What do typical Canadian hockey fans do in the off-season when they can’t play or watch their favourite game?

Those diehards still spend the summer months discussing hockey — all sort of issues, ranging from what’s happening with the stars of the game to the latest trends in the sport.

And how do academics with a hockey bent handle the dearth of hockey in the summertime?

Well, they do much the same thing.

The difference is many of them have the opportunity to write insightful papers on their favourite sport and then formally gather to discuss the hockey issues of the day.

The result of the latter group’s hockey fixation is not only mounds of interesting material on the sport but also events such as the Hockey Conference, a Thursday-to-Saturday gathering in Halifax next week hosted by the Centre for the Study of Sport and Health at Saint Mary’s University.

The Hockey Conference is an international event where the targeted hockey issues are analyzed in just about every way possible.

This is the third conference to be held in Halifax since the series was started here by Colin Howell, the director for the Centre for Study of Sport and Health at Saint Mary’s. He’s serving as chairman of this conference, just as he did at the first conference in 2001.

“There was so much being written by people in the area of sport studies, sport historians and sport sociologists around sports like baseball and football, but there really wasn’t much research being done on hockey across the disciplines — from history to sociology to sports psychology to management to whatever,” Howell said of why he started the conference.

Recognizing the need for more insightful hockey research and discussion, Howell took it upon himself to head the effort.

The result has been six conferences, including the present one, hosted by various universities. Aside from the three in Halifax, conferences have been held in Plymouth, Mass., Victoria and Buffalo. Each had a distinct hockey theme and enjoyed visits from different celebrities from the hockey world as well as the usual group of international contributors.

“All of the conferences have had themes,” Howell said. “The first one (in 2001), the two dimensions of it were hockey and cultural diversity, and the internationalization of the game. The second one was on women’s hockey.”

The theme next week is Constructing the Hockey Family: Home Community, Bureaucracy and Marketplace.

Here are a few of the discussion topics: Hockey: More Than a Game; The Role of the University in the Development of Hockey; The Forgotten Series: 1974 WHA All-Stars vs. the Soviet National Team; Scott Young and the Myths of Hockey; Drafting Fast and Slow: Do Scouts Think Too Much or Not Enough?; Investigating Player Salaries and Performance in the National Hockey League; Real Women Don’t Wear Pink: (Re)Conceptualizing Power and the Body Among Female Ice Hockey Athletes; and Hockey Parents and Sport Choice Decisions.

The complete schedule of topics can be found at www.hockeyconference.ca.

Don’t expect the views to always be what’s commonly heard in Canada. The participants bring attitudes from around the world. For example, for the discussion on international hockey, the panellists are from the United States, England, Sweden and Russia, as well as Canada.

Basically, this is a series of interesting hockey talks for hockey people, be they ordinary fans, coaches or players or academics who love to study hockey.

The conference is open to anyone and is free. All that’s needed is a passion for hockey.

(ccochrane@herald.ca)