On sexual assault, toxic hockey culture, and the 2003 Canadian World Junior Team

Posted On July 26, 2022

Munich, Germany I remember the 2002-03 World Juniors very well because, at that time, I was living through the most devastating moment of my young life. I was in the process of being groomed like a sacrificial lamb (roast) to be served to my very own up-and-coming hockey star. I would, in fact, lose my virginity to that hockey player while the 2003 World Juniors played out in the background like an ominous and inescapable reminder that I had stumbled into a much darker corner of the sport I loved so much.

I will tell you right now that I wasn’t assaulted. The act itself was the least horrifying part of the whole ordeal. It was everything that happened leading up to and leading away from that event that shook me to my core, and still manages to disturb me nearly twenty years later. It was the way my own “friends” pressured me to get closer to him, only to discard me once it became clear that he was finished with me. It was what he did after me, how he moved onto the next ones, what he did to the next ones, and how he humiliated them with the help of his teammates. In a selfish way, what disturbed me the most was not what he actually did with those teammates, but rather it was simply the fact that now my fears had been confirmed; now I knew for sure that he was one of the “bad ones” who did those kinds of things to women. This revelation meant that my involvement with him would always be clouded by embarrassment, and that I would never be able to look back on what should have been a meaningful moment in my life with any sort of fondness.

Incidences like those that have recently come to light regarding both the 2003 and 2018 Canadian World Junior Teams are certainly not new. Rumours of gang assaults and sexual humiliation were rampant back in 2003, but the toxic culture of Canadian hockey meant that none of us – even the women on the receiving end of the abuse – seemed to regard it as the criminal behaviour that it was. There was (is) a sickness in hockey that promoted sexual assault as the reward young men deserved for being somewhat good at a sport with a potential (only potential) future NHL career. With the gift of hindsight, it’s crazy to think that incidences like these were often silenced and covered up for the betterment of the careers of certain hockey players who didn’t actually amount to very much in the end. The women, however, have likely gone through their lives totally traumatized, unsure about their own self-worth, and taking a much longer time to develop functioning relationships with men.

The women in the underworld of hockey were viewed by both outsiders (the fans, the management, the league) and each other as the real villains in these scenarios. For the outsiders, it was believed that these women got what they deserved; that they should have made better judgment calls, or that if they had any sort of self-respect, then they wouldn’t act like puck bunnies; throwing themselves at “horny young men.” The women – young, naïve, and desperate to find meaning – often shared these sentiments; believing that there was a hierarchy among so-called “puck bunnies,” and that the “bad ones” were the ones who got passed around the arena parking lot after hours. The “good ones” were the ones rewarded with “one-on-one action.” This is why it was so unlikely anyone would speak out after surviving an incident like those from the 2003 and 2018 investigations. The feelings of guilt and humiliation are too much to bear; especially when hockey is your entire life, and thousands of adoring fans are cheering him on every night. Back then, you just knew that no matter how horrible the assault was, he will continue to be treated like a demigod, and you will be seen as nothing more than a drunken mistake trying to bring him down and darken his career.

Especially in Canada, hockey players have been promoted for too long as kings among men, and the widespread acceptance of this belief contributes to the problem. It’s important to remember, though, that very often these so-called “puck bunnies” emerge from quite innocent origins. Quite simply, they love hockey, and that love of hockey brings them to the rink, and in some cases, crashes them into the secret world of hockey players. In a way, dating a hockey player is a fantasy, but the fantasy is in the possibility of romance and closeness and free hockey tickets. No one is fantasizing about being raped by half a dozen hockey players while passed out face down on a pool table.

In my case, I didn’t want to let one “bad apple” ruin that fantasy for me. I wanted to believe that not all hockey players were like him and the other pigs I often heard graphic stories about. If I’m being honest, though, there was a part of me that knew – even back in 2003 – that the “good” hockey players were few and far between. And I’m being generous there. Technically, I’ve never met a good one. In fact, losing my virginity to a “bad one” drove me quickly into the arms of a member of the Team Canada roster. Even after he turned out to also be predictably toxic, I still didn’t give up on hockey players until well into my twenties.

These 2003 and 2018 allegations are truly horrific, but from my standpoint the one positive to come out of all of this is that the public finally seems ready to believe the women and break the silence. I spent a significant portion of my youth trying to address these issues through my writing and via my website PsychoLadyHockey.com, but I was too afraid of the backlash to go deep enough to really do this topic the justice it deserved. However, after I published Good Trash: vol. 1 in 2020, I stopped being afraid of the truth. You can read more about this topic and my personal stories in the underworld of hockey in my upcoming book, Memoirs of a Puck Bunny (the prequel in the Good Trash series).

Stay tuned.