In this paper, we explore the Canadian fitness advocate and coaching legend Lloyd Percival's fabled The Hockey Handbook, and its influence on player development and team strategy in Canada, Sweden and the former Soviet Union. Utilizing the notion of global 'scapes', as developed by Arjun Appaduari, to more fully understand the complexity of the global development of ice hockey, we argue that globalization of the game must be perceived as a multi-faceted interaction at both the global and local levels, i.e. as a critical binary relationship. According to the conventional, evangelistic narrative, Percival's instructional manual was responsible for the rise of ice hockey in Europe and the USSR. Our contrary argument is that the global cultural flow of The Hockey Handbook was a complex combination of factors related to the movement of capital, technologies, people, ideological considerations and mediated images. As such, it brings into question, the presumed status of The Hockey Handbook, as a dominant influence of the global hockey world. Rather, our argument suggests, it is a manufactured 'scape', serving to privilege a Canadian ice hockey system while relegating other 'narratives' and ice hockey systems to that of mere receivers.

Special Issue: The Progress of Elite Ice Hockey, Beyond NHL: A Focus on (G)local culture(s), Migration, Entrepreneurship, Americanization and Oligarchism. Guest Editors: Bo Carlsson, Jyri Backman and Tobias Stark

Den här artikeln handlar om tidigare Toronto Maple Leafs- och Team Sweden-stjärnan Börje Salming och hans roll som banbrytare för migrationen av svenska ishockeyspelare till den nordamerikanska hockeyligan NHL. På ett övergripande plan är syftet att belysa omvandlingen av den svenska (idrotts-) modellen kring millennieskiftet 2000. Utifrån ett omfattande arkivmaterial och mediekällor – inklusive föreningsprotokoll, tidningar, självbiografiska betraktelser och intervjuer – hävdas att Salmings enastående NHL-karriär inte bara banade väg för generationer av hans landsmän genom att punktera den nordamerikanska myten att skandinaviska spelare var mjuka och ömtåliga – en allmän uppfattning – men också bidrog till att omvandla den svenska nationalidentiteten och den hegemoniska ishockeymaskuliniteten. Teoretiskt bygger artikeln på medieforskaren Garry Whannels arbeten om mediesportstjärnor, och begreppet stardom som ”a form of social production in which the professional ideologies and production practices of the media aim to win and hold our attention by linking sporting achievement and personality in ways which have resonance in popular common sense”.