Hockey is (almost) indisputably the best sport on the planet, and its fanbase in the United States continues to grow. Female hockey fans share the same struggles as most other female sports fans, but these are amplified by the “manliness” of hockey. Hockey is usually associated with traditionally male things - beards, fights, beer, cold weather, and rowdy fans.
More than most other sports, true female fans are few and far-between. That doesn’t mean we’re not just as dedicated as our male counterparts. Here are 8 things you should know about what it’s like being a female hockey fan.
1. There aren’t any lines in the bathrooms.
I mean none. Even between periods you’d be hard-pressed to wait in line at all, let alone for the insane amount of times you’ll wait at a baseball game. You know what that means? More hockey.
2. You have to put up with constantly dealing with some well-meaning guy explaining to you what everything is. “That’s called icing, it’s when-“
I know.
3. Everyone assumes you’re watching hockey to impress a guy.
You’re right, I scream at my TV at referees at 11PM for those Pacific Coast away games because of a boy. I invest my free time watching the draft in the summer because maybe it’ll come in handy dating? Sorry to break it to you, but I have priorities, and they’re not impressing someone who won’t be around long enough to finish the Stanley Cup finals.
4. You get the time-honored “Which player do you think is the cutest?”
I don’t know, you figure it out while I boo the refs.
5. People ask you how you became a fan.
“Was it because of your Dad, or your boyfriend?” Who cares? How’d YOU get into hockey?
6. Male fans hold you to an impossibly high standard.
“Yeah, I love hockey,” you tell them, and the next thing you know, he’s got out a timer and a notepad, asking you to list off all of the ’78 cup contenders and which players were injured. Don’t know? You must not be a hockey fan. Would he ask his male friends that? Absolutely not. All a guy needs to do to be a passable hockey fan is to say “I’m a hockey fan.” As a female fan, you pronounce one name wrong and suddenly you’re “here for the boys.”
7. Fellow female fans are so scared of being labeled as a “puck bunny” or fake fans that they tear down other female fans too.
The ease in which we are thrown aside as “genuine sports fans” by men is scary. We have to constantly validate our love and knowledge for the sport at every turn to be accepted as a fan. A few women give all the rest of us the image of hopping from player to player without a knowledge of that “round thing on the ice they’re chasing after” that suddenly we have become defensive against ourselves. A woman wearing a pink, bedazzled jersey can’t possibly understand what offsides is, so we denounce her as shallow and only here to appease her boyfriend. A woman who takes the time to dress up for the game clearly isn’t a real hockey fan. But if you see a man in a suit at a game? Oh, he probably came right from work. So quick are we to judge other women that we discredit ourselves in the process.
8. I’m not a female hockey fan.
Sure, I titled this article like that because there’s not other way around it, but the fact of the matter is that I’m a sports fan. My love of hockey isn’t any more reliant on my gender than a man’s love for hockey. We come for the same reason: to watch hockey. Let’s keep it that way.
