NHL’s warmup jersey stance shows hockey is for everyone — just not as openly as before

Inside the NHL

My late mother’s longtime boyfriend had two adult sons, one of who happened to be gay.

As kind and generous as my mother’s friend, Mike, was to us for decades before his passing, he was older and raised overseas in a conservative country where homosexuality wasn’t yet part of open conversation. So, he had trouble accepting his gay son’s sexual orientation and made it obvious through actions and awkwardly timed words.

It took years before they could even dine together with us at home or in restaurants without getting into arguments, and years more of lobbying by all of us before the son’s longtime male partner was allowed to join our evenings out. Even then, more time was needed before the subject of them being together could be broached openly with Mike at the table, uncomfortable as their presence made him — especially in public at a restaurant. 

This immensely frustrated the son, who complained often about this dinnertime “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy privately to my mother, brother and me. Though he loved his father and eventually grew to learn the feeling was reciprocal, he rightly felt their dinner presence was merely being tolerated rather than accepted for what it was.

That’s something I thought about plenty last week when the NHL announced it was backtracking on allowing players to wear specially designed warmup jerseys supportive of various communities and causes. While the decision impacts all groups, it came about only after a handful of Russian players last season declined to don Pride-themed warmup jerseys citing orthodox religious beliefs and worries they’d run afoul of recent anti-gay laws within their home country. Others such as San Jose Sharks netminder James Reimer and brothers Eric and Marc Staal of the Florida Panthers also declined to wear Pride Night jerseys, saying it went against their Christian beliefs.

In discussing the reversal, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman cited the well-publicized controversy over those declining to wear the jerseys, telling Sportsnet, “It’s become a distraction.”

“Our clubs, in some form or another, host nights in honor of various groups or causes,” Bettman said. “We’d rather them continue to get the appropriate attention that they deserve and not be a distraction.”

In short, the league backtracked at the first sign of trouble.

The NHL’s revised position, like my mother’s friend Mike at our dinners, shows some LGBTQ+ “tolerance” but falls short of the “acceptance” goal the league itself had prioritized. Its message to the LGBTQ+ community, intended or otherwise, could easily be interpreted as, “We’ll tolerate your night as long as our players don’t have to outwardly support you in front of the paying customers.”

For me, it didn’t seem much different from inviting Mike’s son and his boyfriend to dinner but insisting they and everybody else pretend they weren’t a couple. There’s a fine line between tolerance and true acceptance that the league appears to be trampling over. 

“I think it just seems like such a big step backward for the NHL to make this decision,” said Joey Gale, co-founder of the Seattle Pride Hockey Association, which staged its third annual LGBTQ+ tournament a few weeks back at the Kraken Community Iceplex.

Gale’s association was the recipient of proceeds from auctions of Pride Night warmup jerseys worn by Kraken players and auctioned off by the team’s One Roof Foundation.

Teams under the revised policy can still hold themed nights, which the Kraken plan to continue for Pride, Black Hockey History, Military Appreciation, Indigenous Peoples, Women in Hockey, Lunar New Year, Hockey Fights Cancer and an environmental Green Night. They can even design special jerseys for the events, have individual players “model” them and continue auctioning them off.

But the league won’t let those jerseys see the ice. And that could lower their value and auction returns.

It also dampens jersey value beyond monetary measurements.

“It goes back to just the highest levels of visibility,” Gale said. “When we’re able to see people waving a Pride flag, or people are vocal or visible or willing to share their support — whether by wearing something or saying something on the record — that has value to youth and to the community.

“So, when you take something like jerseys away, it’s not just the photography or the marketing materials that disappear. It’s the impact it has on youth players. The impact we see on people this really matters to. They’re not going to be able to see their heroes represent them in ways they used to.”

Ari Glass, a local artist who designed Kraken warmup jerseys for Black Hockey History Night, was stunned to hear future versions won’t be worn. 

“That’s kind of the whole thing, right?” Glass said. “It’s like you make a jersey, but now none of the players wear the jersey? It’s cool that you can still make a jersey, but it doesn’t really bring it full circle if players are not wearing that jersey that you designed for the players on that team.”

Glass said other Black community members, friends and families he’d discussed his jersey design with viewed it as a chance to “bring different cultures together” in a “fresh” way.

“Especially for me, growing up, and people in the Black community, we were never really into hockey,” he said. “We never had a team. And we weren’t used to being on the ice and watching winter sports.”

Glass said “cross-cultural dialogue” is something he strives for and it was “validating” for him and Black community members to see players wearing his work. “So, to not have the players wear that, that’s not really where it’s at.”

What’s frustrating so many is that NHL players, even outwardly Christian ones such as Ryan Donato and Philipp Grubauer of the Kraken, overwhelmingly wore Pride jerseys without issue. Wearing them was never meant to indoctrinate anyone into the communities being honored or get them to repudiate their own beliefs.

Rather, it was merely players showing those communities basic decency, support and respect.

“It’s disappointing to see,” Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid said of the league’s reversal after winning the Hart Trophy on Monday night, adding: “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.”

McDavid’s words matter. But so do his league’s actions. 

“It just feels like such a big step backward on the progress we’ve seen specifically from the NHL the last few years,” Gale said. “It seems like they’ve tried to move things in the right direction. But, yeah, this is a big blow.”

A blow that won’t quickly be softened by continuing to invite them to dinner while insisting they keep a lower profile.