Here I am, trying to change the culture of the #NHL AND get a written policy protecting women of sexual assault/domestic abuse and these authors continue to use hockey players in their plots. AND then expose its graphic content to actual hockey players which makes it seem okay.
There are 4 books “Ice Breaker,” “Collide,” “Cocky Score,” and, “Unsteady” that recently got my attention.
So, since the authors of these books did not do their research, let me enlighten folks for a moment. I don’t want to her well these ladies “just wrote a story,” that is gaslighting and then deferring responsibility and accountability. That is also saying that what I am doing is not valid. Writing a book and using a hockey player in the way they have in their books, makes it ten times harder to try and change the culture let alone try and get a written policy because no one sees or thinks what they are doing isn’t right. For example, In “Ice Breaker,” women want to read about romance, they want to be swept up so to speak, but what they actually find that all the sex starts to get in the way of the romance as it becomes more and more gratuitous, and THAT is part of the HOCKEY CULTURE! Safe to say I am not happy with this representation and the ideas it gives hockey players, let alone women.
Then of course, “Cocky Score,” which the title ALONE yells HOCKEY CULTURE! the female character is ridiculously shy and quiet; the male character is stoic and overly confident. Why do we think this type of romance novel is STILL okay?
In “Collide,” there was barely any hockey but this was a friends with benefits type romance which, doesn’t send a great message to women and sends the wrong message to men. In the book, “Unsteady,” the spicy scenes were not pleasant, i found myself cringing a lot while reading them and all I could think about was how unpleasant it must have been for that women who was raped by the World’s Junior Team. This comes off as a gentle romance between two people who are floundering in bad relationships and need to find real love- something that hockey culture can relate too, is the fact that the men of the NHL put themselves in “bad relationships” only to think cheating is the way to solve them.

What do these books have to do with the NHL?

These books portray women in a bad light and justify a hockey players actions they take. Now, there is no rape, sexual abuse, or domestic violence in these books, but the fact that they all portray hockey players as hypermasculine and using sexual relationships as a way of saying that is “romantic” is obscene. SEX has NOTHING to do with ROMANCE. We need to STOP having even female characters of novels put into uncomfortable situations and that it’s okay to sexualize women, especially in hockey.

In the NHL, you have women who get sexually harassed either by being a fan or even working in the league, which is highly male-dominated. Did you know that the front office of the NY Rangers, is only 6% female and that there were NO females that were on the draft floor this past June- as for MANY teams in the NHL. And just recently the Seattle Kraken hired Jessica Campbell, as an asst coach which sent social media into a sexism frenzy?

This is another reason why I am fighting to have the National Hockey League ( NHL) to have a policy in place to protect all wives, girlfriends, and staff of NHL teams against these crimes that DO HAPPEN IN THEIR LEAGUE!

Not only am I talking about rape and sexual abuse, but let’s not forget about domestic violence,, which has occurred within the NHL. According to National Domestic Violence Hotline, Over 1 in 3 women (35.6%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

The hockey culture and how they treat women is disgusting! The social aspect of the sport supports issues related to misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Let me also add that there is a HIGH number of hockey players who cheat on their wives/girlfriends by having a second phone with a different number and using trainers/staff to hide it. So when we are ready a “love story” as in the book Unsteady, take it with a grain a salt.
In the book, “Ice Breaker” the question is asked, “She could never like a hockey player, right? ” These books portray a “Steamy Hockey Romance,” but what these authors don’t get is this:

An anonymous quote from a hockey player on how the culture continues because whatever is SAID in the locker room, stays there. ( Same concept as VEGAS)
“There’s stuff that happens in the dressing room, obviously, talking about girls, parties, whatever is the case, that happens in there, that sort of stays in there for the most part. Well, on good teams it stays in there. Whether it’s who you’re hooking up with, if you got sent pictures from some girl, everyone sees them. So it stays in the dressing room and it’s a team builder. It’s not to embarrass people in front of the outside world.”

THIS ONLY GETS WORSE:
This locker room culture in THE NHL encourages and rewards particular performances of masculinity. And players who don’t adhere to implicit and explicit organizational expectations risk being ostracized.

If authors intend to use hockey players as the main characters for their books, can they learn to separate sex from romance and can the women NOT be reduced to mere love interests for the male protagonists and nothing more?