Florida Panthers goaltender Alex Lyon (34) warms up while celebrating Pride Night with a colorful hockey stick before playing the Toronto Maple Leafs, Thursday, March 23, 2023, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Michael Laughlin, File)
By Stephen Whyno
The NHL sent a memo to teams last week clarifying what players can and cannot do as part of theme celebrations this season, including a ban on the use of rainbow-colored stick tape for the Pride nights that have become a hot-button issue in hockey.
The updated guidance reaffirms on-ice player uniforms and gear for games, warmups and official team practices cannot be altered to reflect theme nights, including Pride, Hockey Fights Cancer or military appreciation celebrations. Players can voluntarily participate in themed celebrations off the ice.
Deputy NHL Commissioner Bill Daly confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday, a few hours before the season opened with a trio of games, that the league sent the updated memo, which was first reported by ESPN.
The You Can Play Project, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ participation in sports and has partnered with the NHL for the past decade, ripped the league by saying, “If Hockey is for Everyone, this is not the way forward.”
“It is now clear that the NHL is stepping back from its longstanding commitment to inclusion, and continuing to unravel all of its one-time industry-leading work on 2SLGBTQ+ belonging,” the YCP Project said in a statement. “We are now at a point where all the progress made, and relationships established with our community, is in jeopardy. Making decisions to eradicate our visibility in hockey — by eliminating symbols like jerseys and now Pride Tape — immediately stunts the impact of bringing in more diverse fans and players into the sport.”
The NHL decided in June not to allow teams to wear any theme jerseys for warmups after a handful of players opted out of those situations during Pride night last season. The league has said players opting out of Pride nights served as a distraction to the work its teams were doing in the community.
“You know what our goals, our values and our intentions are across the league, whether it’s at the league level or at the club level,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said in February during All-Star Weekend festivities. “But we also have to respect some individual choice, and some people are more comfortable embracing themselves in causes than others. And part of being diverse and welcoming is understanding those differences.”
Philadelphia's Ivan Provorov was the first player to decide not to take part in warmups when the Flyers wore rainbow-colored jerseys before their Pride night game in January, citing his Russian Orthodox religion. Six other players followed for a variety of reasons — fellow Russians Ilya Lyubushkin, Denis Gurianov and Andrei Kuzmenko and Canadians James Reimer and Eric and Marc Staal — and individual teams including the New York Rangers, Minnesota Wild and Chicago Blackhawks decided not to have any players wear Pride jerseys in warmup.
“The Pride Tape team is extremely disappointed by the NHL’s decision,” the makers of Pride Tape said in a statement. “Despite this setback, we are encouraged for what lies ahead based on our recent conversations from every corner of the sport.”
Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly told reporters in Toronto he wished players had the right to do more and be more involved.
“I’m going to continue to be involved in the community and offer support to those communities and those groups that want that (and) need that,” Rielly said.
Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Beyond the Spotlight,' a biography series about the intriguing people who capture our attention, fill our social feeds, and shape pop culture.
"Anything Is Possible," a documentary about NBA superstar Kevin Garnett recounting his career from being drafted out of high school to a championship with the Boston Celtics, is set to premiere on Showtime. Executive producer Marc Levin and co-directors Daniel Levin and Eric Newman joined Cheddar to provide some background on the project and discuss Garnett's legacy. With KG considered a pioneer for modern NBA draftees straight out of high school (the fifth pick in 1995), the filmmakers also discussed the possibility of the league reversing course on its current rule that requires a player to be at least 19-years-old and a year removed from high school to play.
Professional sports is facing a reckoning right now over several stories painting an ugly picture of a toxic work environment, encompassing multiple teams in multiple leagues and dealing with different issues.
This week, the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks ousted their general manager and senior director of hockey operations after an investigation confirmed former player Kyle Beach's claims that the team's former video coach Brad Aldrich sexual assaulted him back in 2010, with upper management ignoring his claims until after the team won the Stanley Cup that season. Last night, Joel Quenneville, now the coach of the Florida Panthers but Chicago's coach that season, stepped down from his post.
This comes just a few weeks after the NFL was rocked by leaked emails showing now-former Las Vegas Raiders Head Coach Jon Gruden using racist, sexist and homophobic language. He resigned soon after the emails came to light. We can't forget, though, that those emails come from a much broader investigation of the toxic work environment in the offices of the Washington Football Team. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said this week the league wouldn't publicly release anything from its investigation of the team, but lawyers for many of the women interviewed in the case say they want a public report.
And last January, just one month after hiring him, the New York Mets had to fire then-General manager Jared Porter, who admitted to sending explicit, unsolicited texts and images to a female reporter in 2016 when he worked for the Chicago Cubs. ESPN had been in possession of the texts since 2017, but the woman in question asked the network not to run the story out of fear her career would be harmed. She only reached back out to ESPN after she left the field of journalism altogether. Porter has been banned from the sport through next season.
If you believe in the phrase "where there's smoke, there's fire," professional sports is a five-alarm blaze.
Julie DiCaro, senior writer and editor at Deadspin, joins None of the Above to discuss.
Jill and Carlo discuss the scenes of joy at American airports as borders reopen, another tool in the Covid toolbox, the latest in the Astroworld crowd crush tragedy and more.
Gaming technology studio Mythical Games recently raised $150 million in a round led by Andreesen Horowitz, bringing Mythical's valuation to above unicorn status at $1.2 billion. Mythical Games' mission is to create a new generation of gaming with play-to-earn games that allow players to play to win actual cryptocurrency. Now the company is taking it to another level with NFT technology, allowing players to play with characters they can truly own. Mythical Games CEO John Linden joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Evan Vandenberg, the founder and CEO of Dibbs, a sports card trading platform, joined Cheddar to break down how his company allows sports fans to buy and sell fractions of sports cards. The physical trading cards are typically held in a vault while fans are provided with a digital representation of that card that they can go on to sell or even buy more fractions of the item. Vanderberg also talked about the company's $13 million Series A funding round and investments from major sports figures like the NBA's Chris Paul and NFL's DeAndre Hopkins.
A Freitag pod with Carlo and Baker, talking about the upcoming federal vax-or-test deadline, the most shocking upset of this week's elections, an incredible story of selflessness and Love, Hate, Ate.
