A few Saturdays ago I was at the Air Canada Centre to see the Leafs play the Canadiens. It was my first time to the ACC for hockey game, my only other visit coming in 2001 to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, a memorable show and the only time in the seven I’ve seen Neil Young perform that he played Down By the River, which has been proven by NASA scientists and Harvard academics alike to be the greatest song ever. But what a dichotomy of crowds in my two visits to the arena. One was an evening filled with a solid team effort and a celebration of Canadiana, and the other was a hockey game. Though I have witnessed the booing of the Montreal Canadiens in rival arenas throughout the NHL on television, with a special amount of vitriol coming from the ticket holders in Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto, I had never witnessed it first hand. I came prepared, wearing my Larry Robinson vintage Canadiens jersey, and I fully expected a playful boo or an occasion of drunken derision. But what surprised me, what offended and saddened me, was the unparalleled level of hatred the home crowd had for Canadiens defenseman P.K. Subban. I had seen it on game broadcasts, but in order to fully appreciate the level of animus that the opposition has towards Pernell Karl Subban you really have to be there. It’s more than playful chiding of a respected opponent. More than an attempt to throw a valued foe off his game. What it is, and having seen it first hand I am convinced, that it is pure unadulterated hatred. And it’s because P.K. Subban is an African-Canadian.

I have wronged a good woman or three, so I know the difference between anger and hatred. I have seen it up close, and it is a tangible and violent emotion born of a fierce rage. But to have seen the manner in which the ACC faithful booed Subban, to have seen it from those in Philly and Boston and New York on television, the hopeful peacenik in me tried to resolve the spite and hostility as simply a part of pro sports. Subban, admittedly, plays with an edge. He has what the hockey community like to call “sandpaper”. But while those in the NHL of Subban’s ilk, those who get under the skins of their opponents with their combination of talent, wit, and lip, are often celebrated as players with “character”, Subban is almost universally derided by fans, media, management, and players. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why that is, except to argue that the NHL and the culture of hockey is one that fosters and accepts racism.

I’ll admit that I am biased in that I am a Montreal Canadiens fan. My winters are spent living vicariously through the Habs, and my springs rise and fall on their successes and failures. And I really like Subban. He has a personality, something I have argued in the past that the NHL notably lacks, and often eschews in favour of cliché and a culture that toes the company line. To attribute this double standard to racism may seem simple, perhaps in and of its self inherently racist, but consider the following non-scientific study. I took 10 players from a recent Bleacher Report article on the most hated NHL players since 2000, and I googled their names in quotations and the word hate. I tried to vary the players in terms of age, conference, position, market, and ethnicity. Additionally, I’ve noted their average ice time, points, and penalty minutes. Here are the results (as of February 6):

It should be noted Armstrong has been out most of the year, but he still gets a lot of hate. Sean Avery is the clear winner in terms of internet hatred, but he’s a veteran, one the most hated players to have ever laced up a pair of Bauers and insulted another player’s starlet girlfriend, and has been dispatched to Connecticut of the AHL, most likely until his hockey career ends and his fashion career begins. But P.K., in only his second full NHL season, has 276 000 more Google hate-results than his closest competitor, Matt Cooke, who fancies headshots more than an aspiring actor. Trevor Gillies, whose only NHL accomplishment is his moustache, has also been dispatched to the AHL but maintains a hefty web-based hatred.  And even if you double Max Lapierre’s totals to account for bilingualism, he’s still nowhere close to Subban.

What truly surprised me about the survey, which admittedly has the scientific acumen of creationism, was that none of the players even approach Subban’s level of talent or importance to their respective teams. Subban’s average ice time per game is 23 minutes and 35 seconds. The next closest on this list is Cooke at a good 8 minutes less. Though Subban is the only defenseman on the list, the fact remains that hatred at the professional level is typically reserved for 4^th line pluggers and fringe pros, who need to play the role of pest in order to maintain a roster spot. Arguably, Marchand is the only other player on this list whose team value approaches Subban’s, and it’s interesting that he has been Subban’s foe since their junior days, but with a substantially smaller hate-base.

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