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Though the makeup of the fanbase is a big factor, a large part of it is due to the player-base and the environment cultivated in locker rooms at every level of the sport.

If you haven't already; I'd recommend reading this article by Akim Aliu which touches on his experiences in youth, OHL, and the NHL all of which have an overwhelmingly hostile environment for anyone who's not a "good ol' Canadian boy".

Just look at Don Cherry; racist piece of shit former coach, player, and commentator who spent decades spreading hateful rhetoric. And his eventual firing just last year for clearly racist comments provoked widespread opposition in so many hockey circles.

edit: Also, just read up on Mitchell Miller

There are several reasons IMO:

• It's a very white sport

• It's a very expensive sport to play, which means that a lot of the people who can actually afford to play are from wealthy families

• People are getting poorer and thus less younger people are playing/watching hockey, meaning that there's probably a higher boomer ratio than other sports (case in point: hockey is no longer the top sport in Toronto because basketball has a much lower barrier of entry ᵃˡˢᵒ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᴿᵃᵖᵗᵒʳˢ ᵃʳᵉ ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ)

• It's historically stoked lots of xenophobia, especially during the red scare w/ the Soviet Red Army teams. A large number of hockey fans, especially older ones, haven't been able to let go of their "good ol' Canadian boy" prejudices, not helped by dinosaurs like Don Cherry

• Hockey, like most sports, is hyper militarized - constant bombardment of military propaganda during games

• Hockey players are conditioned to be reserved and conservative, in manner and dress - usually in opposition to the way athletes act in other sports. See how angry people get when a hockey player is too happy for scoring. Of course this has racist implications too, see Evander Kane in Winnipeg.

• Hockey is a violent sport that has fostered toxic masculinity mentalities for ages, especially since fighting and violent head collisions were pretty much unofficially allowed for most of its existence and any talk to the contrary was considered "soft" - which in turn also makes a lot of hockey players super homophobic (source: routinely heard slurs when I played)

• Hockey is the _only sport in some smaller Canadian towns and a lot of those towns tend to lean reactionary

• Edit: Someone else brought up a good point, hockey is a very "justice served" type sport that appeals to punitive justice crowds, e.g. if one of your players gets injured by a hit, fans are going to be calling for blood

Pretty much every sport that's mostly white is gonna have a lot of chud fans. And youth hockey is mostly played in places where only white people live, so the fans are like the whitest of the white people. Youth hockey in particular is also pretty expensive with the equipment and the travel club teams and all that, so it has a lot of upper middle class types, which is pretty much Trump's base.

OP: complains about chuds

Also OP: cheers for the team representing fucking Quebec

(Obv this is a joke)

Hockey is a sport that costs a lot of money to play. It's no wonder that the people who can afford to play it aren't going to have class consciousness.

every queer canadian has a permanent fear of hockey players after high school, this is a fact

Seconding Akim Aliu's article.

Also between equipment and ice time it's the most expensive of the major sports to start playing as a kid.

And I think a lot of the enforcer/fighting stuff appeals pretty hard to the punitive justice crowd.

It fucking sucks too because hockey is arguably the biggest sport where the team is emphasized over the individual.

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Don Cherry warped the brain of hockey dads for like 3 decades.

Honestly, it's because of how whit the sport is.

I don't follow hockey, but I follow auto racing. It has a similar issue, particularly NASCAR.