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.
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.