1 “Discrimination against French -Canadians in the National Hockey League: An Anthropometric Revision” John Cranfield, 1 Kris Inwood, 2 J. Andrew Ross 3 Introduction Discrimination based on ethnicity and race has been extensively studied for its effects on professional sports recruitment, salary levels and segregation (Kahn 1991). In many American major league sports (basketball, football, baseball) the issue has been racial discrimination, but in major league hockey, which has historically been based on Canadian players, the discrimination has been ethnic and, in the period before 1970, overt. Our research question is whether there is a persisting discrimination against an ethnic- linguistic group, Francophones (French-Canadians, who form a majority in the province of Quebec, but a linguistic and ethnic minority in Canada), after 1970s, and if so, which factors explain it. Literature Review In the 1970s Marple (1975) and Boileau and Boulanger (1982) identified an apparent under- representation of Francophones in the National Hockey League. In the 1980s the issue was taken up by Lavoie, Grenier, and Coulombe (1987, 1989), who found that while by some measures French Canadian (and European) skaters (i.e., non-goalies) performed better than English Canadian and American players, they were underrepresented in the NHL, suggesting that overt discrimination by general managers, 1 Professor, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph 2 Professor, Department of Economics and Department of History, University of Guelph 3 (corresponding author) Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Guelph (50 Stone Road, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1, Tel: 519-824-4120 x 52279, jaross@uoguelph.ca)