In this bonus episode, COMMONS producer Jordan Cornish sits down with Jashvina Shah to talk about her book, Game Misconduct: Hockey's Toxic Culture and How to Fix It.
The Hockey Canada scandal has become one of the biggest stories in the country. And now, hockey appears to be in the middle of a reckoning. But this isn’t the first time. There was another moment, just like this one.
Mike Danton was playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the St. Louis Blues. And at the same time, he was trying to hire a hitman to kill his agent, David Frost.
Hockey exacts a heavy toll on many boys and young men — on their minds and their bodies. And then they’re told not to talk about any of it outside the locker room.
The NHL likes to call Willie O’Ree the Jackie Robinson of hockey. And no one can deny how significant it was when he became the first Black player on the ice in an NHL game in 1958. But what the league doesn’t like to talk about is what happened next.
The Coloured Hockey League wasn’t just a sideshow to the main event of white hockey. And the way that league was targeted by the white establishment is reflective of the racism that Black players faced over the next century.
