Highlights: Rainbow-colored Pride Tape has been part of pro ice hockey for seven years, symbolizing the sport’s pledge to be welcoming and inclusive. But the NHL has banned the athletic tape, quickly sparking a backlash.
“I’ll use the tape — if I have to buy it myself, I will,” Philadelphia Flyers forward Scott Laughton said on Wednesday, discussing how he would mark his team’s Pride Night.
The NHL announced over the summer that its players will no longer wear special jerseys during warmups to mark “theme nights,” when teams show support for a variety of groups, from the LGBTQ+ community to Indigenous groups, the military, and people fighting cancer. But as the NHL prepared to start a new season, it sent a memo announcing the ban also applies to Pride Tape.
The abrupt shift came after several NHL players made headlines last season for refusing to wear Pride Night themed jerseys, citing religious or other reasons.
The multicolored Pride Tape quickly became an “ingrained part of hockey culture” — and that quote comes from the NHL’s own website, in a story from 2021.
Pride Tape was backed by a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, as a simple way to encourage LGBTQ+ youth to get involved in team sports.
It’s one thing to not do pride jerseys anymore. It’s a whole other level of fucked up that they are banning fucking tape. This is basically saying they do not want any openly LGBTQ players or allies of them.
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A few players cause a massive public relations nightmare for being bigots, and your conclusion is to get mad at the public for having bad relations and not the bigots? That’s a terrible conclusion.
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More like the NHL tried to do an inclusive event, but 2 or 3 players were able to spit on the whole thing, and the NHL allowed them to very visibly undermine it, justifiably calling the whole thing into question. If the NHL allows that, then I’m sure they aren’t as progressive as they’d like to appear.
If it was truly only 2 or 3 players, I doubt there’d be much pushback from the union for taking action after making them all look bad. This kind of thing only works if literally everyone participates. If those players refused, they shouldn’t have been let on the ice at the very least. Being willing to do that would say way more for the NHL’s support for the LGBT community than wearing rainbow jerseys.
The NHL has shown this was just a PR stunt and doesn’t actually have the backs of its fans. Now, those 2-3 players have somehow forced a multi-billion dollar corporation to completely roll over and drop any pretense of support for the LGBT community in its entirety. I’m surprised they didn’t just fire them for causing such a headache and to help save face.
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I’m really mad I learned Provorov is a homophobe after I got his jersey. The NHL is spineless
I am not a sports person (other than the occasional soccer match), but aren’t all of them (nhl, nfl, nba, mlb) spineless?
MLB has been pretty good LGBT support wise and the NBA is pretty good too minus some of their China hand waving. At the end of the day they’re all corporate and thus amoral but I still think there’s a spectrum in terms of actions, even if the motive is financial.
NBA is the leader. Not perfect but far and away the best.
The NBA tries to be “woke” to appeal to the kids. They pushed out a team owner who was openly racist. They don’t seem to tolerate racist and homophobic jears from fans.
Most of the players are black, so they don’t expect them not to comment on BLM or to all stand for the national anthem. They have had some problems with players being anti-Semitic, they have punished them enough to get them to keep their mouth shut.
Wear it with rainbow spandex tights.
Sell it. It’ll lose them a sale, and you won’t need to keep it.
Unfortunately he got traded so I don’t think anyone wants it. I’ll wait for someone to take his old number and do a nameplate change, I’ve seen pretty decent replacement ones from China.
Older fans like the decision. The players and the younger fans do not.
What are you talking about? The NHL is the most inclusive of all professional sports. They welcome everyone from all sorts of backgrounds. They’re the inclusivest!
Was downvoting … until “inclusivest”.
Lol
It’s the little things. I guess people don’t pick up on them often.
I use /s so it’s clear.
Sarcasm is easy to miss (imo anyway, cause I miss it often).
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Why are all these homophs afraid of gays?
This means we’re allowed to drag them behind cars until they stop moving. (The homophobe, not the car)
Never let a person with prejudice have a voice or a pulse.
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