The National Hockey League will no longer be mandating its teams to participate in celebratory themed game-day promotions by wearing specialty sweaters in warmup.
The National Hockey League will no longer be mandating its teams to participate in celebratory themed game-day promotions by wearing specialty sweaters in warmup.
This means that the Pride Night, Armed Forces Night and Hockey Fights Cancer Night specialty jerseys will not be on the docket in 2023-24 and beyond.
Teams will still honour such events, but the mandatory use of a league-approved, team-issue sweater will no longer be in effect.
This change comes directly from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman from the NHL Board of Governors meetings, amid Pride Month in North America.
“We’re keeping the focus on the game. And on these specialty nights, we’re going to be focused on the cause," Bettman said.
“That’s just become more of a distraction from really the essence of what the purpose of these nights are."
This past season, a number of players and teams opted out of wearing the sweater or participating in warmups in the sweater.
The seven players were Ivan Provorov, James Reimer, Marc Staal, Eric Staal, Ilya Lyubushkin, Denis Gurianov and Andrei Kuzmenko. While the Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers and Minnesota Wild - all of whom have prevalent Russian players on their team (Kremlin law restricts LGBTQ propaganda and behaviour).
Bettman previously spoke about the individuals and teams that chose to opt-out back at the 2023 All-Star Weekend.
“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,” Bettman stated in February. “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.”
The 'You Can Play' initiative, which has worked across a variety of leagues and sports around the world to instil inclusion no matter gender or age or race, is disappointed with the NHL's choice.
"We are concerned and disappointed by this decision," You Can Play shared. "Today's decision means that the over 95% of players who chose to wear a Pride jersey to support the community will now not get an opportunity to do so. Pride nights will continue and we look forward to further enhancing the programming these opportunities bring to the mission of inclusion and belonging for the 2SLGBTQ+ community given this restriction.
As we have stated in the past, no one aspect is the be all for showing support and Pride must be 365. The work to make locker rooms, board rooms and arenas safer, more diverse, and more inclusive needs to be ongoing and purposeful, and we will continue to work with our partners at the NHL, including individual teams, players, agents and the NHLPA to ensure this critical work continues."