I remember my first time through the red door.
It was inside locker room No. 4, at the far end of the hallway beneath the lobby at Brampton Memorial Gardens. It led to the permanent dressing room of the Brampton Capitals, the local Tier II Junior A team.
The red door was enticing to any young player in the Brampton minor hockey system. Dreams of playing in the NHL, or even the CHL, seemed far away then. The Capitals locker room was more immediate. You could touch it.
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There were tales of carpeted floors, trainers who sharpened your skates and cleaned your jersey, and a room full of sticks. The players lucky enough to walk through the door were often just a few years older than the kids who packed the stands on Thursday nights — but in the hierarchy of adolescence, they seemed like kings.
Brampton Memorial was the kind of arena that held the weight of the game’s history. With trophy cases in the lobby filled with photos of teams that your grandparents might have played on. Beneath arched rafters, a portrait of the Queen hung at one end. Banners won by the Capitals over the years lined the other.
There is a rink just like Brampton Memorial in most towns in Southern Ontario and across Canada. Many of those arenas have their own version of the red door, coloring the dreams of kids and shaping the futures of adolescents.
For many, walking through those doors leads to friendships, popularity and a sense of belonging. For a few, those doors lead to the NHL.
For some, however, those doors lead to something much different — and, sometimes, a wish they’d never been opened in the first place.
The last year — through hockey’s longest and most uncertain season — stories about abusive and toxic behaviour at the game’s highest levels appeared one after the other.
- In November, 2019, stories of bullying by Mike Babcock emerged after he was fired as head coach by the Leafs.
- In the aftermath of Babcock’s firing, Akim Aliu revealed racist comments made by his former coach Bill Peters, who then resigned as the Flames head coach.
- In April, New York Rangers defenceman K’Andre Miller was attacked with racist slurs during a Zoom call with fans.
- In May, the Washington Capitals’ Brendan Leipsic made a series of misogynistic comments in a private chat on Instagram that went public.
- In June, former players Dan Carcillo and Garrett Fraser launched a class-action lawsuit in Toronto that alleged incidents from bullying to physical and sexual abuse in the Canadian Hockey League, the top tier of junior hockey.
Also in June, Eric Guest — a 20-year-old former junior hockey player — went public on Instagram with stories of the hazing, bullying and misogyny he witnessed over three seasons (2016-19) with the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers.
The explosive stories included allegations he was forced by older players to use illicit drugs when he was 16. And in a series of subsequent videos, Guest described a culture rooted in locker room hierarchy. The abuse, Guest says, was condoned by team coaches and management — whom he says turned a blind eye to it.
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Guest’s allegations were shocking, revealing the kind of horrific behaviour that many argued had long been erased from the game.
But Guest wasn’t surprised when his inbox flooded with messages from people who had experienced the same.
“I’ve heard from tons of kids. And not just kids. Adults who back in their day they saw and went through stuff like this,” Guest says. “There’s definitely tons and tons of people who feel the same way.”
As the pandemic-related stoppage pushed our attention away from the ice, we started to heed the calls for change from the highest levels of the game down to its grassroots.
There has been a collective acknowledgment that something fundamental about hockey’s culture allowed these incidents to happen.
But these aren’t the first calls for reform or the first allegations of racism, abuse and bullying. In 2003, John Vanbiesbrouck used racist language as a junior coach and resigned. Aliu endured hazing when he played in the OHL. And David Frost, then a junior coach in Canada, faced multiple charges of sexual exploitation in Ontario, allegations dating from 1995-2001 for which he was later acquitted.
Each headline sparked widespread calls for change.
This time, though, the conversation seemed different. Concerns about the the toxic side of hockey culture have surfaced for years — but never with such volume or force.
On the verge of a new season, hockey’s leading bodies appear to be taking a critical look inward, conceding the need for change. More than any time in the sport’s history, a fundamental shift in the game’s underlying culture seems possible.
“I’m hopeful that some of the situations I went through, no one has to go through again,” Guest says.
But what is different this time around? As a new season in the game begins, is the sport really prepared for change?
I first reached the other side of the red door as a Capitals call-up when I was 15 years old. It was everything I’d heard it would be.
There was, indeed, carpet on the floor and gear hanging in individual stalls, alongside heavy, pressed sweaters with last names stitched across the back. It was exhilarating and intimidating. It felt like I’d entered a man’s world, even though the players on the team were mostly in their late teens. Some kept to themselves, carrying serious looks as they prepped to play. Others were loud, some obnoxious — and the language was adult and vulgar. Pornographic images were stuck to the walls with hockey tape.
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It was a “boys only” clubhouse.
When I returned as a regular player a couple of seasons later, those pictures were gone. But the culture of the room was the same. Loud and rude. Hypersexualized. Hypermasculine. And hyper-White.
I didn’t think much of it then because it was hockey. This was how I’d come to understand the culture of the game I grew up with.
I didn’t know what misogyny was at the time, but it was standard practice. Homophobic phrases were tossed around casually and sometimes aggressively. Insults were common, but usually made in jest. It was a culture of toughness; a culture where you learned to “man up.”
It was intense and serious. Professional, almost, as far as I understood what that meant. Winning was essential — and if you weren’t helping the club toward that end, it was understood that you’d be dealt, potentially to a team far away, which would mean leaving your world behind or the end of your young career. The stakes felt enormous.
But here’s an important thing about the red door: When it was opened for me, I was welcomed in. I never faced bullying or humiliation. I was never the target of hateful comments or slurs. I looked like everyone else. I belonged.
Hockey gave me a lot. In my youth, I counted only the positive experiences. I learned the value of hard work and the importance of being part of a team. It gave me self-confidence and status.
But I was also blind to how my experiences conditioned my understanding of who belonged in the game.
It never occurred to me then that, even in one of Canada’s most diverse cities, I could count on one hand the number of Black teammates or teammates of color from my minor hockey years. Or that every coach I ever had was White.
It never occurred to me that while we slung homophobic slurs, there might have been a gay teammate in the room. (Not to mention just how casually hateful those comments were.)
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While I viewed hockey as being central to my identity, I also implicitly defined the game as being something that belonged to people like me. I failed to understand how those who didn’t look like me or think like me could love the game as I did.
Hockey gave me that, too.
Ryan Munce doesn’t exactly remember when his hatred for the locker room eclipsed his love for the game.
But it was likely sometime in his rookie season with the Sarnia Sting in 2002, when he says he was tormented by teammates and forced to take part in humiliating and abusive rituals, which he and other rookies endured throughout the season. The torment and abuse were so constant that Munce says he battled suicidal thoughts.
He compares the experience to “Lord of the Flies,” the book by William Golding in which a group of boys attempt to govern themselves on a stranded island.
“It was horrendous for us,” Munce says.
Those allegations are part of the proposed class-action lawsuit against the CHL in which Carcillo, his former Sting teammate and a retired NHL player, is one of the lead plaintiffs. Munce is one of several players from that roster who came forward to corroborate the disturbing allegations of abuse.
Those allegations have since been echoed in affidavits by more former Canadian Hockey League players alleging graphic incidents of abuse and humiliation. The claims span from the late 1970s through to 2014.
But these stories read like old chapters in the canon of hockey hazing. Anyone who has played the game at a high level has at least heard versions of the same horrors. Or experienced them.
It’s that culture, adopted by coaches and players alike, that allows these toxic traditions to persist. It’s a culture that, on the surface, prides itself on team dynamics and hard work — but also reinforces a corrosive idea of what it takes to belong and succeed.
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One of the fundamental tenets of the sport’s culture is that players see themselves as distinct from society, says Michael Robidoux, a researcher with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa, who studied the social structures of competitive hockey in his book “Men At Play.”
The idea of exceptionality has roots in the game itself, Robidoux says. You can do things on the ice that you can’t do in the real world. If you’re angry, you can fight. You can shout obscenities and hurl insults. It’s not just allowed; it’s expected. Off the ice, those exceptions apply to the locker room — or, the boys’ club.
And when someone enters the fraternity at a young age, behaviors become engrained.
You are influenced by what you see and what you experience. You’re influenced by your coaches and your teammates.
“Minor hockey becomes an institution that shapes us,” says Tim Skuce, a professor with the faculty of education at Brandon University who has researched how concepts of masculinity are reinforced through hockey. “It’s an ever-narrowing perspective of what it means to be a man.”
In some cases, the way young players are molded is subtle, built on everyday language that reinforces the idea of what kind of person belongs in the club, including the use of homophobic, misogynistic or racist language.
In other cases, it’s overt — with hazing rituals intended to strip victims of their identity and make them subject to locker-room hierarchy.
Although they played in different decades, Munce and Guest both describe similar cultures festering beneath junior hockey’s polished veneer. Both found the enforced hierarchy impossible to break away from. Everything they spent their young lives working for was on the line.
Inside the bubble, Guest felt that there was little he could do.
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“I felt like I was on an island,” he says. “When you’re in that situation, it’s tough to go against all of your teammates and all of your peers.”
Munce played goal with the Sting for three years before spending several years playing minor pro and retiring in 2011. He knew the game was doing more harm to him than good.
“I quit because of the room,” he says. “I couldn’t deal with the room anymore. I loved the game. I hated the room.”
In my earliest years of minor hockey, I attended David Frost’s hockey school in Brampton along with many other minor hockey rep players in the area.
He was the Capitals coach for a short time before I joined the team, too. He was on the bench when I, dreaming of one day playing for the team, used to sit in the stands at Memorial Arena on Thursday nights.
I don’t remember thinking about Sheldon Keefe until I was older.
When I was still in minor hockey, Keefe was one of the top players in the OHL with the Barrie Colts — a talented roster that might have one of the worst reputations in junior hockey history. Many of my teammates looked up to Keefe. I know that some of them knew him through the world of Brampton hockey. I vaguely remember hearing some of the stories of what major junior was like.
But several years later, when allegations of sexual exploitation involving Frost and teenaged girls spilled out in court, I questioned hockey culture for the first time. (Frost was eventually acquitted of the charges.) It was a culture that often dismissed “boys being boys.” One that condoned behaviors that wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere but were allowed because of the privileges that come with earning your place on a team. Implicitly, being part of that team means not questioning it.
The exploitation of that culture has created opportunities for predatory behavior.
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A recent investigative series by The Athletic’s Katie Strang revealed years of alleged sexual abuse of young athletes by a well-known Chicago-area hockey coach, Tom “Chico” Adrahtas. Strang’s reporting led to an investigation of USA Hockey president Jim Smith regarding his handling of the allegations against Adrahtas during his tenure as president of the Amateur Hockey Association of Illinois.
The Adrahtas allegations echoed the story of junior hockey coach Graham James, who was convicted of sexual assault after abusing players on his team.
While these examples of abuse are the horrific exception, each persisted within a culture of unquestioned power and exploited vulnerability.
In the years since his well-publicized experiences in junior hockey, Keefe became a rising star behind the bench at the Junior A level, then in the OHL and AHL. Now as the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he has achieved one of the most notable second acts in the game.
He has built a reputation as a well-respected coach who maintains a team culture that is largely devoid of the behavior that occurred during his playing days.
Keefe, 40, doesn’t believe his experiences with Frost were necessarily indicative of hockey culture at large.
“That’s all a part of who I am and what my life has become, but I don’t associate that with hockey culture,” Keefe says. “I don’t relate it to anything that came as a result of the culture I was a part of within my teams or league, or wherever I was playing. It was independent of all of that.”
But toxic behavior from bullying and hazing to misogyny and homophobia, Keefe says, were certainly present throughout his junior hockey career.
“As you come in as a young player … you figure that’s what it’s like. And then that becomes part of it, and it becomes part of you,” Keefe says. “And that cycle continues. The older players leave and the younger players grow older and that’s what they’ve come to expect.”
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Keefe is certain, however, that there has finally been a shift in the sport.
“All these issues in the world that we’re dealing with right now are reminders that we have so many areas to grow, and so much to continue to learn, and so much progress to make still,” Keefe says. “Yet I do believe, and I know for certain, that the hockey culture has improved greatly.”
Through efforts by Hockey Canada and other governing bodies, Keefe says, fewer players have experienced the kind of toxic culture that existed when he played in the OHL 20 years ago. Now, he says, when players are treated with respect, they pass that expectation on to the next group.
“It’s not perfect, clearly,” he says. “And I don’t know that it ever will be. But we have to work towards that.”
It’s difficult to predict what’s on the other side of hockey’s longest season.
Will calls for a fundamental shift in hockey culture continue? Will they sputter on good intentions but never really bring meaningful change? And can a game as stubborn and steeped in tradition really change course?
The NHL’s return in August after a five-month delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic began with a powerful statement against racism in hockey from the Minnesota Wild’s Matt Dumba, a member of the new Hockey Diversity Alliance, which was formed in the spring by several current and former NHL players with the goal of combating prejudice at all levels of the game.
A few weeks later, the NHL postponed games after players in the playoff bubble requested that the league pause in response to anti-Black violence, as protests swept across North America and other professional leagues halted play.
It was an unprecedented moment in the game’s history.
In early September, the NHL announced a series of initiatives that it hopes will address racism and promote diversity in the sport, including the creation of executive, player and fan committees to focus on improving inclusion within each area.
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Each of those committees met through the fall, sharing ideas for how to make the game more inclusive.
The HDA has since expressed disappointment that the NHL had not agreed to a pledge outlining specific benchmarks that it wants the league to reach and announced that it would continue to operate independent of the league.
Kim Davis — who started her role as the NHL’s executive vice president of social impact, growth initiatives and legislative affairs three years ago — says the past year was emotional for her as both a Black woman and an executive within the NHL. Davis says she didn’t expect to see these conversations develop so quickly, but she is buoyed by the fact that they are happening.
“I think sports plays an important role in society. You know, Nelson Mandela says sports can actually be a catalyst to change the world,” Davis says. “I do think that that’s true. I think the voices of players are an important aspect of that and how they choose to use their voices — and we’ve seen a real shift in our sport around how players are using their voices.”
But while players speak up, Davis says the league has a responsibility to guide the sport at all levels.
“I think the role of the NHL specifically as the North Star of the sport of hockey, is to be a leader and to put a stake in the ground around the things that are going to be important to the future of our sport — and hopefully, the other actors in the sport will follow,” Davis says.
Those efforts have begun, although only recently.
USA Hockey started tracking demographic information of its participants based on race only in 2018. Almost 80 percent of its 561,700 participants identified as White last year.
Hockey Canada has not tracked racial demographics of its 750,000 participant in the past, but plans to begin in the 2021-22 season.
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The governing body for the sport in Canada, which represents players across 13 leagues, including the CHL, has also never specifically tracked incidents of verbal taunts, insults or intimidation based on race.
But the organization is taking steps to develop an incident-tracking system that will allow it to record incidents of racism, bullying and harassment. It will also launch task forces to improve equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as one to focus on issues of gender identity. Hockey Canada also says it will commit to having more diversity on its board.
The CHL says that each of its regional leagues have programs in place to address hazing, abuse, harassment and bullying. It recently launched an independent review panel that includes Sheldon Kennedy, a former player who is now an anti-child abuse advocate, to assess its policies and practices.
Beyond these governing bodies, marginalized voices in the game are starting to be heard. Brock McGillis, the first professional hockey player to come out as gay, has spoken widely about the rampant homophobia and bullying that exists at all levels of the sport. He’s been critical that moves toward change within the NHL and other bodies have been largely superficial.
“Until people admit there are (systemic) problems, it will never shift,” McGillis says.
Even well-intentioned public gestures, like putting rainbow tape on a stick or making a social media post against racism, can create the illusion that issues within the game have been addressed, he says. What must be rooted out are the quiet chuckles at homophobic jokes, the silence in the face of racist rhetoric and the inaction to bullying.
Aliu, who fought against hazing in the OHL in 2005 — back when it seemed like hockey was facing a reckoning — has become a leading voice for more inclusion in hockey as a co-founder of the HDA.
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“Hockey is one of those sports that is ‘Just for White people,’” Aliu says. “You need to have kids from all facets of life … from anywhere in the world to look at that sport and say I can see myself playing that game.”
Aliu’s foundation, Time To Dream, recently developed a minor hockey team made up of entirely Black, Indigenous and other minority groups, and covered the costs for it to play in a tournament in Toronto.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” Aliu says. “But I’m not going to let this moment pass. … This is just the beginning.”
But lasting change will take much more than the efforts of players battling from the outside of hockey’s insular culture.
It will take more than the activism of the Hockey Diversity Alliance. It will take more than Instagram posts from the game’s most famous names.
It will take more than campaigns to show that “Hockey is For Everyone” or to “Change Hockey Culture.”
It will take more than committees and action plans from governing bodies. And more than a season of public acknowledgment that change is needed.
Each is important, well-meaning and impactful. But alone, they are not enough.
We all play a role in constructing hockey culture.
What that culture looks like in the future will be determined by how seriously this moment is taken — or by how quickly it is dismissed — by each of us.
Because in the end, real change only happens when those who have sat comfortably beyond hockey’s locked doors are prepared to understand that we’re the ones who hold the keys.
(Photo illustration: Stu Ohler/The Athletic)
