The Legality of Violence in Ice Hockey: Consent and Assumption of Risk in the Playing Culture of North American Hockey Leagues

Abstract

This thesis explores the question of when hockey players should be held legally liable in Canadian tort law for intentionally and/or negligently causing violent injuries on the ice. This question has puzzled the Canadian legal system, which has led to different legal outcomes in various provincial jurisdictions. At the heart of the legal issue in most participant liability cases of hockey violence is the question of consent and the assumption of the inherent risk of injury that comes with playing a competitive contact sport. Throughout this thesis, the main argument is that despite the normalization of risk-taking, pain, and injury in the occupational culture of hockey over decades of widespread violence, it does not warrant a uniform and objective application of consent. The decision to consent to violence and the risk of injury in hockey is deeply subjective and it is shaped by broader structural and occupational requirements for the athletes to put their bodies at risk of unnecessary harm. To resist the hegemony of the National Hockey League (“NHL”) and professional hockey more generally, players are increasingly turning to the law to address the fact that the NHL is doing little to curb the problem of hockey violence and to receive compensation for the serious injuries they suffered while playing hockey. The turn to the law demonstrates that the process by which consent is secured and communicated to do violence on the ice and suffer the embodied consequences of playing such a physical contact sport is not effective. Rather, it serves as evidence that there are limits to a player’s consent to violence in hockey. My research thus explores these limits in more depth through a qualitative research design to provide empirical evidence of the cultural breaches in the normalization of risk, pain, and injury in hockey to show at what point players should be held legally responsible for inflicting injury on another player.