Kraken remove 'BookTok' content after Alex Wennberg controversy - ESPN

The Seattle Kraken have removed TikTok videos marketed to the hockey BookTok community after forward Alex Wennberg and his wife, Felicia, published statements that criticized the objectification of NHL players.

«BookTok» is a commonly used TikTok hashtag by content creators who want to discuss, review or promote books. A subset of that community focuses on hockey romance novels, with some users fixating on actual NHL players as proxies for fictional characters. One of those players was Wennberg, 28, a nine-year veteran who just completed his second season with the Kraken.

His wife, Felicia Wennberg, had joked about that fan fixation in the past. But last week, she published a statement on Instagram that said videos and comments made about her husband had «crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone» to the point where they sounded «predatory and exploiting» to her.

«What doesn't sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that, with the Internet, we can normalize behavior that would never be OK if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete,» she wrote.

Alex Wennberg published his own statement a few days later, citing backlash that his wife had received for «speaking up about sexual harassment on TikTok» in her comments. He noted «vile comments» on Felicia Wennberg's Instagram, including on photos of their 2-year-old son.

«The aggressive language about real life players is too much,» he wrote. «It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media. This is not something we support or want our child to grow up with. All we ask for is a little respect and common sense moving forward. We can all take a joke and funny