Men at play : a working understanding of professional hockey in Canada

Players dedicate their lives to the goal of playing professional hockey and teams demand total commitment from their players, giving them complete control over almost all aspects of the players' lives. With the enormous labour turnover in the AHL and the surplus labour pool, players are extremely vulnerable: they must perform well or be replaced by the scores of other men willing to do the same job. With limited education and limited life skills, players seldom meet people who are not connected to the game and, when they do, they do so with trepidation. The constructed universe of the game consumes the players so that, in spite of any wealth they may accumulate, they often know nothing other than the game and have invested everything in an occupation where their services quickly become obsolete. Far from the sensational memoirs of those few players who make it to the top, Robidoux's Men at Play offers a bracing inside look at the dynamics of the fastest game on earth. "After a year spent documenting the working life and daily routines of players for an American Hockey League team, Michael Robidoux found that most peoples' perceptions of hockey players' lives as romantic and glamorized are unrealistic. The majority of professional hockey players work in a closed and discriminatory environment in the lower tiers of hockey on semi-professional teams." "Players dedicate their lives to the goal of playing professional hockey and teams demand total commitment from their players, giving them complete control over almost all aspects of the players' lives. With the labour turnover in the AHL and the surplus labour pool, players are extremely vulnerable. With limited education and limited life skills, players seldom meet people who are not connected to the game and, when they do, they do so with trepidation. The constructed universe of the game consumes the players so that, in spite of any wealth they may accumulate, they often know nothing other than the game and have invested everything in an occupation where their services quickly become obsolete." "Robidoux's Men at Play offers an inside look at the dynamics of the fastest game on earth."--Jacket Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 1 Producing the "Self" in Professional Hockey 6 2 Repression, Incorporation, and Segregation: The Evolution of Sport in Canada 3Z 3 The Meaningful Universe of Professional Hockey: The Ethnography 50 4 The Game 65 5 The Practice on Off-Days 85 6 Entering into the Trade of Professional Hockey oo 7 Homogenizing Men in Professional Hockey x27 8 Power, Play, and Powerlessness 15I Conclusion i88. The closed and discriminatory environment of professional hockey is exposed through an examination of a professional team. Far from the sensational memoirs of those few players who make it to the top, this book offers a bracing inside look at the dynamics of the fastest game on earth.