P.K. Subban’s “polarizing” personality lands him in the New Yorker

Living in Toronto and consuming Toronto-based media can sometimes make it hard to tell when a Torontonian has truly become world famous, rather than just-in-Canada famous. Here’s one way we can know that P.K. Subban’s celebrity doesn’t end at the border: he was just profiled by the New Yorker. Anyone who read Toronto Life’s 2013 story about Subban and his family will already be familiar with the Rexdale-raised Montreal Canadiens defenceman’s biography, but the New Yorker piece, by Ben McGrath, takes an outsider’s view of P.K.’s rise through the Canadian hockey machine. Readers get an introduction to Westmount, the Montreal enclave where Subban is looking to buy a home (preferably one with cedar closets for his furs), and, at one point, out of consideration for American readers who have never been subjected to Coach’s Corner, McGrath even spends a full paragraph explaining who Don Cherry is. Mostly, though, the article is a meditation on professional hockey’s deeply conservative value system, and why Subban’s ebullient personality is so disruptive to it. It’s worth a read.