Hockey Fandom Influxes
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| Related terms: | Hockey RPF |
| See also: | Migratory Slash Fandom |
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Hockey RPF fandom experienced a number of influxes of fans over the years, coming from different sources. Some significant migrations into the fandom are identified, but means such as following a fan's home team or joining the bandwagon of a team making a playoff run are also quite common.
Bandom
Between 2010 and 2012, there was a significant initial influx of fans into hockey RPF.
The earlier parts of the wave was due to a group of BNF including Impertinence becoming invested in the sport with the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the collapse of Panic! at the Disco and the Fall Out Boy hiatus leaving a void in Bandom. This is particularly strongly tied to the Chicago Blackhawks, as the team won the Stanley Cup in 2010 and as bandom had a significant number of members who had moved to Chicago, and thus it was their home team. [note 1][note 2]
Later parts of the influx are often tied to thefourthvine and their rec lists.[note 3] This is very commonly connected to Migratory Slash Fandom and criticism of the focus on such a white sport. The fandom influx was still quite strongly connected to the Chicago Blackhawks, but the Pittsburgh Penguins and Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin were also significant ships and teams of the time, also all good at hockey.
One Direction to Hockey Pipeline
This is a well-known phenomenon, from around 2015-2017.
https://rosesvioletshardy.tumblr.com/post/656817557287911424
https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/y7j534/greg_wyshynski_nhl_says_its_us_female_fanbase/
One of the most vocal and visible identifiers of the One Direction to Hockey pipeline is the podcast The Broadscast, created by 4 women hockey fans, including at least one participant who was part of this pipeline. They have discussed it somewhat on their podcast.[1]
This is known outside of transformative fandom circles, and has been used to promote books[2], criticize the NHL for being out-of-touch[3], and been mentioned by actual hockey journalists[4]. It is also anecdotally identified with a rapid increase in women and enby hockey fans.[5]
This migration is not particularly strongly correlated to any particular team, but is most strongly connected anecdotally to the 2015 draft class and to a lesser extent the following couple of draft classes. Since the draft lottery that determines which team gets the highest draft pick is weighted to favour teams that are performing poorly, this meant that unlike the Bandom wave, much of the fandom surrounded teams that were performing poorly on the ice, including the Toronto Maple Leafs, Philadelphia Flyers, etc. It is also particularly correlated with being fans of multiple teams.[5]
Check Please!
I am, I swear to god, | | <- exactly that close to having actual hockey feelings and not just fictional ones.Tumblr post by korechthonia [6]
Check Please! is a webcomic about (among other things) a college hockey team, and later a number of fictional NHL teams. As a result, many fans of Check Please! gravitated towards following actual hockey teams, though the teams themselves varied widely. It was quite common for Check Please Discord servers to have sections for RL hockey, often including game day threads for watching specific games.
There were also a large number of crossover fanfics between Check Please and hockey, so that writers did not need to invent entire hockey teams of OCs, which introduced players like Sidney Crosby and Tyler Seguin and common Hockey RPF pairings to Check Please fans.
The migrations happened over the span of the comic's run and afterwards, likely peaking in 2018-2020 as the comic was at its most popular and coming to a close. It sometime served as an in-between point for 1D fans.
References
- ^ "Because a bunch of old Bandom BNFs got into it after the collapse of Panic at the Disco and while Fall Out Boy was on hiatus. This happened, in part, because a ton of Bandom BNFs lived in Chicago, and right about then was when the Chicago Blackhawks won their first Cup in forever. Which was also the year of the Vancouver Olympics." Re: Why did hockey rpf make it big in fandom?, anon comment at fail_fandomanon, 2018-02-03.
- ^ "Because Bandom BNFs genuinely were concentrated in Chicago. About half the musicians in the Bandom bands were from Chicago, so a lot of people moved there. That is a thing that actually happened." Re: Why did hockey rpf make it big in fandom?, archived, anon comment at fail_fandomanon, 2018-02-03.
- ^ "Thefourthvine, a BNF and fic reccer (she also writes, but reccing is what she's mainly known for) got into the fandom somewhere in this late 2011/early 2012 wave and started reccing hockey fic. In either February or March of 2012 she also did one of her "Fandoms I Have Loved" posts and pulled in a crapton of new people, partly on the strength of her simply being a BNF, but also partly as a result of the pairings, and the fanon for said pairings, that she had chosen to focus on." Re: Explain this fandom to me, anon comment at fail_fandomanon, 2014-02-24.
- ^ https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-broadscast/episodes/Episode-71-How-Do-You-Solve-a-Problem-Like-Hockey-Media-e1f957r approximate timestamps from 41:00-45:00
- ^ https://twitter.com/_stephaniehoyt/status/1493612833929584642
- ^ https://twitter.com/JustinMoris/status/1410280908893016066/photo/2
- ^ https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1676753949104443393
- ^ a b https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/y7j534/comment/isv5we9/
- ^ https://korechthonia.tumblr.com/post/177434808889/i-am-i-swear-to-god-exactly-that-close-to