Ian Kennedy has loved hockey for almost as long as he can remember. His love for the sport began in Grade 1, when he began to play.

“I think it was something that I saw friends doing and saw on TV all the time, so it was just something that I fell in love with pretty quickly,” he recalled.

Kennedy played hockey until his early 20s, when he transitioned to coaching girls’ hockey. This shift sparked his interest in women’s hockey and opened his eyes to inequities in how female players are treated.

At the same time, Kennedy found himself struggling to enjoy men’s hockey to the degree he once did due to “locker room culture.” The term refers to behaviours and language often associated with male-dominated spaces, including prejudiced humour.

“Some toxic aspects and the misogynist ideas and the locker room culture, things like that — I just didn’t feel comfortable and I wasn’t enjoying it, and I thought at some point, as an adult, it should just be about the enjoyment and the social aspect,” he said.

While Kennedy loved playing hockey, he no longer wanted to be in the locker room. He found a renewed love for the game through women’s hockey, which he said felt more inclusive and enjoyable than men’s hockey.

As a long-time subscriber to The Hockey News, combined with his love for writing, he began running online blogs and a local news outlet in his community. From the outset, he aimed to provide equitable coverage.

“Eventually I just wanted to go further with it, so I started pitching out articles, and The Hockey News liked what I was pitching,” he said. This led him to writing for their website and magazine.

Two years ago, Kennedy had a desire to make a full transition to covering women’s hockey. He found a void in the market, with no outlets providing daily coverage of women’s leagues, compared to dozens covering men’s hockey.

“I asked if [The Hockey News] could start one, and the answer was ‘yes,’ as long as I ran it,” Kennedy said. “So, here we are, a couple years later, providing as robust and in-depth and comprehensive of coverage for women’s hockey as men’s hockey gets on a regular basis.”

Kennedy has acknowledged his own biases and has worked to unlearn them by listening to voices from underrepresented communities in sports narratives.

“I think it’s really important to tell diverse histories, and I […] can help amplify the voices of people that have traditionally not been heard […] I’ve really found a passion in that.”

Kennedy’s second book, Ice in Their Veins: Women’s Relentless Pursuit of the Puck, was released in Oct. 2024. It covers the overlooked history of women on the ice, and the many off-ice battles they have endured to receive the same recognition and support as male hockey players.

Kennedy said the inspiration for the book came after learning about Marian Coveny, the first captain of the Canadian women’s hockey team and a native of his hometown. Despite her achievements, Coveny’s contributions to the sport are largely unrecognized.

“I thought, you know, if she was a man, not only would [Kennedy’s hometown arena] be named after her, we’d have a sign entering in our town recognizing her, and she would probably be in the Hockey Hall of Fame […] that struck me as so incredibly wrong,” he said.

The book follows the long history of women’s hockey from its beginnings all the way until January 2024 — the first game of the groundbreaking Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). Kennedy had originally completed the book prior to the announcement that the PWHL had been founded.

“I figured, let’s collect all the stories up until [the start of the PWHL], because new history is going to be written every day from now on,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy is thrilled that women’s hockey has been given a larger media coverage through the PWHL, with records being broken for turnout and increased interest in the game.

Women are now coaching more frequently at higher levels as well, which he sees as important to the future of the sport. More recently, Hockey Canada has released a paper with the goal of reducing barriers for women in hockey.

Kennedy looks forward to seeing where women’s hockey goes from here, and especially to the day when there are no more records to break. Lastly, he urged all readers to educate themselves so that everyone has the same opportunity to play the sport.

Ian Kennedy’s new book, Ice in Their Veins: Women’s Relentless Pursuit of the Puck, is now available through Tidewater Press.