I had an original plan to write this blog about how and why hockey keeps popping up on this blog.

And then Team USA happened and the entire nonsense regarding the admin and the politics of Team USA and how they treated the women’s team. I wish I could say any of this surprised me but this is the baseline for hockey culture.

There was no way any of it would be any better if Hockey Canada won. Have we not seen all the allegations against Hockey Canada and its legacy on hockey culture? They would’ve done something similar to Team USA.

The discourse, though rightfully angry, only made me go “where was this 10 years ago when it was still the same thing?” To some extent, I’m glad that the greater public is now aware of the consistent toxic misogyny that runs rampant in hockey culture — all hockey culture, not just Team USA. But it’s also not as though anything will actually change. I can’t even say that the PWHL is without problems — there are certainly problems of transphobia and racism that have existed in the league and its past iterations. Problems in hockey will always remain because the foundation of the culture has always been rotten. What’s been on display at the Olympic level is par for the course.

If I had a choice in how my brain works, I would never think about hockey. C-PTSD doesn’t work that way, and literally anything could cause the flashbacks to happen at any moment.

No matter how much I can work on managing the C-PTSD and still thrive in the world (look, ma! I’m a national baseball writer!), it’s a demon that lives in the back of my mind and ready to attack at any moment. No matter how much I could succeed in spite of this, I keep comparing it to what I’ve endured at the hands of hockey. I think about what hockey never gave me, a baseline minimum of respect for my intelligence and my being.

Instead, it’s a mental scar that could open at any time. The respect I experience in baseball is shit I always wish I got in hockey, and what I know I’ll never get, so I stopped seeking it. Getting to the point where I accepted that hockey would never give me that baseline was a breakthrough moment for me in learning how to manage the trauma — and then learning if I wanted to stay in hockey knowing I would always be treated like this. I didn’t, so I left.

Reaching a part of my life where I’ve left hockey entirely and just focusing on the side that I want to keep moving forward in took a lot of years of therapy. The truth, though, is that I’m now seeing the way my life moves that is much different than how it was when I was in hockey, and how much I did not get in that space. It becomes depressing when you realize that an entire culture doesn’t even reach the bare minimum, but it also becomes easier to reflect on why it’s a good thing you’ve left when you’re in spaces where people want to see you succeed.

With Team USA now being on the main stage of shittiness and showing exactly how bad hockey culture is on the largest scale possible post-Olympics, the only thought I had was, “Alright, I’m heading out to the store. Anyone want anything?” Because that’s how fruitless of an endeavor it is to yell about it or try to get things to change. That’s hockey for ya.