Yukon Joe
Registered User
What the hell is going on when a company's policies can apparently be classified as "Say Gay" and "Don't Say Gay".
Given it was a very small number of players (five?) out of 800 that, within their rights, made an individual choice to not participate fully (they did play in the game) would seem to give a clear indication that the league is "inclusive" would it not?
When the work "still needs to be done", it will be never be done.
So keeping on the business topic...
I don't think it was even 5 players - I think it was two (Provorov and Reimer). But to be honest - the media didn't focus on all the players who did wear Pride jerseys, but rather on the two who didn't. The league felt this was a bad look, so banned all themed jerseys in future. Then just a few days ago they banned any coloured tape during special event games (as far as I can tell a player could wear pride tape during an ordinary game).
I rather think though that if the league had just left it alone the story would have died down. Hey - nobody is talking about NFL players refusing to come out for the anthem anymore, right?
But, in my opinion, the league made the situation worse by banning the jerseys (and tape), thus ensuring it revived the story, and will revive it again the first time a player wears rainbow tape in defiance of league rules.
From a business perspective the NHL is in a no win situation. If they ban teams from having support the troop nights--the same people who hated Pride night will be up in arm over that ban
Just a reminder - the league will continue to have both pride nights and "support the troops" nights. What's been banned is special jerseys for the players on those nights (plus also special tape).