The Stanley Cup finals will begin this Saturday, with the Florida Panthers taking on the Vegas Golden Knights. We’ve come a long way from the six original NHL teams. One thing remains, however, and that is the sense that masculinity demands both physical prowess and gentlemanly conduct.
Those lessons are widely scorned today, and hockey might seem an odd place to look for them. Prowess we’ll concede. Topend Sports calls hockey the most demanding sport after boxing, and viewers with only a glancing knowledge of the game might think it little more than a series of fistfights. But masculinity requires something more than physical toughness. There’s also a need, derived from the traditions of chivalry, for a sense of things not done, of advantages to be shunned and of magnanimity in victory. (READ MORE: Glimmers of Anti-Woke Sanity in the World of Hockey)
Our sense of what masculinity demands of us, including the willingness to protect the weak, is never entirely lost.
The sense of restraint can make gentlemen out of hockey players, even with all the fights in the game. When skaters armed with sticks cross-check each other at 20 miles an hour, or slam another player into the boards, they’ll get their blood up. It’s a game that elicits violence, unlike football, where the physical encounters are momentary and end immediately when the play is over. In hockey, by contrast, the players crash into each other and go on playing. What brings an element of nobility to the contest is the way in which, without formal rules, the violence has been ritualized.
Hockey’s code of conduct is policed by its “enforcers,” the players who fight each other. What might look like a random brawl takes place within a set of rules of things not done, and which call for retribution if done. You pick on your own size. The heavyweights don’t attack the middleweights. A goalie is too well padded to fight, and those who attack him will immediately be attacked.
Before a fight begins, there is usually an express challenge. “You wanna go,” they’ll ask? The two players will drop their gloves at the same time, since the “instigators” who start a fight are penalized with an extra penalty. They’ll also doff their helmets, to protect the other player from a hand injury that could prevent him from playing. When one of the fighters drops to his knees, the round ends, and they’ll permit the referees to separate them.
Most importantly, you don’t attack the exceptionally skilled players, the Wayne Gretzkys and Sidney Crosbys, who are too valuable to risk an injury. That’s where the enforcers come in. Without a Dave Semenko to serve as his bodyguard, Wayne Gretzky would have had a much shorter NHL career. As it was, Crosby lost a season and a half in the NHL due to concussions and needed a set of enforcers. Take away the enforcers and the game would be more, not less, violent.
Hockey’s tradition of sportsmanship teaches us that the opposing player is not an enemy. He’s to be treated with dignity because of what we owe him and what we owe ourselves as gentlemen. And when a series is over, the players will line up and shake each other’s hand, a North American sports tradition seen only in hockey.
The idea of gentlemanly behavior is widely mocked today, but vestiges of it remain, in our distaste for the person who demands more than his due. He is the vain, strutting person who is guilty of the Greek vice of pleonexia. We’ve also been taught that fistfights are an example of toxic masculinity. But our sense of what masculinity demands of us, including the willingness to protect the weak, is never entirely lost.
Since the gentleman refuses to play dirty, he might be seen as weak, at least as compared to someone less scrupulous. George H. W. Bush tried without success to shed the image of a gentleman. In 1992, we turfed him out in favor of the ungentlemanly Bill Clinton, and then in 2016 we elected a consummate vulgarian. We might have thought we wanted a fighter, but Donald Trump taught us that there is something to be said for gentlemanly behavior. Better than all of them was a Franklin Roosevelt who combined the qualities of a quintessential gentleman with a hockey player’s willingness to mix it up against the boards.
F.H. Buckley is a professor at Scalia Law School and the author of Progressive Conservatism (Encounter, 2022).
Image: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
READ MORE:
The Canceling of Mitchell Miller
There Is No Licking in Hockey, Eh?
Let’s Bankrupt All the Pride Sponsors (With Joy and Conviction)