hi new hollanov fan here! i always love that your fics feel so real when it comes to knowing about hockey things, and your last couple posts about it have been interesting. is there anything else that you could share in terms of trying to make things more grounded? Or avoiding things that aren't real life accurate? xoxo!!
why thank you anon!! yes i have been dying to make a post like this but haven't wanted to sound like a dick. I love all the new fans!! it's great!! and it is very obvious when someone is writing fic and knows nothing about hockey lmfao.
I read a lot of hollanov fic, hockey rpf, hockey romance novels, and I follow the sport itself pretty closely. (Go Caps) So sometimes I read a hollanov fic and get taken out of the fic by an obvious inaccuracy. Which at the end of the day–who cares. It’s fan fic. Do what you want. Lord knows Rachel’s books are full of inaccuracies.
However with the fandom booming, I've been thinking about putting together some info for those new to the sport and are interested in writing slightly more accurate fics. This is not the end-all-be-all and I’m not saying I’m the expert. Who knows, I will probably get something wrong and be corrected in the comments. And, again, who cares do what you want. This is meant to be fun and light, helping out anyone who has fallen in love with hockey and is interested in reading about writing hockey! If you’re like “I don’t care, I write whatever” great, love that for you baby, keep on scrolling. I’m not holding a weapon to your head.
Let’s start with the anatomy of a season. Before the season actually stars, before training camp starts, there’s something people refer to as “informal skates.” Most guys don’t spend the summer in the city where they play, unless they’re a hometown boy or really settled with family. A lot of guys go back home, Europeans go back home for a bit, people go on vacation, etc. They all kind of slowly trickle back to the city they play and start skating together, running some drills, getting back up tp speed before training camp starts.
Training camp will include a large, large group of guys. You’ll have those who are set to be in the team for certain, then your AHL (minor league) players, and some players on professional try-out contracts. Guys that aren’t the staples of the team are fighting for an opening night roster spot. Everyone who doesn’t make it will get sent down to the AHL or released from their PTO. Training camp leads into preseason games. These are essentially just exhibition games to get teams back up to playing at the NHL speed. It’s often an odd combination of players until you lock in the opening night roster.
The NHL season runs from October to April, and then playoffs run April to June. If a team misses the playoffs, they finish their season in April. It's an 80+ game season and not a lot of breaks inbetween. My number one piece of advice for if you’re writing about a stretch of games and want it to feel accurate, just pull up a real NHL team schedule as a touchpoint about who they might be playing, amount of time between games, and if they have to travel. For playoffs, first two rounds are in your division, then you have a conference final, then it’s an East Vs. West final. You wouldn’t have a west coast team playing Ottawa in the first round in 2021.
For games and game days, the team has a “morning skate” in the morning before an evening game. These practices are run by the coach and the coaching staff, not by the team captain. A team can have anywhere from 5-7 coaching staff, and assistant coaches often focus on the power play, penalty kill, defense, goaltending, video, etc. Coaches are running and setting drills, not the captain. Who knows maybe there is a team captain that runs drills, but as far as I know, it's the coaching staff. (I see this come up a lot.) Also I promise they are not getting bag skated every practice. Please erase that from your mind. A morning skate can be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more just depending on the coach.
For Travel, you would technically be show-accurate to say that the team waits inside the airport, but that’s not NHL accurate. ( likely just because of the small budget for the show) Players fly on private team planes and board on the tarmac. They even go through security on the tarmac–something that occasionally pops up in team social media photos. Players fly with those who work for the team–coaches, athletic trainers, equipment managers, social media, broadcast crew. (Piper Shaw of the Seattle Kraken once said that the team invited her to play Mario Kart on the plane with them lol.) Also, while a lot of average players would fly commercial, high paid stars like Ilya and Shane likely charter private planes. Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid aren’t flying with the normies, I don’t think Shane and Ilya are either when they’re established in their career.
Now let’s talk fights. I see this come up a lot in fics. Is fighting in NHL something you can get a penalty for? Yes. Is it that big of a deal? Unless you seriously harm someone, not really. It is a huge part of the culture and honestly, kind of expected. There’s also a difference between some roughing and a proper fight, and there are rules about this. Anyone at any point on the ice can start to rough around with an opposing player–grabbing their jerseys and yanking around a little bit, getting in their faces, shoving at their faces. That’s fine. That happens ten million times a game. You might get a roughing penalty but mostly the refs tell them to knock it off.
In order for a proper fight to happen, both players have to agree to the fight and they both have to drop their gloves. If Player A asks someone for a fight and Player B says no, they don’t drop the gloves. Heat of the moment stuff happens all the time, especially if an opposing player injures your teammate, but gloves typically don’t get dropped for a Proper Fight unless they have agreed to it. And when that happens, yeah they’ll get a penalty, maybe a game misconduct, but as long as no one gets seriously injured, it’s not an issue. A player wouldn’t get benched for season for getting into a fight where the other guy skated off just fine. And even then, the Department of Player Safety sucks ass and they might get a fine, but rare that it’s like. A Big Deal.
Players aren’t like, pulling off one glove to throw a punch. Fights happen and for the most part, no one gets in Serious Serious trouble over it. However I know it’s fun to write about them getting pissy on the ice and fighting, so go with god on whatever you want to do there. Penalties also happen all the time during games, and unless it’s a consistent issue of a player taking stupid penalties when the team is down and in a tough spot, eh. It happens. Fighting is a regular part of hockey culture but there are, in fact, specific rules in place about it.
Other odds and ends:
Previously mentioned: Handshake lines only happen at the end of a playoff series. Your average, regular season game will not have a handshake line between the two teams in men’s hockey. It WILL have a goalie headbonks line for the winning team. If a player is seeing another after the game, it’s often in the hallway outside the locker rooms after the games. I see reporters tweet all the time “Player A waited outside of the locker room to see old friend Player B.”
Previously mentioned: TO ME PERSONALLY, Jerseys are not like, soft and comforting. They are often stiff and scratchy. The big logo on the center is physically very stiff. No one really wears them off the ice just around the house, but if you’re wanting Shane to wear something soft of Ilya’s, I would recommend the team branded hoodie. The whole team gets matching hoodies that say like “CENTAURS HOCKEY” and has the player number right above the heart. Sometimes a player will grab the wrong hoodie and wear his buddy’s number in media and that always gets a normal reaction from the fans.
If a player misses one pass. Not a big deal. That happens ten hundred times a game. A lot of times what’s going on there is that players aren’t communicating well on the ice, being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It’s less that a player isn’t magically catching the pass and more that their head isn't quite in the game. It seems so unlikely to me that Shane would miss one pass and a teammate would be like "Woah... are you okay?" yes this happens all the time. Something to work on if the team overall can't pass for shit tho. (@ the Washington Captials)
Players are often dealing with the same reporters at every home game, the local media crowd. They won't know a lot of them personally, but if someone's been with the team long enough, they'll know the guys and know their names. NHL'ers don't really get "paparazzi" the same way celebrities do UNLESS they're dating someone more famous than them. Pap photos are more likely to happen from a normie on the street seeing a hockey player go by and be like "Is that Ovechkin?" I don't ever see official paparazzi photos of players out and about in the city like that's a big deal, but I'll see someone's selfie with a player they ran into or something.
I will say tho players do get asked shitty questions by bad reporters a lot tho. A lot of people do get that right. Please look up Connor McDavid biological clock and Leon "Why are you so pissy?" Draisaitl.
Players also often do media in the locker rooms while still sweaty and gross. Sometimes bigger teams (Toronto, Edmonton) do media at a table in front of a banner, but a lot of the time, it happens just in front of the player's stall. This leaves a lot of opportunity for a teammate to come up and mess with them or interject during media!! Happens all the time. I don’t think i have ever seen two teams do the same media availability after a regular season game in the same room. That's not really a thing that's happening on the regular.
EQUIPMENT MANAGERS! EQUIPMENT MANAGERS! During the season, players are not managing their own gear and jerseys and sticks. The equipment managers are making sure everything gets laid out in their stalls and transporting their gear bags on roadies and washing their game jerseys. Equipment managers are also making sure that players are uniform and following rules. It would be hard to sneak by like, a full jersey or equipment change without special permission.
Also. Lol. No player takes the All-Star Game seriously. A lot of players wind up kind of annoyed that they don't get the full break but have to give nice media answers about it. Some ASGs have been more fun and some players have gotten more into it. It's nice to be recognized, sure. But It's Not That Deep.
I'm sure I will think of more and I encourage other hockey fans to note things that you notice come up in fics a lot. Really if you're wanting to write more grounded hockey fics... less is more. You don't have to try and write a bunch of stuff you don't know about! That's okay! What's important is you're having fun. Engage with hockey, read hockey rpf if you're really wanting to see hockey stuff written well, and follow your local beat reporters!
