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Home , Frank Calder, Gary Bettman, Hockey Canada, Joe Hall, NHL Commissioner, Peter Patton

Stephen Hardy, Andrew C. Holman. Hockey: A Global History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018. 600 pp. paper, ISBN 978-0-252-08397-6.

Reviewed by Stephen Smith

Published on H-Diplo (July, 2019)

Commissioned by Seth Ofenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of )

By the end of May, the winter had mostly re‐ Bettman went on to extol hockey as the ceded from the upper third of the North American “greatest spectacle in sports” and the “remark‐ map, if not yet the nation’s appetite for hockey. able” season the NHL had seen on ice. He cited While on ’s east coast the national junior soaring TV ratings, expansion to , exciting championships were wrapping up, fans of the in‐ future ventures into and China, and tech‐ ternational game settled in across the country to nological innovations that will bring player and see whether the plucky national team could grab puck tracking into play as soon as next season. He gold at the International Federation spoke about the prevailing turbulence in women’s World Championships in Slovakia. Of the ice, the hockey, but only in passing. His assertion that the sudden springtime demise of the nation’s wom‐ NHL features “the best pace of play in sports” may en’s professional league continued to reverberate. or may not have been primarily directed at those Meanwhile, at the center of the hockey world, with both doubts and attention defcits. “We have (NHL) the most and fastest action in the shortest period convened a press conference to de‐ of time,” Bettman boasted.[2] liver his annual state-of-the-game address. The Speedy as it is, the NHL has also become in its fact that he was doing so from Boston, and that one hundred years of existence such a mighty (once again) no Canadian-based team would be mass that at times it can seem to displace all other playing for hockey’s most coveted prize, the Stan‐ forms of the game that don’t quite mesh with the ley Cup, isn’t enough anymore to faze the country massive workings of the league’s corporate ma‐ that thinks of hockey as a proprietary natural re‐ chinery. For all the excitement that the league source indivisible from the national soul, never generates with its hockey, despite its many good- mind how far the Cup might wander away from faith eforts to grow and diversify the game, the home. NHL hockey is not—and should never be—the Bettman spent much of his time on the podi‐ only game in town. um lauding the successes of the corporation he Authors Stephen Hardy and Andrew C. Hol‐ guides. “While there are things that are always man don’t command TV cameras the way Gary debatable in our game,” he said, “let’s frst focus Bettman can, and their important new book, on some indisputable facts that detail why the Hockey: A Global History, won’t be broadcast as NHL is in the strongest position in our history.”[1] widely as the commissioner’s messaging. It’s too H-Net Reviews bad: their expansive and very detailed study of mutable verities. It all makes for a brisk and fuid hockey’s evolution, structures, and culture is re‐ narrative, too: on top of everything else, Hardy quired reading, the new standard text when it and Holman unpack an awfully good story. comes to understanding how the sport got from The crux of it all is in the title, three words in. the far-of historical there to where it is today. Referencing Gruneau and Whitson, Hardy and The library of the sport’s literature is an ex‐ Holman acknowledge that Canada and the Cana‐ tensive one, but there’s nothing in it like their dian experience is at the center of any discussion Hockey: A Global History. Hardy is an emeritus of hockey. “The problem,” the former pair wrote professor of kinesiology and history at the Univer‐ in , “arises when Canadi‐ sity of New Hampshire; Holman is a professor of ans’ appreciation for hockey is mistaken for ‘na‐ history at Bridgewater State University in Massa‐ ture’ rather than something that is socially and chusetts. It’s not that the game hasn’t been studied culturally produced” (p. 6). “We try,” note Hardy with serious and scholarly intent before. A stack and Holman, “to move hockey history beyond the of the most interesting and edifying books on the limits of one national bias” (p. 7). Unbounded, game’s rise and development would necessarily they also succeed in their efort to transcend “di‐ include, for example, On The Origin of Hockey mensions beyond nationhood, particularly along (2014) by Carl Gidén, Patrick Houda, and Jean- lines of class, gender, and race” (p. 11). Patrice Martel; Craig Bowlsby’s 1913: The Year They also make a key shift in considering the They Invented The Future of Hockey (2013); and game’s early evolutionary momentum. The em‐ Deceptions and Doublecross: How The NHL Con‐ phasis of much previous historiographical debate quered Hockey (2002), by Morey Holzman and has been fxed on determining hockey’s “birth‐ Joseph Nieforth. place” rather than on discussing migration pat‐ For insight into hockey’s character and cul‐ terns. As Hardy and Holman write, “birth details ture (including its many defciencies and outright would matter little (beyond antiquarian interest) failings) you’d add Hockey Night in Canada: if the game and its followers, players, and promot‐ Sport, Identities, and Cultural Politics (1993), by ers had never grown, if they had never become Richard Gruneau and David Whitson; The Death fruitful and multiplied” (p. 65). of Hockey (1972) by Bruce Kidd and John Macfar‐ If there is a consistent tone to the narrative lane; and the 2018 scholarly anthology, Hockey: here, it’s set early on as the authors remind read‐ Challenging Canada’s Game, edited by Jenny Elli‐ ers (while discouraging any romanticists who son and Jennifer Anderson. As for general histo‐ might have strayed by) that there was never a ries, books like Michael McKinley’s Putting A Roof golden age of hockey, a prelapsarian frozen gar‐ on Winter: Hockey’s Rise from Sport Spectacle den where once the game was purely, innocently (2000) stick close to hockey’s perceived home ice, yet to be spoiled. Hockey, like most human en‐ which is to say Canada and the northeastern Unit‐ deavors, is an imperfect, in-process, not always ed States. No previous single-volume study has entirely progressive afair that its various stake‐ ranged so broadly as Hockey: A Global History holders—players, coaches, owners, members of nor dug so deeply into the details, and I don’t the media, fans—continue to make up as they go know of a precedent, either, for the quality of along. Hardy and Holman’s analysis as they make their And it was ever thus. The game, to start, was way through hockey history, cracking open ortho‐ many games, and they proliferated spontaneously doxies as they go, and briskly reordering many of wherever people picked up sticks to knock balls— what we have come to think of as the game’s im‐ or bungs or, eventually, pucks. They note that the

2 H-Net Reviews frst skates were fashioned, probably, from ani‐ atavism” (p. 136). As elsewhere, Hardy and Hol‐ mal bone, with practical purpose: in northern man are clear-eyed on this serrated subject, not‐ climes, they were developed for travel and trans‐ ing that the idea that hockey’s roughness was, port before they were put to use in fun and game. from early on, seen as legitimate insofar as it Many of the proto-hockeys that were played in the proved and defended the “manliness” of the soci‐ wintry past were, of course, informal, without ety that embraced it (p. 134). Intimidation and vio‐ consistent rules or equipment or chroniclers. That lence have also always played a tactical role, same they went largely unrecorded isn’t so surprising— as the speed and skill. One of the game’s essential as historian Craig Bowlsby has pointed out, two —at times existential—questions has been about hundred years ago, nobody was assiduously an‐ how much of its inherent violence constitutes too notating the history of snowball fghts, either. much. Hockey’s ancestry features strains of hurling If hockey’s second age was a period of coales‐ (Irish-born) and kolf (Dutch) and of the English cence (many games fused more or less into one) games of hurley and ricket. It’s easy to see how it’s and consolidation (fans found, leagues solidifed), related to hockey-like games—your polos and the years 1920 through 1971 saw what Hardy and bandys—that once seemed like they might thrive Holman qualify as a “centrifugal” pattern of de‐ the way hockey has but didn’t—and yet still found velopment. “This process,” they show, “was akin their own narrow niches. to the splintering of a college” (p. 12). Across hock‐ As Hardy and Holman see it—and as they ey’s now worldwide frontier, a bevy of profession‐ demonstrate, persuasively—hockey’s history di‐ al leagues and national federations, amateur or‐ vides into four distinct epochs. Following the ganizations, and colleges developed and defended chaotic early folk era came hockey’s their own fefdoms. This period of divergence saw phase, and it was there, in in the late disagreements over everything from rules to play‐ 1870s and early 1880s, that a pastime truly be‐ ing styles to questions of gender, amateur play, came a sport. “Why Montreal?” the authors ask (p. and violence. 36) and readily answer, citing geographical, de‐ It also laid a foundation for hockey’s fourth mographic, and economic reasons, along with a age, which dawned in 1972 with the seismic Sum‐ healthy supply of indoor rinks and a vibrant uni‐ mit Series. From there on in, we’re in the age of versity, McGill, that became a veritable “hockey what Hardy and Holman term “corporate hockey” laboratory” (p. 37). (p. 377), the era in which the NHL has (for better It was Montreal’s version of the game that and/or worse) expanded, enhanced, and cashed in gradually spread across Canada and beyond on its brand. “After a half-century of diversifca‐ through the late nineteenth century. Hardy and tion,” they write, “… distinctions on and of the ice Holman tab its fow as “a story about the move‐ began to collapse toward a central model” (p. ment of men, goods, and capital”; thanks to “fa‐ 377). miliar historical forces: contingency, individual Throughout, Hardy and Holman trace the im‐ interests, and luck” (p. 64), it captured the coun‐ portant contributions of many early hockey try. And then it kept going. As it went, the game “evangels” (p. 69)—enthusiasts and advocates was “altered and improved, and codifed” (p. 65). who spread the word, organized games, tourna‐ The game that emerged from Montreal was ments, and leagues, and even, as in the case of speedy, skillful, and often very unruly—criminally Thomas Paton in 1888 (p. 73), brought in the frst so, in some cases. Hockey was “a unique construc‐ sticks and pucks with which the game was estab‐ tion that fused science with savagery, art with lished in . Some are familiar, others less

3 H-Net Reviews so. Hardy and Holman disdain the suggestion that that shook Canadian sensibilities so thoroughly James Creighton should be recognized, as he has during and after the 1972 . come to be, as “the father of hockey,” though they Many players cameo all the way, but these don’t deny his importance as an organizing force pages are thickly populated, too, by hockey lead‐ in Montreal. ers, impresarios, and bureaucrats in the order of Hockey’s history abounds with memorable , Tex Rickard, and Bunny characters, of course, many colorful, others hero‐ Ahearne. Not all of them are white males, just ic, some merely controversial. Many of them, most—but that, of course, is hockey. Some relief is along with others who worked without fame or provided by the likes of Kelley Steadman, an fanfare, feature in Hockey, helping to illuminate American player whose journey from upper New the various stages of the game’s development. York state to Russia illuminates the restrictions Arthur Farrell played on several early-era Stanley and realities of modern-day women’s hockey. Cup-winning teams, but his most important con‐ Hockey’s diversity—which is to say, its historical tribution may have come with the book he pub‐ lack thereof—threads through Hockey: A Global lished in 1899, Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter History. “It has long been a white man’s game,” Game, the frst real hockey guidebook, with which they write (p. 14), and while others have studied he helped to describe and further disseminate the the communities that hockey has so consistently sport he loved. marginalized throughout is history, none has Few players dominated the ice the way Fred framed and contextualized those histories as thor‐ “Cyclone” Taylor did in the years before the First oughly. World War: his example illustrates the game’s There is much more, too: discourses on the shift from the predominantly amateur to the cut‐ evolution of skates and sticks and on shifts in tac‐ throat professional in the frst two decades of the tics; discussions of rinks and spectatorship; forays twentieth century. Around that same time, Bad to Russia, Britain, and Finland; considerations of Joe Hall was making headlines playing a highly ef‐ the role of media and the infuence of broadcast‐ fective and breathtakingly brutal brand of hock‐ ing in popularizing the game and how it’s per‐ ey: his story is one that Hardy and Holman use to ceived. Hardy and Holman take careful stock, too, appraise the ins and outs of what, at the time, was of the ways in which storytelling and storytellers sometimes called hockey’s “rowdyism.” have shaped it. As it winds toward its conclusion, Others who feature include the NHL’s frst Hardy and Holman’s chronicle of (to quote their president, , and a little-acknowl‐ phrase) “change and continuity” (p. 476) high‐ edged Mohawk left winger, Buddy Maracle, who lights, among other things, the game’s increasing is now generally recognized as the frst Indige‐ diversity and the role that hockey has played— nous player to skate in the NHL. There are pio‐ and can continue to play—in building communi‐ neers of European hockey, like Peter Patton in ties (p. 478). Britain and the early ace of ’s rinks, Louis What is absent, oddly, from the fnal chapters Magnus, or Charles Hartley, the American-born, is any meaningful discussion of concussions and Canadian-bred dentist who was a force in pre- what disturbing recent breakthroughs in medical First World War German hockey. They touch on science might mean for the game, particularly in tacticians and infuencers like Eddie Jeremiah, the area of head injuries and chronic traumatic Lloyd Percival, and Anatoli Tarasov, the latter a encephalopathy (CTE). The deaths of former play‐ masterful Soviet player, coach, and architect of ers who specialized in punching and being the “collective, creative, winged hockey” (p. 366) punched, and Steve Montador

4 H-Net Reviews and others, have rocked professional hockey over [3]. “Time for Mr. Bettman to stop blindly dis‐ the past decade. The names of researchers like missing efects of concussions,” Citizen, Boston University neuropathologist Dr. Ann McK‐ May 27, 2019, B2. ee now fgure prominently in the conversation of the sport and where it’s going. Meanwhile, as the NHL answers in US courts to a series of lawsuits from former players over the damages they suf‐ fered while playing in the league, commissioner Gary Bettman continues to downplay links be‐ tween CTE and blows to the head. Whether Bettman and the NHL he steers ac‐ knowledge it or not, this is a big deal for hockey at every level, and its absence here is surprising. The same day in May that Bettman addressed the me‐ dia in Boston, Ken Dryden published another searing essay in Canadian newspapers laying out —again—the league’s “willful blindness” on hits to the head.[3] Dryden, a former for the who’s in hockey’s Hall of Fame for what he achieved on the ice, has been outspoken of it. As his 2017 book Game Change makes clear, hockey needs to—and can—adapt in the face of the urgent challenge of this new era. Stephen Smith is a writer in Toronto, a some‐ time contributor to and Canadian Geographic. He’s author of the book Puckstruck: Distracted, Delighted and Distressed by Canada's Hockey Obsession (2014) and steers a blog at puckstruck.com that keeps an eye on hock‐ ey history, literature, and culture.

Notes

[1]. Gary Bettman, “State of the League Ad‐ dress,” May 27, 2019, https://www.nhl.com/video/ 2019-state-of-the-league-address/t-277350912/ c-68311803.

[2]. Ibid.

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Citation: Stephen Smith. Review of Hardy, Stephen; Holman, Andrew C. Hockey: A Global History. H- Diplo, H-Net Reviews. July, 2019.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53878

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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