No Issue of Pride in the PHF

Unlike the NHL, the PHF's Pride initiatives went off without a hitch, showing full support for LGBTQ+ people in hockey.

While the NHL dealt with a number of issues this season related to Pride celebrations, North America’s lone professional women’s hockey league, the PHF, had none.

When each PHF team stepped on the ice during the 2022-2023 season, there were no refusals to wear jerseys for religious reasons or nationality. Pride jerseys were also worn during games, not only warm ups.

“It’s really important that we do this, it’s really important… that all sports teams and sports leagues do it,” Metropolitan Riveters captain Madison Packer said of her team wearing Pride jerseys.

“We have an obligation as athletes to use our platform for positivity and for good. there’s a lot of kids sitting at home right now questioning who they are as people. When we push back and we don’t put a jersey on because it means something to us personally, we do damage to those kids.”

The issue, which has seen multiple NHL teams pull out of planned Pride jersey’s for warmups, as well as players such as James Reimer, Eric Staal, Marc Staal, Andrei Kuzmenko and others sit out of warm ups in order to not be seen wearing the Pride jersey, avoided all issue in the PHF.

For each team’s respective Pride night, all PHF players participated.

The league itself features many openly gay players and in 2021 published a transgender and non-binary player policy. The policy itself received some criticism, but many leagues across North America lack any form of policy related to the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

Teams, including the regular season champion Boston Pride also took the opportunity to post in recognition of International Transgender Day of Visibility in March, as the Pride wrote “The Pride honors and supports the Trans community.”

Perhaps the most famous openly transgender hockey player, Harrison Browne got his start in the National Women’s Hockey League playing for the Buffalo Beauts and Metropolitan Riveters from 2015 until 2018. Browne has become a noted transgender rights advocate after leaving the league following the 2017-2018 season to continue transitioning. Browne was the first openly transgender athlete in American professional sports.