Rb'ing this not as an HR fan but as a hockey fan. Let's see what I can add to the list that isn't already in the replies (gucci purse, bunch mox, sexcel spreadsheet, steers and queers...)
- Auston Matthews getting drunk and mooning a female police officer (and trying to enter her car, which most people forget). (Supposedly he was going to get the C back in 2019 or so but this incident made the team decide that was a bad idea...)
- Dylan Strome having a sex tape uploaded to Twitter in which he's fucking himself with a dildo. (Supposedly the Blackhawks, his team at the time, managed to scrub the video off the Internet, but not before people found out about it.)
- Matthew Tkachuk's recent Linsanity run of being buddy-buddy with Trump, including being on that "Fitness Council" aimed at "keeping men out of women's sports". (Gary Bettman and Wayne Gretzky - so the NHL commissioner and the greatest NHL player of all time - are also on this panel.)
- Matthew and Brady Tkachuk's podcast, where they complain that "girls" shouldn't call players by their nicknames.
- Teams visiting the US President (because a Canadian team hasn't won in over 30 years) is a time-honored tradition, but every team that's visited with Trump tends to get cancelled because "they support Trump!" (Most NHL players do. The ones that don't are exceptions.)
- Logan Couture (Canadian) (cannot vote in America) claiming that he got "sucker punched" in Toronto because he talked about voting for the Republican Party.
- Slurs upon slurs. More common(ly acted upon) in junior (NCAA and especially CHL).
- Speaking of the CHL, Nathan Villeneuve and Evan Konyen getting suspended for placing a bounty on Kashawn Aitcheson after the latter hit Villeneuve. (For those unfamiliar - a "bounty" in hockey is like, "$500 to whoever hits X guy on the other team hard enough to hurt him and take him out of the game".)
- Literally yesterday (three days ago), Porter Martone celebrating an empty net goal by slapping an opponent on the butt. (He got a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct for this.) (He is the captain of Team Canada at World Juniors.)
- Anything Evander Kane does, from faking a covid vaccine card (which they found out because they were investigating him for betting and throwing his games) through filing for bankruptcy in part due to gambling debts all the way to assault, harassment, DV, and SA allegations.
- There are a lot of DV/SA stories around hockey. Most notably recently the 2018 WJC trial. Consider yourself warned if you look that up.
- Tyler Seguin marrying his stalker, with whom he's now going to have a child. (Has led to more speculation that she's his beard.)
- Everything that led up to the cancellation of specialty jerseys - players like Provorov and the Staals refusing to wear specifically Pride jerseys (note the discourse with "can Russian players opt out of Pride Night because of political concerns with Putin?" while guys like Nikita Zadorov openly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine) the Rangers' "contemporaries" saga, all of that. Pride Tape being banned because it was a "distraction". Travis Dermott (a bottom-pair defenseman for whom this move could easily have ruined his career) put Pride Tape on his stick anyway and dared the league to do something about it. Result? Ban rescinded.
- Generally, fandom likes to hold Europeans, and ESPECIALLY Russians (/Belorussians/other post-Soviet countries) to a different standard than Americans/Canadians. In many ways, from infantilizing them for not standing up to Putin to demonizing them for (often) having more visible personality than some of the Canadian athletes, who've had it bred out of them.
- Also, pretty sure a few hockey players (emphasis on FEW) kneeled during the national anthem in solidarity against systemic racism. ("Why didn't your fave do that?")
- Brad Marchand's rat antics, from licking people to cheap shots.
- Some of the players being borderline stalked and harassed. Especially thinking about the story a few days back with Will Smith and Macklin Celebrini and the fan in the elevator. Or Connor Bedard ignoring someone who was being super pushy about him not signing a hockey card for him (when that person was going to sell it for a profit). (And some people were still mad at Bedard for not stopping for the "fan." This is why some players, especially when it's not at specific signature events, will sign memorabilia and also write something like "to [fan's name]" on it - this makes it harder to sell as an "autographed card". Oh - yeah - sometimes parents enlist their children to be "in" on it, too, because athletes generally don't refuse to sign for kids. Crazy shit.)
- Jonathan Huberdeau going to a strip club after Game 3 versus the Lightning (in a series the Panthers were down 0-3 in and facing elimination). Not surprising he was traded soon after. (Technically nobody ever confirmed who on the Panthers was at that strip club, but it's generally accepted that Huberdeau was part of it.)
- Halloween costumes. Crossdressing, petplay, the whole nine yards. Usually there's one costume per team that's kind of racist and then everyone gets offended. The Devils are GREAT at this. (Also leads to discourse like "if he's Swiss, would he know that dressing like a hippie with a distinctly Afro-textured wig is a bad thing?")
- Cole Caufield's infamous picture with the Scrabble letters spelling FAG in his hand.
- Relatedly, Trevor Connelly posting swastikas made of building blocks to his Instagram when he was like 16 or so. (If you want to read about how hockey breeds assholes, I strongly advise you to read this article. Note that it definitely has a strong anti-Connelly bent, and to read it with that in mind.) (There are also guys like Logan Mailloux, Mitch Miller, etcetera. You can look those up on your own time.)
- Vince Dunn saying the n-word on stream while singing along to a song and then harassing people who called him out for it.
- Sammy Blais calling his sister "sexy" on Instagram. (We still call him "Sister Fucker Sammy Blais", as one phrase.)
- Bunch of rumors, especially in the pre-social media era, of guys sleeping with their teammates' wives and getting beat up about it. Most famously Eric Lindros and Rod Brind'Amour, but there's a bunch.
- The whole Alex Galchenyuk situation, culminating in violent threats and racial slurs against police officers while being arrested for hit and run.
- Oh, yeah, there's also a thing with drugs too. While the modern day NHL seems to tend towards marijuana, cocaine use (as well as other hard drugs) was rampant years ago.
Note: in general, it is MUCH easier to get cancelled than it is to get uncancelled. People remember these things. ...Unless you're Conventionally Attractive and/or a Community Beloved Player. In which case, almost anything except DV, SA, or liking Trump openly is permissible.
And here's some stuff that's less "cancellable" and more just flavorful:
- Claude Giroux getting his car stolen twice in like, a month, up in Ottawa.
- Jakob Chychrun - literally any headline, from the raw liver diet to the thirst trap watermelon video to the "candles in the house, no more electric lights" thing. (The last one was later debunked by Chychrun himself - it's something he and his wife do after dinner to help the body adjust to sleep without blue light.) There's also a really good article about Chychrun learning that it's okay to like, eat a donut now and then. Seriously. Read it.
- Almost anything that comes out of Paul Bissonnette's mouth, at this point.
- Connor McDavid (best player in the league) being afraid of ketchup.
- Brad Marchand getting fined $5000 for something and putting up a link to his Cameo on his Instagram stories. Really almost anything Marchand does can qualify here though.
- Relatedly, Ryan Hartman flipping off Evander Kane, getting fined $4250, and fans creating a GoFundMe to pay off the fine, raising over $30000 (which Hartman donated to a local children's hospital).
- John Tavares's amulets, Pheonix Copley's potion business, and other enterprising NHLers espousing usually bogus products.
- The Leafs being cursed. Especially in Game 7s.
- Alex Ovechkin headlines are a blast. From the dick piercing allegations through the sauna story (allegedly I believe a porn star was in a sauna with the Caps after their Cup win and commented in depth about their genitalia) to the footlong from Subway and flamin' hot Cheetos before games. Take your pick.
- The entirety of the Panthers' Cup celebrations, from dunking the Cup in the Atlantic Ocean (bad) through the golf cart parades through Marchand trolling every other team by thanking them for the players that used to play for them through Marchand's Dairy Queen antics to playing Pink Pony Club because it was the Oilers' post-win song... Yeah, Marchand is a hoot.
- Taylor Hall failing his open book boating license 3 times. Or him and Jordan Eberle in the "worst hangman game in history", where Eberle misspells "bananna" and Hall can't figure out the second word is "split".
- Jim Rutherford perhaps single-handedly causing the Canucks to exit a contention window and plummet into a rebuild because he can't stop running his mouth about the "personality issues" on the team.
- The Capitals barking in their locker room. Or the Predators who used to give out a collar to the best player after games. (Yes, there is a hockey team called the Predators.) Or the Flyers' dog mask last year. You get the drift.
- Robin Lehner's exotic snake farm.
- Nico Hischier doing his mandated military service (in Switzerland, every citizen must do some amount of such service before they hit a certain age) and everyone reminding each other that the Swiss army isn't a tool of imperialism in the way the American army is.
- Brendan Smith's teammate (Riley Sheahan) once stole his driver's license and got arrested for driving "superdrunk" in a purple Teletubby costume.
- The Mikhail Sergachev chicken saga.
Like... these guys are still humans with human lives, not just Hockey Players™. But yeah - whatever traits they have are absolutely also the ones getting them into varying shades of trouble lmao.
