The Cult of Hockey
Hockey might not be a cult, but it utilizes a cult mentality
While documentaries exposing cults including NXIVM, the Branch Davidians at Waco, or the Peoples Temple at Jonestown have gained popularity recently, sinister elements of another organization utilizing the structures, systems, and dynamics of cults have also come to light.
That organization is known as hockey.
Stanley H. Cath, a psychoanalyst, physician, and professor of psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine defined a cult as “a group of people joined together by a common ideological system…” with the expectation they can overcome the limits or bounds they face while forming an us vs. them mentality. This also comes with social pressure from the group to change behaviour.
A common misconception is that cults are always religious groups. While some people refer to hockey as a religion, specifically in Canada, cults are simply groups of people with leaders who push membership to overcome obstacles, with promises of “improvement” or “development” while working against common foes, and a focus on the adherence to the structures and ideas of the group.
When you look at hockey, the connection is obvious.
Hockey may not be a cult itself, but hockey has utilized cult dynamics to develop and control players and to instil hegemonic ideologies and culture. As a growing number of scholars and advocates assert, the culture in hockey is toxic, and often harmful.
All cults have certain things in common, especially how they gain members, indoctrinate them into their systems, maintain control, and impact ideas of self and the identity of members. While there are several variations (like this, or this, and this, or this), eight relatively universal steps and procedures in the formation and control of cults exist, and hockey, specifically Junior hockey at the elite level in Canada, uses each.
Step 1 – Identify the recruit.
In hockey, this occurs through scouting and recruiting processes and tryouts. It can also take the form of pre-draft combines and interviews. Through this, the group discovers which player has the skills, traits, and characteristics to benefit the organization, and support organizational success.
Many people assume that cults target vulnerable people, but that’s not typically the case. Although vulnerable individuals may be easier to manipulate, introduction programs and recruiting practices are simply in place to identify candidates, much like identifying players a team would like to sign or draft. It doesn’t mean they’ll end up in the organization, but this is step one.
Step 2 – Persuade the recruit to enter the fold.
As told by The Conversation “To entice new players, Hockey Canada’s website makes a heartfelt pitch to parents: playing hockey will help their child make new friends, get in shape and build character, among other important skills.”
Here’s the excerpt from the Hockey Canada website:
“Hockey is a fun, family-friendly activity that offers people of all ages an opportunity to make new friends, get physically active, build important skills like hand-eye coordination and strategic thought, and create memories that last a lifetime. Hockey is also a great sport for building character, and it gives those involved the opportunity to learn the value of teamwork, sportsmanship, and personal responsibility. In addition, the National Sports of Canada Act named hockey Canada’s official winter sport, making it a quintessential part of the Canadian identity.“
This is the pitch. From the youngest age, youth in Canada are told that being Canadian means playing hockey, and that hockey is a way to develop identity and a place for self-improvement.
This pitch could mimic the introductory pitch of almost any cult. For example, NXIVM preached “empowerment through overcoming self-chosen adversity.” NXIVM did not focus on the abuse to come, but rather on treating the decision to join, and follow the process “as a way that they’re going to fulfill their dreams.”
For hockey, improvement and the achievement of dreams are a powerful pitch. In a recent study from York University on minor hockey involvement at the ‘AAA’ level in Ontario, however, it was found that Hockey Canada’s claims didn’t align. Hockey involvement and coaching did not lead to positive youth development (fostering personal assets, such as competence, confidence and character). And the odds of making the NHL for any given athlete are as low as 0.0004%, and can cost parents hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a minor hockey and junior career.
But the promise is there.
Even as fans, so many people tie their identity to professional and junior hockey teams in Canada. Scroll through the obituary pages, and alongside mentions of beloved family members, you’ll often see mention of sports teams people loved to follow in Canada and the USA as if this involvement in an imagined community defined their life.
For some hockey players who don’t conform to heteronormative behaviour, staying in hockey and being included actually involves the harm of suppressing and hiding their true identity.
Despite this, hockey teams conduct rigorous recruitment efforts. Team and league websites read like marketing campaigns to lure the best and brightest, the most skilled, boasting of purported benefits. The AJHL’s prospect page states that “a player is joining a fraternity of storied athletes.” The OJHL brands itself “League of Choice” for the supposed opportunities it provides. The OHL states they are “committed to remaining a world leader in the development of players, coaches and officials… while continuing to offer the finest player experience and academic opportunities.”
These promises, which you can almost hear NXIVM’s Keith Raniere saying, aim to convince families to send young athletes away, much like a cult looks to pull people from their current situation with the promise of more.
Step 3 – Selling the system to others, sometimes referred to as dangling the prize.
Every Junior hockey league out there has pages to promote alumni, information on advancement paths, and the hope of scholarships or being drafted or recruited to a higher level. By joining their league, you’ve taken a step in the path to reach professional hockey, a goal unavailable to players elsewhere.
Leagues utilize the testimony of former and current players as a marketing tool, they brand their logos and jerseys, they sell merchandise and publicize games and successes in the hopes of being the best, of winning championships, and of selling their system to the next generation of players.
Step 4 – Love bombing.
Love bombing aims to build self-esteem and a sense of pride and belonging through continued positive feedback, compliments, gifts (eg. team attire and free equipment), promotion on social media, and publicly celebrating the successes of team members.
Think about the recruitment of a player. “You’re going to get powerplay time, you’re going to add the physical element we need, we love the skill you possess.”
When luring a player, teams use these flattering phrases. Next comes the perks – your education will be paid for, you’ll be provided with new sticks, equipment, and free personal training. Here’s a package of t-shirts, sweaters, hats, coats, and tracksuits.
Much like in a romantic relationship, this love bombing is convincing the athlete that this team and league are a “perfect fit” for them, that they’re meant to be there, that they care about them, or in romantic terms that they’re athletic soulmates. We know this isn’t true from the amount of player movement we see in hockey. Players will be replaced, cut, or demoted in junior hockey at any moment to give the team a better chance of winning. When you cease to provide benefits to the group, you are cast out.
This is how love bombing becomes dangerous in any dynamic – romance, cults, sports – because it builds an unrealistic sense of security, and encourages future wrongdoings and mistreatment to be excused in lieu of past affection.
Step 5 – Tough Love.
Here is where the courtship ends in a cult or on a hockey team. It’s where a serious commitment is made, expectations are raised, and because you’ve been treated so well, and sought after so aggressively to this point, you do it.
Players complete off-ice testing and training and are expected to show no quit or weakness. Players will spend long hours on buses, at practice, tournaments, games, volunteering, working out, doing video sessions, and attending team functions, with the expectation to place priority on sport over school, personal relationships, family, or career development. In some cases, these portions of normal development must be completely put on hold until hockey season, or a junior hockey career is over.
This “carrot/stick” portion features actions reinforced by rewarding “good” behaviour and punishing “bad” behaviour.”
For example, sacrificing your body, playing through the pain, no mistakes, standing up for teammates, perfect attendance, and a willingness to place team success over personal, even if that means being a scratch or benched.
This could also include on-ice physical punishment, like “bag skates” after poor performances, and enduring yelling and verbal abuse from coaches.
This tough love portion includes control by organizations, both cult and hockey, over what members eat and drink, exercise regimes and when they sleep. Even though teams are often doing this for athletic benefit, the resulting control is the same.
Initially, for many hockey players, the first step in the tough love phase is hazing rituals. Although banned by Hockey Canada, hazing practices like rookie parties and additional custodial duties for rookies are commonplace.
From packing or carrying hockey bags for older players, picking up pucks after practice or warmup, or mandatory attendance at a rookie party where drugs and alcohol are present, this is an indoctrination and control mechanism.
In more serious examples, like the Tilbury Hawks scandal in 1993, or that of the OHL’s 2002-2003 Sarnia Sting, hazing can often take the form of physical and sexual abuse as a means to gain entry to a group, to assert power and command conformance. Many cults, including psychotherapy-based cults, operate in an identical fashion of humiliating and abusing new members. The Tilbury event led to 135 criminal violations after players were forced to participate in group masturbation, the shaving of pubic hair, and forced drinking.
As a class action lawsuit alleging that junior hockey leagues in Canada “acted in concert in perpetuating a toxic system which condones violent, discriminatory, racist, sexualized, and homophobic conduct, including physical and sexual assault,” describes, these acts at times included sodomizing teammates with brooms, hockey sticks, and food.
Tough love can take the form of assertion of power, abuse, and assault to gain control.
Step 6 – Renouncing loved ones for your surrogate family.
Hockey teams are often referred to as a “family,” describing hockey players as “brothers?”
“I love them like my brothers.” Those were the words of NHLer Zdeno Chara, a former Canadian junior hockey player in the WHL of his former Boston Bruins teammates.
The displacement of a real family for a pretend one, is not always positive.
In the case of former NHL player Akim Aliu, he was ushered in as a beloved young star to the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, who had selected him in the first round, sixth overall in the OHL draft.
Soon after, hazing and initiation into hockey’s culture began. Aliu was bullied to conform, but when he refused to strip naked in a bus bathroom with three other 16-year-olds while the heat was cranked, Aliu became the problem.
In Aliu’s words, “I was with all these people who were supposed to be my brothers, right? That’s what hockey is all about. Brotherhood. Togetherness. Teamwork. And they just stood there. I was surrounded by the types of players I had dreamed of playing with, and I had never felt more alone.”
Separated from his real family and told he was part of a new family, Aliu was abused.
Only 18 games into his rookie season as a 16-year-old, Aliu was soon traded to a team 7-hours away. Junior hockey protects those on the inside and finds ways to force others to conform, or it casts you out.
Not only do coaches and management preach about “brotherhood” and a “hockey family,” but for many hockey players in Junior B, Junior A, and Major Junior, moving away from home is physically required.
Teens are removed from traditional family systems, often from the age of 16 or younger, and are required to move hours away from their family to live with a billet.
Hockey Canada outlines a lengthy list of expectations, and perceived benefits for all parties in this living condition. They have rules for behaviour to remain in the billet system, like any good cult would.
Across OHL team websites, almost all publicize an identical statement about billet families, “It takes special people to open their homes and hearts to our players and we take the utmost care to ensure our players are placed in environments that are conducive to care, understanding and safety.”
Even though players sometimes aren’t safe, and these aren’t their families.
But the illusion of a traditional family support structure is needed to effectively separate the youth from a protective bond. This separation is key in cults.
Many teams get more specific like the Erie Otters who refer to their billet families as a “surrogate parent.” Most teams utilize the promise that “players be treated like any other member of your family.”
If you travel to other leagues in North America, like the NAHL, you can find statements like this, “Billet parents serve as authority figures, role models, and extended family to their assigned players…”
These are impressionable young men in a challenging stage of life who are being asked to leave their family structure while emotionally, physically, and mentally still developing. As one BCHL team put it, “it’s never easy for a young man when he leaves home for the first time.”
Surrogate family systems put pressure on these players to tow the party line (“unwritten rules of conduct that cult members know and are expected to follow and those who do not are subjected to judgment and a type of subtle shunning or marking”).
If it’s a more local team where billeting is not used, team bonding activities or trips can ensure the “recruit is immersed in the cult’s ideology over the course of a few days.” Here, recruits are “physically isolated from friends and family members who might otherwise provide a reality check.” This can also occur at overnight rookie parties.
Unfortunately, when we are in real, or imagined families, it’s nearly impossible to say “I quit,” and there is a mountain of research on why people stay in abusive group structures, including relationships, families…and cults.
Step 7 – Introduction of the core beliefs and control of identity
“Take pride in the jersey.”
“Play to win.”
“Going to battle with each other.”
“Always stand up for your teammate.”
“We never quit, we never give up.”
“You’re representing your team and community.”
Whatever the core belief of a hockey team is, it likely sounds something like one of the above.
Rules mandate conformity, like dress codes to promote solidarity.
At the NHL level, there is no greater example of rules mandating conformity than with Lou Lamoriello. The veteran NHL general manager preaches “professionalism” through conformity on his teams, and in order to get it, he makes players shave any facial hair, and cut their hair sort. The leader, he instantly gains control by stripping players of autonomy and their individuality.
In elite junior hockey, players must sign away their images and likeness to leagues and teams to be used freely for marketing and promotion, further stripping them of control over themselves, and handing their identity to an organization.
According to a study conducted at West Virginia University about junior hockey players, researches found “The power dynamics within intense team environments prioritize conformity and reward individuals best able to embody team dictated cultural ideals (i.e. conformity, self sacrifice, blending in, avoiding causing disturbances, etc.). Individuals seen violating these spoken and/ or unspoken terms can suffer consequences such as being cut, getting traded, losing playing time, or being mistreated by teammates or coaches.”
This study mirrored defining features of cults including “a group of people” with “common ideological systems” who hold “an us vs. them mentality,” and feel “social pressure from the group to change behaviour.”
Hockey utilizes the same methods as cults in demanding conformity and embodying cultural ideals, thereby removing individuality.
Step 8 – Zero tolerance of criticism and the introduction of shame
This is the final step and Akim Aliu is again a perfect example, as are the horrifying stories in a class action lawsuit claiming “widespread and ritualized” hazing and abuse against junior hockey players in Canada, led by former OHL and NHL player Dan Carcillo. If you speak out, you are out. You are no longer an accepted member of hockey’s “brotherhood” or inner circle.
How many times have junior hockey players experienced public shaming of harsh criticism or demeaning comments made by a coach in front of teammates? This type of shame ensures players remain committed to the cause.
In hockey, however, if a coach or player publicly criticises league decisions, culture, or officiating, they are fined or suspended. It’s written into rules, demanding the “us vs. them” boundary be held, and discouraging players to speak out against injustice or abuse.
For hockey players, the decision is clear – conform, support the system, protect the team…or leave.
Junior hockey may not be a cult, but it utilizes a cult mentality.
Teens and youth are vulnerable to these tactics because of the point they’re at in self-discovery and the development of personal identity. According to a study by Columbia University, individuals, such as teens, who are struggling to develop identity, and suffer depression related to identity formation are at particular risk, and the “difficulties with identity formation appeared to have made this group more vulnerable to cult recruitment techniques that offer clear cut identities and prescriptions for living.”
Hockey becomes integral to identity, and the culture of hockey’s toxic off-ice lifestyle has been perpetuated for generations. It gives searching young men a place to belong… until they don’t.
The very idea of sacrificing personal development, even as hockey players, in order to win as a group, is a tactical measure of gaining group control, and it sits at the essence of a hockey system where winning is the definition of success.
In the words of polemicist and linguist Noam Chomsky, sports are “a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements.”
So how do we help athletes and change the sport?
The late Dr. John G. Clark Jr, a former professor of psychiatry at the Harvard University Medical School said that ”before therapy can take place, the patient’s attention has to be gotten, and the patient needs information about the cult group. In that sense, deprogramming has a dignified provenance.”
In other words, junior hockey leagues, Hockey Canada, and the NHL need to be educated, and the off-ice development of players must be fostered with a focus on citizenship, justice, education, and mental and physical health. To enact this change, those unwilling to ensure the holistic safety and psychosocial development of hockey players must be removed from their positions of power.
Thanks in part to the horrific allegations facing Hockey Canada related to gang sexual violence, and due to court proceedings such as the class action lawsuit against the Canadian Hockey League related to abuse, hockey is having a reckoning.
Alongside this reckoning of sexual violence and abuse, is the lesser-discussed issue of exploiting amateur athletes for financial gain. The exploitation of members for monetary benefit is another trademark pattern observed in cults. Hockey players use their bodily capital to make owners, leagues, and sponsors money, without personally benefitting from it with the exception of an elite few.
Leaving cults, and leaving hockey, can be difficult.
In leaving sport, including hockey, the beliefs and systems developed, the dependence of identity on the sport, and the need for continued inclusion in one’s surrogate family can result in prolonged and irrational protection and hegemony of these groups.
Counselling offered to former athletes related to their departure from sport, as outlined by a study conducted by the University of Lethbridge, and the challenges athletes face leaving competitive sport, are very similar to those leaving cults.
Hockey is a beautiful game. As are many of the philosophical ideas that initially attract people to cults - community, growth, improvement, and the opportunity to achieve your dreams. The power used to recruit, initiate, control, indoctrinate, exploit, and expel humans from either institutional category, however, remains dangerous.
After all, hockey is for everyone…and so are cults.
The cult that you speak of is largely limited to AAA and junior hockey. The remaining 98% of hockey playing Canadians who populate the sundry other hockey leagues and levels are not part of that cult. They just like playing hockey.