The NHL’s Seattle Kraken embraced horny BookTok and found controversy

This past spring, during the Seattle Kraken’s first appearance in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the 2-year-old franchise found itself with an influx of new fans: readers pouring in from the BookTok community on TikTok. How did this happen? How did it happen? IcebreakerHannah Grace’s book, The Last Days of the Romance, was a New York Times bestseller and remains there to this day. Like Colleen Hoover’s novels, Icebreaker became a viral hit on TikTok, beloved by fans of the hockey romance subgenre that’s popular on the platform.

It was likely that the timing of this event led to this fandom watching hockey. Icebreaker’s popularity leading into the NHL playoffs. BookTok has a particular team that they are devoted to: The Kraken.

It’s been a fun club to follow. The Kraken made a surprising playoff run in their second season, taking out last year’s Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche, in the first round. The Kraken then took the Dallas Stars into a thrilling Game 7, before being beaten. Everyone loves an underdog, and the Kraken are a flashy new team that’s fun to watch. That’s part of the appeal, but BookTok also latched on to several conventionally attractive players — namely, forward Alex Wennberg — and their gyrating warmup stretches. When the Kraken’s social media team realized that people were making fancams of Wennberg and other players, it started playing into the fandom, making its own fancam-esque videos of its players’ arena entrances.

BookTok’s whirlwind hockey obsession did draw positive attention to hockey as a sport, inviting fans who otherwise might not have known they’d be interested. A few fans went too far and treated players like characters, rather than actual people. Here’s how we arrived at the controversy that’s gone viral in the past week.

Why did BookTok fail and Seattle Kraken succeed?

The problems started when a minority of BookTokers began sexualizing hockey stars and connecting them with their favorite romantic characters. And the Kraken’s own social media team fanned the flames. The relationship felt like other parasocial high-profile relationships that the internet craved, such as when The Last of Us actor Pedro Pascal — the fixation on Pascal as “daddy” often veered into uncomfortable territory.

As TikTokers became fans of the Seattle Kraken, some BookTokers “face-claimed” — which is similar to fancasting — Wennberg and other hockey players for the character Nate Hawkins in IcebreakerThe characters of other hockey romances.

This sort of behavior started to spiral when the Kraken’s social media team posted A ton of thirst content about the team’s players. The Kraken, while other clubs posted BookTok content, were by far the most aggressive. Team social media administrators have an increased level of access to players and their likenesses, and there’s an assumed level of trust between a player and their organization in using that to promote the team. When a team’s social media manager posts even vaguely sexualized content about their players, it can be taken as a kind of consent — and can egg on that sort of behavior, and more, online.

Emily Rath is the author of a series of Jacksonville Rays romances. She explained why, in a TikTok 10 minute video, this kind of abstraction by social media teams of players was a big problem. “You should not treat your employees with the same level of abstraction as the fans do,” she said.

Over the past week, Alex Wennberg’s wife, Felicia Weeren, posted Instagram stories about the sexualization of her husband and other players. Weeren said that while she herself has joked online about Wennberg’s TikTok fandom, she feels that some people’s comments and videos have crossed the line into “predatory and exploiting” territory. “What doesn’t sit right with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment,” she wrote. Wennberg published a statement about the negative reaction Weeren faced for her writing.

“The aggressive language about real life players is too much,” Wennberg wrote. “It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media. It is something that we do not support nor want for our child. What we want is some respect, and to be able to move forward with common sense. We can all take a joke and funny comments but when it turns personal and into something bigger that effects our family, we need to tell you that we’ve had enough. It’s enough of the sexual harassment and bullying of our family and character. Thank you for your understanding.”

The Kraken have now deleted all references to BookTok from their TikTok page; it’s unclear when this happened, but it appears to have been done in response to players’ discomfort with the posts. The organization has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

What has BookTok done in response?

No representative is available for BookTok or its subset of hockey romance. This behavior does not seem to be coming from the majority of fans. Rath, in her 10-minute video, said she estimated that the sexual harassment encompassed 1% of hockey romance fans on the app, whereas 99% of fans are normal people who love hockey romance — many of whom were brought into loving hockey as a sport, too.

Kierra, a BookTok-influencer from Seattle, was outspoken in her comments about Seattle Kraken. She was flown out to a Kraken playoff game and given a jersey emblazoned with “BookTok,” with her content seemingly endorsed by the club’s social media team. In a TikTok posted after Weeren published her initial statement, Lewis accused the Kraken and others of using BookTok to promote themselves and “get clout,” only to later discard the community. She added that she was upset to discover that the Kraken’s social media team has distanced itself from her, seemingly for her overtly sexual content about hockey players. (Lewis was photographed at the game holding a sign that read “Krack my back,” for instance.) Lewis also said that everything she’s posted is a joke.

There’s a subset of BookTok that’s defending Lewis’ role in everything — claiming that the Kraken owe BookTok for their success — while some people say they’ve been uncomfortable with her content, as well as others’ sexualization of athletes. It’s a debate that reminds us of those around fan fiction featuring real-life people. Hockey players don’t have the same celebrity as, say, top basketball players, but they are accustomed to some fame. This fame makes it easy for people to form parasocial relationships — and the perceived consent of organizations like the Kraken only adds to this.

The Kraken BookTok scandal has shown that, whatever your opinion, at least some athletes feel uncomfortable when their likenesses are sexualized, and some fans have crossed the line. Some players have revoked any consent they may have given, whether it was knowingly or unknowingly.