Hockey games and missed opportunities

When I was 16, I quit hockey.

I was a closeted teenager, and I was sick to death of the bullying, the violence, and the culture. Hockey made me ashamed. For a decade, I found it easier to come out of the closet than to tell people I had once loved hockey.

But lately, I have come back to it. I started to love watching the Jets with my dad, seeing kids laughing at the rink, the connection that being fans brings us. I have started defending hockey and all that is beautiful about it. I wear my Jets hat with pride.

I’ve been eager to tell people about Connor Hellebuyck, the hard-working Jets goalie who proudly talks about mental health and co-wrote a children’s book about it. In B.C., where my career has taken me, few things make my day like running into another Jets fan.

So, when the Canadian men and women both lost to the United States in the Olympics, I saw a silver lining in Hellebuyck, who almost single-handedly defeated the Canadian men after years of disappointment in Winnipeg. I felt that if anyone deserved it, it was him.

But now I am devastated by Hellebuyck and the U.S. Men’s team’s enthusiasm in meeting U.S. President Donald Trump. When Trump called the team and denigrated the U.S. women’s team, the men laughed heartily, and Hellebuyck was seen on video smiling wide while asking “How’s it going Don?”

Hellebuyck and the team then happily headed to the White House to meet with Trump and attend the State of the Union address.

I can understand how difficult of a situation Hellebuyck is in: in a pattern that says a lot about our two countries, American athletes do not grow up dreaming of bringing the Stanley Cup back to the kids in their hometown, but instead are raised to believe that the pinnacle of sports is meeting the president. He has worked his entire life for this and is being celebrated after redeeming himself in the greatest moment of his career.

But I suspect that Hellebuyck and the team are not fully aware of what they have been caught up in.

As evident by social media videos of the team squeezing ketchup out of packets onto fast food at their White House meal, Trump does not respect them. He is using them. In a move eerily similar to Hitler’s use of the 1936 Olympics as Nazi propaganda, Trump is using Hellebuyck’s success to celebrate his leadership in the face of all the terrible things he has done.

Trump’s announcement during the address that Hellebuyck will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom spurred rousing cheers and chants that helped take attention away from the attendance of several of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who had implored people “do not look away.”

Whether he knows it or not, Hellebuyck is quickly going down in history for the wrong reasons. I’m willing to bet, given all the time he devotes to hockey, that Hellebuyck is not familiar with Umberto Eco’s 14 common features of fascism and might not have noticed that Trump’s leadership is almost a picture-perfect representation of Eco’s thesis. He might not know that fascist leaders are always looking for national heroes, people to use as propaganda in their war against justice.

But I’ve played a lot of hockey in my life and one of Eco’s points always felt the most familiar to me: No. 4, under fascism, “disagreement is treason.”

Any hockey player knows that you always stand up for your teammates. But sometimes, what’s more important is standing up to your teammates.

And as someone who never had the courage to stand up for themselves in the locker room, I know how difficult it can be. But in On Tyranny, another book I think the U.S. men’s team could benefit from reading, Timothy Snyder recommends that to resist a tyrant like Trump, we must refuse to “obey in advance” — put another way, we must stand up for what is right when we get the chance.

Unlike last week, we now live in a world where the best player on the Winnipeg Jets, is world famous as a friend of Trump, a man who has overseen the arrest of children who are then kept in cages, fraternized with and protected pedophiles, laughed at the death of innocent people, and threatened to take over our country. A world where a man inextricably linked with Winnipeg is world famous as a symbol used by the powers of hatred.

So thanks to Hellebuyck, I can no longer in good conscience wear my Jets hat. For the time being, it is too associated with evil. Only when Hellebuyck, the Winnipeg Jets organization, and the other Jets players show that they have the courage to stand up for what is right, will I be ready to put it back on.

Jonathan Van Elslander is a writer and ecologist from Winnipeg. He now lives in British Columbia.