The heightened awareness of athletic health and safety provides a competing discourse as well as different views on the practice and meanings ascribed to sport. Guidelines aimed at minimizing the risk of injury as well as an increase in parental supervision of youth during unstructured physical activity in neighborhood playgrounds, points to a societal shift toward a more cautious cultural landscape when it comes to youth (Ball, 2002; Clements, 2004; Howard et al., 2005). Similar safety concerns have been documented in Canadian community sport organiza- tions, particularly in Canadian minor hockey as parents are becoming increasingly concerned with the significant risk of traumatic brain, neck and spinal injuries of youth participants (Donnelly & Kidd, 2003; Rick Hansen Institute, 2013). Even with the predominant assumptions about the way sports should be played and orga- nized, namely, using a highly competitive professional or pyramid model where opportunities for less talented or smaller participants become fewer as they grow older (Donnelly & Kidd, 2003), academic and medical researchers have argued for an alternative sport model with a greater emphasis on participant safety, par- ticularity in North American minor hockey (Cusimano, Nastis, & Zuccaro, 2013; Emery et al., 2010).

Although the genealogy of any discourse cannot be easily identified, the critique of conservative discourse in hockey can be traced to when recreation (‘house’) leagues were criticized by researchers in the 1970s in Canada for over-emphasizing winning at all costs and focusing excessively on the outcome of games (Donnelly & Kidd, 2003). These critiques led to ‘best practice initiatives’ promoting fair play and positive participation experiences. Meanwhile, because of the decline of minor hockey registration in the late 1970s and early 1980s, its excessive violence and related risk of injury, there was growing concern expressed by hockey practitioners and the general public over safety issues in the sport (Marcotte & Simard, 1993). The levels of violence in hockey perceived by hockey stakeholders as well as the declining participation rates led to a number of studies on the subject (Brust, Leonard, Pheley, & Roberts, 1992; Vaz, 1982). In particular, researcher Edmund Vaz (1982) suggested a reward system (a ‘fair play’ point system where teams are awarded additional points in the standings for fewer penalties) to encourage less

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violent and aggressive behaviors. This paved the way for the implementation of ‘fair play’ leagues in the province of Québec (Marcotte & Simard, 1993; Roberts, Brust, Leonard, & Hebert, 1996). In fact, the ‘fair play’ solution started with parents who were concerned about the state of minor hockey and proactive in advocating for improved safety conditions for youth participants (Marcotte & Simard, 1993).

In the last five years, there is emphasis by the media and academics on player safety due to the increased number of incidents of professional and amateur hockey players receiving season or career ending injuries, particularly those involving con- cussions (The Canadian Press, 2011; C. Cole, 2011; Cusimano et al., 2013). While much public scrutiny of injury in hockey has focused on professional cases, injury in minor hockey is just as problematic (King & LeBlanc, 2006; Yard & Comstock, 2006). This has led to a public debate regarding how to make minor hockey safer for its players while attracting more participants to the game. Some researchers contend that rule changes are the most effective method for injury prevention since they address both cultural and behavioral changes (Cusimano, Nastis, & Zuccaro, 2013). However, rule changes that could potentially curb the distinctive Canadian style of game are difficult to modify because of a host of sociocultural reasons (Robidoux & Trudel, 2006). Despite these constraints, academics, medical practitioners and safety advocates continue to challenge more conservative hockey practices.

While the medical community and sports sciences continue to generate knowledge highlighting the dangers of body checking (Emery et al., 2010; Emery & Meeuwisse, 2006; Macpherson, Rothman, & Howard, 2006) and the effects of concussions (Cusimano et al., 2011; Harmon et al., 2013; Johnson, 2011), it is generally coaches and former players advocating a style of play that emphasizes toughness, intimidation, violence and other values such as hard work, sacrifice and fighting (Bernard & Trudel, 2004; Dowbiggin, 2008) that reinforce prevailing conservative hockey discourse. Coaches in the sport also play a critical role in support of conservative discourse. As Johns and Johns (2000) note, coaches “hold privileged positions in a performance discourse because of their claims to expertise, experience, wisdom and resources” (p. 229). Therefore, in what Foucault (1978) deemed “the system of legitimate knowledge,” coaches’ positions within hockey affords them the title of the expert concerning truth/knowledge claims of what constitutes acceptable Canadian hockey practices.

From a historical standpoint, prioritizing the safety of youth hockey players was once considered a marginalized discourse. However, this discourse should be considered emerging as it is increasingly at the forefront of public debates. Ironi- cally, it is often written and spoken about in the same language in which it was first dismissed (Cusimano et al., 2013). This denotes that the discourse prioritizing youth safety does not simply run counter to the prevailing conservative discourse. On the contrary, after systematic examination of these discourses through media representations and actual on site injuries in minor hockey, it is our opinion that the emergence of the discourse prioritizing youth safety has entrenched the position of the prevailing conservative hockey discourse preventing further progressive change in the sport to prevent injuries. Before the materialization of the reverse discourse and the subsequent public discussions about safety in minor and professional hockey, it was just “the way the sport was played” (Robidoux & Trudel, 2006). Much like Foucault’s (1978) tracing of the explosion of discourses of sexuality in response to the repression of public discussions of sex, with the surfacing of debates about player

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safety comes the simultaneous production of waves of prevailing discourse. This prevailing discourse is buttressed by powerful narratives on national and masculine identities (Robidoux, 2011). As detailed in Foucault’s (1980) strategic elaboration, the response to this reverse discourse on athlete safety was the production of new currents of power that reinforced prevailing discourse on the ways to ‘know’ and ‘play’ ice hockey in Canada.

The rise of this reverse discourse stems from the efforts of informed hockey parents as well as the support of medical and academic institutions that take part in the production and transmission of related knowledge. Although NHL norms and values were once considered the ones that ‘count’ compared with the values and priorities of medical practitioners and health and safety researchers (Gruneau & Whitson, 1993), there has been a shift toward prioritizing participant safety. Evidence of this can be seen in the 2011 and 2013 decisions of North American minor hockey governing bodies to amend their body checking policy based on the knowledge claims of scientific research about safe hockey practices (USA Hockey, 2011ab; Hockey Canada AGM, 2013; Thomson & Clipperton, 2013). Unfortunately, body checking and safety issues seem to arise through ‘crisis management,’ as they respond to public scrutiny following high profile injuries, rather than through a systematic and proactive approach (Donnelly & Kidd, 2003).

At the Crossroads: Hockey Discourse and the Implications for Youth Safety

In attempting to analyze the oppositional discourses that influence youth hockey practices, there is the temptation to locate the source by which these discourses take shape. This is especially evident with the more recent and locatable reverse dis- course that urges hockey reform to reduce the risk of injury and protect participants. Intentionality, however, must not be confused with subjectivity in that Foucault (1978) clearly states, “power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective” (p. 94). The intention of medical practitioners, researchers and/or league officials to implement injury prevention strategies does not imply that the reverse discourse described above stems from specific advocates of hockey safety. Rather, instead the intentions of these advocates reproduce a circulating and self-generating system of meanings that call into question behavioral norms and practices that produce injurious situations for youth participants. In other words, the efforts by the medi- cal community, researchers and other safety advocates are made possible through discourse that is in opposition to the high risk behaviors routinely expressed and legitimized through the intense physical contact hockey enacts. In this paper, we focus on specific resistive strategies articulated by certain elements of advocacy. Yet resistance, as detailed by Foucault’s strategic elaboration, is also sporadic, ambiguous and less consolidated and involuntary.

Take for example the tragic case of 21 year old Don Sanderson who died as a result of a fight in a 2009 Senior Hockey game in Hamilton, Ontario. The public outcry over the incident produced its own discursive and resistive logic that has tremendous oppositional force and transformative potential. In a CBC story covering the incident, the President of Sanderson’s team was quoted as saying, “At the time, it looked like so many other fights that anybody connected with hockey would have

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watched over the last number of years” (CBC Sports, 2009). The article goes on to discuss the importance of wearing helmets properly so that incidents like this will not happen again. The fact that the player died as a result of a fight on the ice is not interrogated, but rather equipment modification or rules to prevent players from taking off their helmets during a fight are. The article highlights the need to protect players from serious injury yet simultaneously normalizes violent and injurious behaviors, which in this case led to a player dying. The following year, prompted by Sanderson’s death, a CBC investigative journalism program entitled The Fifth Estate aired an episode exposing the “dark side” of fighting in hockey. Host Bob McKeown points to the hypocrisy of the NHL, an organization claiming efforts to reduce brain injury by eliminating shots to the head, yet continues to allow fighting in the sport. According to McKeown, what hockey ‘insiders’ apparently all agree on is that “hockey, and the violence in it, is governed by an unwritten law that makes the sport far safer. They call it the code. And you are about to meet some of the men that for better or worse have lived by it” (McKeown, 2010). It then quickly shifts to a series of brutal hockey fights that display the unnecessary violence of the sport, yet are insidiously celebratory knowing that the CBC profits from them through their weekly airing of Hockey Night in Canada, which “has been a cash cow that helped float many of CBC’s other news and original programming endeavours, with some estimating it was worth $200 million, and up to half of the TV network’s advertising revenue” (Mudhar, 2013).

The intense response to the Sanderson incident has generated discursive flows that fuel the controversy of player safety and the obligations of governing bodies to respond accordingly. As the self-proclaimed ‘national guardian’ of the game, Hockey Canada has positioned itself as the gate-keeper of legitimate hockey practices (Hockey Canada, 2012). In doing so, Hockey Canada faces the difficult task of managing the sport in light of these competing discourses. The most recent step it has taken to prioritize player safety is the removal of body checking from the Peewee level (ages 11–12). This reveals the impacts these discursive flows are having. Although earlier changes to body checking policy have been made to main- tain conservative hockey practices, such as lowering the age when body checking is introduced (Maguire, 1996; Robidoux & Trudel, 2006), the sport’s provincial governing bodies, such as Hockey Québec, Hockey Alberta, and Hockey Nova Scotia, have all made the step to delay the introduction of body checking until the Bantam level (ages 13–14) in reaction to public pressure to improve player safety (Hockey Canada AGM, 2013; Thomson, & Clipperton, 2013). In response to pro- vincially led changes and mounting public outcry to protect player safety, Hockey Canada also recently adapted this policy in 2013 (Hockey Canada AGM, 2013; Thomson & Clipperton, 2013). Delaying the introduction of body checking is not a solution in itself; researchers argue that suddenly exposing youth to full contact without mandatory training is also problematic (Emery & Meeuwisse, 2006; USA Hockey, 2011b). However, in addition to training, a graduated introduction to body contact would enable youth to gradually immerse themselves into a physical con- tact environment where they are better prepared to give and receive body checks. Although efforts to introduce some sort of a graduated system are underway, there is nothing in place to date. What is certain at this point is that there has been sig- nificant public backlash to whatever direction Hockey Canada takes. In response

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to the latest changes to delay body checking, the public debate has intensified, so too has the complex interplay between prevailing and reverse discourses.

Caught in the middle of the competing discourses at play are the youth in minor hockey. Since many Canadians care about both mass participation and international hockey supremacy (Moore, 2002), issues surrounding body checking are debated with great passion and emotion. In response to the latest decisions by Hockey Canada and its provincial branches to raise the age level of body checking initiation, some Canadians are infuriated that hockey is being changed and fear that it will lose its more traditional components (CBC News, 2013a). While some have expressed concerns about the debilitating effects these decisions will have on player development, others applaud Hockey Canada and its thirteen member branches for finally responding to safety advocates and public scrutiny (The Globe and Mail, 2013). Canadian hockey parents are also caught in the middle between these competing discourses. The public debate and ambivalence among hockey stakeholders is reflected in the views of local minor hockey parents. Their diverse views on the appropriate age to introduce body checking and whether to preserve hockey integrity at the expense of player safety, demonstrates some of the complexities around competing discourse (CBC News, 2013ab; The Globe and Mail, 2013; Tetley, 2012). For example, some parents take conflicting positions by simultaneously endorsing the physicality of the Canadian game and supporting the conservative hockey discourse while also advocating behavioral and rule changes to body checking to ensure their children’s safety and minimize risk (Thomson & Clipperton, 2013). The legitimacy of certain hockey practices over others and the meanings and understandings ascribed to them are ultimately contested through competing discourse. Since discourse cannot be separated from power (Foucault, 1980), the complex interplay between prevailing (conservative) and emergent (player safety) discourse is the articulation of power and knowledge. These com- peting discursive streams produce knowledge about Canadian hockey and shape what is possible to know about what hockey is and how it should be played. This complicates our understandings of why the reverse discourse, advocating for player safety and rule modification, has difficulty gaining traction, despite the support of medical and health research communities and its obvious value to society (protect- ing children who play the sport).

Conclusion

From its inception, and subsequent merger with the Canadian Hockey Association in 1994, Hockey Canada has struggled with the competing discourses that surround the sport. The recent changes in body checking policy by Hockey Canada (Hockey Canada AGM, 2013; Thomson & Clipperton, 2013) illustrate the direction the organization is currently heading. However, with the intensification of advertising dollars and network interest in amateur international ice hockey, such as World Juniors competitions, it remains to be seen what responses will be taken by Hockey Canada in the high-performance side of the sport and how they will impact player safety in minor hockey. What is fascinating, at least from an academic perspective, is the generation of competing discourses that are influencing Canadian amateur

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hockey practices. What might seem like innocuous efforts to ensure the safety and well being of youth participating in the national winter pastime are, from another discursive framework, situated as an attack on a sport many hold sacred in Canada. Sadly these reactionary perspectives are hindering constructive dialogue between hockey conservatives and sport safety advocates, consequently impeding progres- sive injury prevention strategies. The most recent decision to delay body checking is an example of the tempered efforts by Hockey Canada to improve safety without removing body checking altogether. If hockey officials are determined to keep body checking part of competitive minor hockey for certain age groups, it would seem logical to institute a graduated approach to physical contact, where players learn to engage in degrees of contact before full body contact. In addition to this graduated approach, there should be a national systematic training program where youth are formally taught body checking (how to give and receive) skills. In other words, rather than addressing the issue of youth being suddenly exposed to body checking in a proactive and systematic manner, Hockey Canada has simply delayed it in a response to public pressure to improve player safety.

The challenges Hockey Canada faces in implementing effective injury preven- tion strategies are not unique to this organization, nor are they specific to hockey. In the United States, fierce debate is being produced around the sport of football, which is generating similar discursive flows around the health and safety of its participants. Much of the focus has been on high profile cases of National Football League (NFL) players seeking, and obtaining, compensation for the acute and chronic degenerative brain trauma they are experiencing (Hopkins, 2013; Sports Illustrated, 2013). These high profile cases are raising doubt about the safety of the sport in general, and as a result there has been a marked drop in youth football registration, as parents are increasingly unwilling to register their children for fears that they will be seriously injured (Fainaru & Fainaru-Wada, 2013; Hruby, 2013). Whether it is elite or amateur football, tensions are being evidenced between those wishing to preserve the special place football has in American culture versus those who are calling for reform or abolishment due to safety concerns. It is a parallel debate to that which is taking place in Canada, and at its source is a similarly con- founding question: if it has been clearly established that the intense physical contact of football/hockey is causing serious injury (in particular serious brain trauma), why do these behaviors persist? The analysis of the competing discourses provided here point to a departure from standard epidemiological and biomechanical injury research and urge closer examination of the sociocultural processes at play that are impeding the implementation of injury prevention strategies. At the very least this paper might enter the nexus of discourses circulating about the health and safety of participants engaged in high risk sport.

Notes 1. To be referred to as hockey from this point forward.

2. Don Cherry, on his popular Hockey Night in Canada segment Coach’s Corner, has been quoted as saying “you have good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions... you’re gonna be sorry. You watch and see, you will be sorry” in response to Hockey Canada’s decision to remove body checking from Peewee (ages 11–12) hockey nationwide (Perry, 2013).

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3. There are likely implications and parallels in the United States, but the analysis is Canadian based.

4. The sport’s national governing body in Canada which oversees both male and female grass- roots and elite development streams as well as the administration of the National Team programs.

5. Defined as one player participating in one practice or competition where they are exposed to the possibility of injury (Dick, Agel, & Marshall, 2007) regardless of the amount of playing time.

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