Hockey Canada summit puts elite men's hockey under the microscope

The outside of the mask was decorated with the words "boys will be boys, power, kings." The inside read "pain, suicidal, need love."

Another mask read "smart, focused, money" on the exterior, and "angry, unsure, bi" on the interior.

The masks, created by university hockey players — some who played major junior — were a research project presented Friday at Hockey Canada's Beyond The Boards Summit.

The two-day summit tackled elite men's hockey, which dominates the sport's culture in Canada, and the toxic masculinity in it that can also breed racism, sexism and homophobia in the game.

The masks, which were distributed among the tables in the conference room for examination, were intended to demonstrate what toxic masculinity does to men in the game.

"Those are conversations men aren't able to have," said the researcher Teresa Fowler, an assistant professor at Concordia University of Edmonton.

The closed door of the hockey locker room and the pressure to conform to the behaviour in it, as well as violence presented as toughness were among the themes kicking off the summit that concludes Saturday.

"The men in our study were told [they] have to do things against [their] constitution," Fowler said. "One of the players knew he would have to fight, so he couldn't sleep and was drinking on the plane and doing whatever he needed to do to cope."

The summit's audience at the summit included leaders from minor and professional hockey. Workshop sessions and panel discussions were closed to the media.

One of the tamer examples of hazing presented at the summit was a rookie initiation in which a male player was made to wear a dress with the intent of making him feel inferior to the rest of his teammates.

Coaches using sexual terms or