National Hockey Team Research Articles

“I remember the Cocagne arena was packed to the rafters”

Serge LeBlanc, who was born and raised in Sainte-Marie-de-Kent—a small town approximately 45km from the City of Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada—is a proud Southeast Acadian known affectionately to his friends and colleagues as ‘Bâyo’. Since the 1990s, Serge has become a staple in regional and national hockey communities in his capacity as an extremely dedicated equipment manager. He has worked with the Moncton Wildcats of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), with Team Canada at the World Junior Championship, and with is currently the equipment manager for the Canadian Women’s National Hockey Team. In addition to looking after some of the world’s best athletes, Serge is a husband and father who works as the head equipment manager for all sports at the Université de Moncton, the country’s first Acadian university and also the largest francophone university outside of Quebec. This essay provides a brief history of the Acadian people and will then overview a conversation Serge had with the first author (also an Acadian from Moncton) about his heritage, his experiences in hockey, and how he believes that the two overlap.

Chronicle of an unintentional MDMA intoxication of a field hockey team to prevent its qualification for the Beijing 2008 Olympics: A case report.

Current doping trends overshadow the traditional interpretation of using prohibited performance-enhancing drugs to improve training and/or sports results. Its definition has evolved due to several recent cases of unconventional manipulation in sports. In this article, we present a case study of an intentional intoxication against the Spanish National Field Hockey team that resulted in its ineligibility for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The events occurred during the pre-qualifying Olympic tournament held in Azerbaijan. The Spanish team won the final match of the tournament against the hosting team and gained qualification for the Olympic Games. One month later, the International Hockey Federation (IHF) reported that two players of the Spanish National Hockey Team had tested positive for MDMA and would subsequently disqualify the Spanish National team from the tournament. The Spanish Hockey Federation then started an appeal process to demonstrate (1) contamination through team's hotel air ventilation and (2) tampering of a urine sample. This process ended with the IHF's final ruling that overturned the sanctions imposed on the Spanish National Team. This manuscript not only outlines a deliberate case to exclude a team from the Olympic Games, but also a federation's difficult efforts to prove an intentional intoxication that resulted in adverse findings.

Hockey’s Significant Others: Canadian Newspaper Coverage of Elite Migrant Athletes in the 1980s and 1990s

Peter Stastny and Petr Nedved were among the most famous Eastern European defectors to play in the National Hockey League (NHL); they not only had success in the NHL but also represented the Canadian men’s national hockey team in international tournaments. Meanwhile, the son of Canadian hockey legend Bobby Hull, Brett Hull, opted to play for the US national team and became a threat to Canadian hockey in the 1990s. This study examines how these three athletes were represented in Canadian newspaper coverage. Specifically, the stories of Stastny and Nedved served as a means for Canadians to differentiate themselves from the former Czechoslovakia and Eastern Bloc. The success of Hull and the US national team, on the other hand, served to threaten Canada’s dominant status in hockey.

More than a Miracle: The Korean War, Cold War Politics, and the 1960 Olympic Hockey Tournament

This article documents the transformation of the American national hockey team from a poorly organized initiative into a powerful, partially state-sponsored operation, in the context of the broader geo-political tensions of the Cold War. Although the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Czechoslovakia are typically portrayed as dubious ‘shamateurs’, paid by their respective militaries to do little but play hockey year round, we argue that the USA engaged in similar activities, albeit on a smaller scale. When the USA won hockey gold at the 1960 Olympics, the American media framed the team's success as a colossal upset of the mighty, military-supported USSR. The evolution of the American team, however, was far more complicated than this simple underdog story suggests. In this article, we use historical newspapers, sporting magazines, and government documents to illustrate the American government’s increasing commitment to international sporting success by examining the tumultuous USA national hockey program from the close of World War II (WWII) to the 1960 Olympics.