Just over three years ago, I wrote a piece for The Hockey Writers that argued an inclusive NHL was waiting with open arms to welcome its first openly gay player. So, in that time has one managed to crack an NHL lineup and has the NHL become more welcoming to gay players living out in the open?
Related: An Inclusive NHL Awaits its First Openly Gay Player
The answer to the first question is none and to the second it’s no. In fact, in the years since I wrote that article, it looks like the NHL has run for cover when confronted by the major social issues of the day. It’s as if the league decided that it can only lose by taking clear stands in today’s raging culture wars. Pleasing one side risks angering the other.
Luke Prokop – First Openly Gay Player Under NHL Contract
While an openly gay player has yet to earn a regular spot in an NHL lineup, Luke Prokop is the first to come out while under contract to an NHL team. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound right-shot defenceman signed an entry-level contract with the Nashville Predators in December 2020 and now skates with the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League (AHL).
Upon coming out in July 2021, Prokop said, “It was definitely nerve-wracking. You never know what the reaction is going to be inside hockey, outside hockey, because no one has done it before. It’s been way more positive than we thought it’d be. I did not expect the amount of support I got from NHL players. That was really cool” (from, Joe Smith, ‘Luke Prokop on NHL’s Pride missteps and preparing to make hockey history,’ The Athletic, 11/17/23).
NHL Players More Supportive of Gay Players Than the League
Prokop is right – there’s no question that individually, NHL players want to make it easier for gay players in the league to come out into the open and be themselves. The first player he heard from after coming out was Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews who texted him saying, “Hey, it’s Auston Matthews, I wanted to congratulate you. I look forward to sharing the ice with you someday.”
That message was followed by the Boston Bruins’ Jake DeBrusk who during a four-on-four game among NHLers in the summer of 2021 tapped him on his shin pads and told him, “Congrats. I’m really happy for you. If you need anything, let me know.”
That the league’s players are ready to embrace openly gay players isn’t new. Bruins captain Brad Marchand took a stand against a homophobic slur directed at him on Twitter in 2016 and later said of his fellow NHLers, “Guys would accept it, no question (if a gay player came out). We’re a team in the locker room and a family. It doesn’t matter what different beliefs guys have, or where they come from, or whatever the case may be. Guys would accept it.”
There’s far more support for openly gay players among the NHL’s elite than just Matthews and Marchand. In my 2021 article, I noted the many NHLers, past and present, who have been big supporters of LGBTQ+ causes – former goalies Braden Holtby and Anders Nilsson to name just two. Others have marched in Pride Parades including Kyle Dubas, president of hockey operations with the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Maple Leafs’ Morgan Rielly and the New York Rangers’ Artemi Panarin. And who could forget the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl making a point of wrapping their sticks with Pride tape in December of last season after the NHL banned all specialty jerseys during warmup, including Pride jerseys in June 2023?
NHL Lags its Players on Gay Issues
The question this raises for many is why the NHL seems less willing than its players to embrace those skaters who are openly gay. Many thought banning Pride jerseys was bad enough – the equivalent of Florida’s “don’t say gay” law. But they were stunned when the NHL decreed in early October last year that the ban would extend to Pride Tape too. The tape ban was rescinded after Travis Dermott used Pride Tape in warmup before an Oct. 24 game last season between his then team, the Arizona Coyotes (now the Utah NHL franchise) and the Los Angeles Kings.
Banning Pride jerseys and other gear is not something that only the NHL has done. Major League Baseball (MLB) imposed the same ban across its 30-team league just a few months before the NHL outlawed Pride attire. Still, the decision is puzzling. It’s not like NHL fans were boycotting Pride nights and the league’s season’s ticket holders were refusing to renew. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that Pride Nights created at least as many new fans as they drove away.
McDavid called the NHL’s decision on specialty jerseys “disappointing.” He went on to explain that, “I certainly can’t speak for every organization. I know in Edmonton, we were one of the first teams to use the Pride tape. We strongly feel hockey is for everybody, and that includes the Pride nights.”
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman justified the ban on specialty jerseys by saying, “I’ve suggested that it would be appropriate for clubs not to change their jerseys in warmups because it’s become a distraction and taking away from the fact that all of our clubs in some form or another host nights in honour of various groups or causes, and we’d rather them continue to get the appropriate attention that they deserve and not be a distraction. In the final analysis, all of the emphasis and efforts on the importance of these various causes have been undermined by the distraction of which teams, which players (chose not to wear the jerseys), this way we’re keeping the focus on the game and on these specialty nights we’re going to be focussed on the cause.”
Alluding to the handful of players who declined to wear Pride jerseys for religious reasons, Bettman seemed to suggest that the ban was put in place out of respect for religious freedom. In his view, tolerance of varying viewpoints was part of being “open, welcoming and inclusive.”
It’s true that many Russian players rightly fear the consequences back in their homeland of wearing Pride jerseys in the NHL. Since 2013 it has been “illegal to spread ‘propaganda’ about ‘nontraditional sexual relations’ in all media, including social, advertising and movies” (from ‘The NHL’s Russia-Pride Jersey problem explained: Canadiens Denis Gurianov latest player to decline to participate’ The Athletic, 4/6/23).
Even so, how can the NHL be tolerant of intolerance? Why do the objections of just a handful of players to sporting Pride jerseys trump the wish of most NHLers to wear them once a year? Surely the NHL could have made wearing the jerseys optional. That would have solved their Russian problem.
Without a doubt, players refusing to wear the jerseys will suffer the wrath of many fans. Yet do players who embrace what many regard as homophobia in the name of their religion really expect to remain unscathed? All of us are entitled to express our opinions, including those that many consider loathsome. But others aren’t obliged to tolerate them. And as is their right, they may exact a price when you voice those views in word or deed.
To be fair to the NHL, Pride Nights along with many other so-called “cause” celebrations are still permitted by the league and left to the discretion of each franchise. What’s more, the league is still collecting autographed NHL Pride jerseys to auction off for various LGBTQ+ causes. Not only that, but it remains committed to supporting initiatives such as “Hockey is for Everyone” which uses the game – and the league’s global influence – to provide a positive environment for players, families and fans of every race, colour, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, socio-economic status and for those with disabilities.
NHL Avoids Culture Wars
Even so, ducking culture wars seems to be NHL policy now. Take the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As anger in 2020 rose over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the NHL refused to flash the BLM slogan on the jumbotron at the city’s Xcel Energy Center at the start of a Minnesota Wild playoff game. Instead, it displayed the insipid slogan “End Racism”. (show of hands please – does anyone disagree with that?) It has gone to great lengths to avoid using the politically charged term “Black Lives Matter” and seems doggedly determined to remain “apolitical.”
In trying to straddle both sides of the issue, the league has satisfied no one. Socially progressive fans are unhappy with the league sidestepping the use of the term, while the remainder, whether they are people who just want to enjoy “politics-free” hockey or those who oppose the BLM movement, are angry.
It’s puzzling then that the NHL didn’t apply this lesson in developing its policy on Pride jerseys. The move to ban them was a public relations disaster. The You Can Play Project, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ participation in sports and has partnered with the NHL for the past decade, blasted the league pointing out that, “if Hockey is for Everyone, this is not the way forward.”
The NHL Must Become More Gay Friendly
In the 107-year history of the NHL, there has never been a gay player who has come out – not even in retirement. That stands in sharp contrast to experience in other leagues where a trickle of gay players began coming out in the 1960s and ‘70s. In the NFL, 16 players have come out as gay or bisexual in that league’s 104-year history. Admittedly that’s a small number, but it’s better than the NHL’s record.
I pointed out in my 2021 article that it’s preposterous to argue there are simply no gay players in the NHL. Do the math – assuming 4.5 percent of the population belongs to the LGBTQ+ community and that half of those are gay, does anyone really believe that not one of the more than 750 players skating in an NHL uniform could be gay? I also dealt with several theories as to why there has never been an openly gay NHLer. Yet none of this really matters.
The NHL needs to set itself apart from other professional sports leagues and it can do that by making itself more accommodating to gay players. Instead, it offers itself as a “me-too” sports league doing no more, nor less than what most other major sports leagues do to embrace gay players.
Every team in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB), except the Texas Rangers, has a Pride celebration. In the National Football League (NFL) Pride Nights are relatively new and not as common as they are in other sports, but that’s understandable since Pride Month falls well outside the NFL season. Still, most NFL teams and the league itself are heavily engaged in off-field LGBTQ+ events.
Embracing Gay Fans Good for NHL’s Business
I get that the NHL, like most other businesses, tries to avoid controversy by remaining neutral on the great social and political issues of the day. Yet customers need to be able to see themselves and their values reflected in the products they buy. That means that the NHL must go to greater lengths to accommodate the LGBTQ+ community in the entertainment product it sells. Banning Pride jerseys and tape was a step backward.
The league needs to consider whether it can afford to alienate as large and as wealthy a market as the LGBTQ+ community. NHL hockey has now been surpassed by soccer as the fourth most popular sport in the US – behind baseball, basketball and football. And its television audience is shrinking year after year.
It needs its LBGTQ+ fan base and those fans need to be able to see themselves in the game through more openly gay players on NHL rosters.
