Three weeks into Pride Month, and the National Hockey League is worn out by all the drama.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said teams are no longer going to be wearing themed jerseys for any warm-ups during specialty nights like Pride Night. No pink ribbon jerseys for breast cancer awareness. No special camo-styled jerseys to recognize veterans for Veterans Day. And no rainbow jerseys for LGBTQ+.
A growing number of players and teams had been refusing to wear the special LGBTQ-theme jerseys.
Bettman told Sportsnet following the NHL’s Board of Governors meeting on Thursday, “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 honor of various groups or causes, and we’d rather them continue to get the appropriate attention that they deserve and not be a distraction. But in the final analysis, all of the efforts and emphasis on the importance of these various causes have been undermined by the distraction in terms of which teams, which players, this way we’re keeping the focus on the game and on these specialty nights, we’re going to be focused on the cause,” he said.
The league’s Board of Governors agreed with Bettman’s view that the players’ refusals, which started in January and have grown over the months, overshadowed the point of hockey.
The pushback began Jan. 17, when Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov was the first to refuse, saying the LGBTQ-themed clothing goes against his Russian Orthodox beliefs.
“I respect everyone. I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said. He added that his own choice was staying true to himself and his religion.
Then, on Jan. 27, the New York Rangers scheduled its “Pride Night,” but at the last minute issued a statement saying the Rangers would not be wearing rainbow attire in the warmup period before they played the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Apparently the team members were rebelling.
“Our organization respects the LGBTQ+ community and we are proud to bring attention to important local community organizations as part of another great Pride Night,” the Rangers wrote. “In keeping with our organization’s core values, we support everyone’s individual right to respectfully express their beliefs.”
The controversy kept going, week after week, with either a team or a player making the statement that they would not participate in donning the rainbow. The NHL has thus decided that no specialty warm-up jerseys will be worn from here on out.
