Popular opinion says that when Montreal Canadiens fans at the Bell centre harassed two Ottawa Senators fans during Friday night’s game, it was wrong. Social media saw comments on how this is typical behaviour for Montreal fans or how Montreal fans were embarrassed on behalf of the Canadiens and their fandom. Less popular topic of […] More »

If you didn’t hear, the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs, a first since 2004. The last time they won the Stanley Cup was in 1967. This is all newsworthy stuff, history made with the youngest team in the playoffs. But it was a look between two women that made the news for days. “DRAMA! […] More »

The hockey world was shocked this summer when three tough guys (one just retired) died unexpectedly, one from an overdose of alcohol and pills and two others by suicide. When Wade Belak, a popular, seemingly happy former Toronto Maple Leaf hanged himself while in Toronto for the taping of CBC’s The Battle of the Blades, […] More »

After the sheer surprise of Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riots had dissipated, Canadian commentators tried to figure out what it all meant. Most beat their usual political drums—months later we’re blaming the pinko anarchists, capitalist pigs, and beer companies for making their products so darn tasty and portable. But this being 2011, many who broke windows […] More »

The National Hockey League playoffs open this week and the abundance of emotion-laden storylines are sure to captivate a significant portion of the the Canadian sporting public’s hearts. But while three Canadian squads—the Vancouver Canucks, the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators—vie for Lord Stanley’s coveted Cup, there’s another, less exciting, story unfolding that probably […] More »

Today in Verbatim, This contributing editor Andrew Wallace interviews Dave Zirin, sports editor of U.S. progressive weekly The Nation and host of Edgeofsports.com, a blog and radio show that examines the collision of politics and sports. He’s the author of several canonical books on that topic, most recently of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, […] More »

Guest blogger Canice Leung recently wrote in this space that Canada’s “national sport,” our beloved ice hockey, has became too elitist, too expensive and too inaccessible to maintain its position near to the top of the Canadian cultural hierarchy. Sparked by a fiery debate on Twitter the day before, her words were thought-provoking and insightful […] More »

I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, home to the most diverse region in all of Canada, perhaps the world, in a Hong Kong immigrant household (caveat: my Man U-loving dad raised me on soccer). I’m intensely proud of that fact. So it ruffles my feathers that, hockey so often precludes all other events — […] More »