Gotta tell you guys something wild in the Chinese fan sphere
So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.
So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.
And that is how this charity received over 1 million in donations in three days lol. Oh btw the “freedom of expression” side won by a landslide (960k to 40k)
My god, why does every NHLer have such profound daddy issues
i don't know if you wanted a serious answer but this sent me into an absolute spiral. it got very long and more in-depth that i intended so big disclaimer that this should not be taken too seriously! the f in rpf is for fiction! if you don't want to read about me psychoanalyzing nhlers and their daddy issues don't keep reading!
easy answer is just: hockey just facilitates weird, intense father/son relationship. the long answer is more like, who knows. but i've given it a shot below.
the best way i know how to frame this is through a personal anecdote. if you've had no interaction with youth hockey, believe me when i say that the most insane aspects of the game are just. Always Like That. even when the players are seven years old and not good. even when they're seventeen playing on the worst level of a rec league, there is something strange and unsettling if you take a closer look. and that's probably especially the case at the highest level, where the guys playing have known nothing but hockey for their whole lives.
my brother played hockey until he went to university, so i grew up in rinks watching him play. he was consistently in tier one of a house league which is like... pretty good for minor hockey, but minor hockey is Not junior hockey. so he played with a lot of guys who were good, but not quite good enough (no one makes the jump from house league to the dub, basically). most of the guys (and more importantly, their parents) didn't have any illusions about that fact: they played hockey because they loved it, and most parents accepted this and would cheer their sons on like you would expect.
there were notable exceptions that are so thoroughly burned into my brain that my heart rate picks up when i think of them.
i watched a grown man be thrown out of a peewee (u13) game because he couldn't control his temper. i remember another instance where a ref had threatened to give one of the novice (U9) kids a penalty if his dad couldn't mind his language. he had to follow through in the end, because the guy just would not shut up. one of the dads on my brother's bantam (U15) team was allowed to drop his kid off, but not come into the rink, even for practices, because he was just such a hardass. there are certain swear words that i first heard during esso minor hockey week from parents who took the quarter finals that seriously. hockey parents are fucking insane.
hockey is a pretty all-consuming sport. nhlers are usually skating from the second they can walk, often because their dads are a) also hockey players b) hockey fans or c) canadian. obviously that's not always the case but hockey is just so generational. in a bit of perfunctory looking around i did find some pretty interesting thoughts about the ways in which sports acts as a way for fathers to socialize their sons to masculinity. this study is particularly insightful, and well worth a read. it interrogates the motivations of fathers and what would be considered an appropriate level of involvement in their sons' teams.
it essentially made a distinction between inclusive masculinity and orthodox masculinity. inclusive masculinity involves positive reinforcement in the vein of ‘it doesn’t matter if you win, as long as you have fun’; whereas orthodox masculinity places the emphasis on winning and competition. the study found that the former provided the most enjoyment for kids; they can see that their parent is involved and cares how they’re doing, but it never toes the line into too much investment or pressure. over-investment on the part of their fathers decreases enjoyment, for obvious reasons.
in trying to see whether this phenomenon was written about in the mainstream, i stumbled across a quote that just absolutely floored me for about five minutes:
"Further complicating matters is that we fathers are not quite sure how "professional" we want the on-field relationship with our sons to be. The identification between man and boy, after all, is never so close as on the athletic field, where the kids become walking advertisements for the potency of the father's testosterone." (from here)
like yeah. YEAH! that's it! the son is the extension of the father. you can live out your dreams through this little boy who just loves playing the game. he doesn't get why you're so hard on him, but that's okay, because it'll all pay off one day. he doesn't like that you yell at him after a loss, but that's okay! he doesn't like that you call him soft in front of his team, but that's okay! he's a hockey player, goddamnit.
hockey is about enforcing masculinity over and over again, and who better to do it than the father. so of course, when you're met with something like that, you're going to crave affection from someone who maybe could be your father, but isn't him.
(if you're still reading, here is where this actually does get into very firm rpf territory. i will be diagnosing daddy issues of various nhlers. you've been warned.)
the aforementioned study led me down a bit of a rabbit hole of speculating where certain nhl dads would fit into a study like that, and as a result of that i feel like hockey father/son relationships need to be sorted in one of three categories which all have the capacity to be troubling in their own way.
normal father and athlete son
athlete father and athlete son
coach father and athlete son
normal father athlete son
first off: normal father and athlete son would refer to a dad who never played sports at a professional level, but might've done it recreationally. plenty of normal players fit into this category. mitch marner also fits into this category but in a very not normal way.
this video (BIG warning that it's just not fun) about his father from when mitch was 12 is a pretty clear illustration of the kind of hockey dad his father was. it's a very tough watch due to the fact that paul yells at his kid, tears apart every aspect of his play, says, directly to his son: 'you better get fucking skating, mitch, i swear to god'. to a twelve year old.
i don't want to make assumptions about paul marner's behaviour or say that he's a bad father. it's just that... if that's the way you act about your 12 year old son when there are cameras from cbc news pointed at you...
it's maybe not hard to see why mitch has been historically Weird about various older nhlers (see patrick marleau and sidney crosby). when patty was asked to give marns some advice, he said: "for you i would just realize how good you are. i don't know if you realize how good you are. how great you are" and mitch can't even look at him for a moment (source here). it's a lot. (as an aside that's very interesting to me personally, mitch marner wore sidney crosby's number when he was young. do with that what you will)
all that to say, this is one of the most blatant examples of just looking for something you've never had before. feeling like you're cracking open because someone actually recognizes that you're good, not that you could be better.
this kind of relationship between a guy who is quote unquote normal and his son who is obviously great is very interesting. there's maybe an aspect of living out some kind of unfulfilled dream. there's maybe an aspect of wanting to feel like the financial investment into your kid pays off. but the relationship is weird no matter how you spin it. you cannot yell at a 12 year old about how fucking bad they are at hockey and not have it leave some kind of scar. much to consider.
athlete father athlete son
i'd categorize an athlete as just someone who has played professional hockey at some point. because hockey is such a family sport there are lots of examples of hockey dads putting their sons into hockey. plenty of them are like a really good player who you google one time and then find out their dad played, like, three seasons for detroit in the 80s, or something. sidney crosby would fit into this category: his dad was drafted and even though he never played in the nhl, you cannot argue that sid would be Sidney Crosby if his dad wasn't a hockey player. other examples would be like, william nylander, nolan patrick. famously fun guys to project issues onto.
but the specific example i'm thinking of where the father/son relationship is just Really Something would be the tkachuks.
first of all, love them or hate them, you cannot watch brady or matthew play and not immediately draw the parallel to their dad. their style of play is just the same, and it harkens back to a different era of hockey. and it's obvious that the tkachuks are a really tight knit family! keith is proud of his sons! watching him sob over matthew winning the cup really got to me, and at the time i was also busy sobbing because the oilers had just lost the cup. like keith loves his sons. however.
there's like a lot of discourse about brady being keith's favourite child and like i don't know if that's true but his interactions with matthew in particular are super interesting.
like that time in 2023 when he said that the panthers were soft and he was disappointed in how matthew was playing. he said that publicly. it was heard by every member of that team, by the coaching staff, by the equipment guys. that dynamic is fascinating: you want to be taken seriously by this new team that loves you, unlike your old team, and your dad is just openly talking about how your team is not like your brother's team. and then keith went on sp*ttin ch*clets (here) and talked about how after he made those comments matthew didn't talk to him for a while and basically banned him from speaking to media about how the team was doing. and then everyone on sp*ttin ch*clets laughs, because the idea of a grown man setting boundaries with his father is funny in a hockey setting. of course it is: hockey is openly hostile to difficult conversations.
that father/son relationship is also interesting when you consider that it's always been matthew and brady competing against each other. and there's definitely this element of wanting to live up to your father, wanting to be better than your brother. it's not clear cut in a 'keith neglected him' way or anything because keith loves them both.
keith loves matthew. he's proud of matthew. but does he like him? keith refusing to throw a hat for matthew's hat trick. allegedly starting a 'brady's better' chant. like you get it. right?
and you can also frame this in comparison with, say, the hugheses. another american family with athlete parents who produced two phenomenal players. and also luke.
i don't think any of the hughes brothers have daddy issues. in a way they're almost more interesting when you look at them through the lens of their mother, who was a phenomenal athlete who was robbed of true greatness because she was a woman in a time when women's sports weren't taken seriously. but she was absolutely instrumental in their careers. like she taught them to skate!!! they are a part of her legacy!
anyways i think they're a well-adjusted family (Please let me know if this is not the case so i can diagnose them in my google docs) so it's interesting to dissect them in order to understand what makes them different from the tkachuks. quinn hughes is cursed by something not of this earth, but matthew tkachuk is cursed by just... wanting to impress his dad. like maybe it really is that simple.
coach father athlete son
almost at the end. the hughes brothers also all fit in here because of their parents background and the fact that they were just getting an insane amount of hockey tutoring very early on through their father. super interesting how his role with the maple leafs in player development translated to his sons. but they all seem well-adjusted (if a little haunted). anyways they're not the specific relationship that i made this section for. that honour goes to rick and macklin celebrini.
this article in the athletic is a foundational piece of macklin daddy issues scholarship. this video is objectively insane.
i think what makes this relationship so crazy right from the outset is how immediately obvious it is that there's no space between rick as his father and rick as his coach. there's a quote in the athletic article about how workouts on macklin and his older brother aiden would be tougher when their dad had a tougher day at work, because he brought that through the door with him. he took this intensity, this drive to always be doing something, and he drilled it into his kids.
the way rick's players talk about him is the same way rick's children talk about him. like functionally that relationship is very, very similar. and not necessarily all for the worst: draymond green calls him a guy you can confide in. he's someone the players trust. a father figure, if you will. he loves and cares about his players.
but then there's the flipside of that! at home he is not just a father but also a director of player health and performance! 'what are you doing to get better today' was the motto of the celebrini family. apparently rick would set up training courses on family vacations (source). there was literally not a single second where this guy was just dad. 'do the kids really need to hear that every single moment. can you maybe just watch a movie.' you know. 'there's no doubt he treats his kids just like he treats his players.' YOU KNOW?
people are already having discourse about whether you should or should not project daddy issues onto macklin but like. even if you refuse to acknowledge the weirder parts of his relationship with his dad, there's no denying that he is just way too intense for an 18 year old. and if you try to find the root of that intensity, it leads to his father. you cannot come up in that kind of environment without it fundamentally shaping you.
part of it is probably also just natural talent. aiden celebrini was drafted 171st overall whereas macklin went first. LET ME BE CLEAR: 171st is nothing to scoff at. being drafted at all is an insane accomplishment. but the framing of this family is very much like, rick is proud of the payoff for his investment. macklin going first validates rick. he is proud because he has shaped this player.
there's also this aspect of macklin being super similar to his father, even if he doesn't admit it. like they dressed the same the morning of the draft. they argued about who had woken up earlier. the celebrinis aren't big on declarations of love. they don't wear their hearts on their sleeves.
so of course this 18 year old is loudly looking for that affection elsewhere. of course he is father-ifying his prettyboy teammate. of course he is latching onto anyone older than him. it's not hard to understand at all, actually.
(and maybe most importantly: macklin called his father 'da-da' at least well into his teens, including when he hugged him at the draft. which tracks very well with everything else i have learned about him recently.)
in conclusion?
this is not really an answer at all. why do all nhlers have daddy issues? maybe hockey just attracts a certain kind of father. maybe hockey is what creates them. maybe i'm just projecting way too much. please advise.
While I sort of get the impulse, it does always get my back up when people talk about something like Animorphs with this attitude of 'omgggg remember these books, how on EARTH were we allowed to read these books, they're so grim and dark and violent and tragic, no adults could possibly have known what they actually contained or they'd have been banned.'
And like. Allowing for the fact that there absolutely are adults who think every distressing topic ever should be banned from children's literature - they're children's books. You were allowed to read them when you were a kid because they were written for kids. Bridge to Terabithia is also a children's book. So is Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and The Giver and loads of other books that deal with heavy, difficult topics. It is appropriate and good for children to have books about these things that are tailored to their reading levels and it genuinely really bugs me when people act like they're somehow not really for kids because bad things happen in them or they end tragically.
and I often wonder if god is still watching but then I remember there is no god, there is only myself. I am just myself watching myself and I have given games to all the rotten parts of me and held them up high.
I’m trying to get the boys I coach to stop saying “I’m gonna kms” after every little inconvenience (it’s my fault tbh) and last night my goalie missed an easy shot and screamed he’s gonna run away to Africa, become a National Geographic photographer and win the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
Turns out that’s actually what he wants to do. And I love that he replaced ending his life with his dreams for his future. Like yes, this inconvenience sucks but I will persist anyway.
❌ Does this ship make any sense whatsoever by any reasonable metric
✅ Does the thought of these characters standing next to each other make you want to chew concrete and then break apart a nearby automobile with your bare hands
Edit: For those wondering, this is from a 70s nsfw sci-fi zine called "alien brothers" (more specifically, page 83). This little paragraph was right above a k/s smut fanfic written by this lady.
