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***boom*** · 03-07-2023, 11:43 PM

Wild are, if I’ve been paying attention, the third team this season to nope out of wearing Pride jerseys at the last minute, reportedly an organizational decision.

tired. this week has been so hard and while it’s performative it’s still nice to feel seen when these things do happen.

hockey is for everyone feels hollow.

sending love.

***luke*** · 03-07-2023, 11:44 PM

And it was a boring hockey game to watch. Karma?

kit · 03-08-2023, 12:38 AM

i think its prob an organizational decision so kaprizov doesn't get singled out, purely speculation and its still shitty.

spooked · 03-08-2023, 12:48 AM

Yeah, organizations are doing it and I expect it to continue, not because they are not doing anything, but because it carries risk of being a distraction if one of any of their roster is a little shit about it, from now until the end of time. Sens had rainbow tshirts around the whole stadium making a rainbow and had it broadcast multiple times across multiple platforms on multiple days, and had an LGBT hockey team invited to a private pick up game with the alumni, and a bunch of other stuff I am sure I didn't know about since I have moved away and don't keep up with the non-hockey stuff much anymore, but they too did not have anything in their practice uniform (but are auctioning off pride jerseys silently I think as well it has been reported, so they can probably be added to the list).

I would expect it to be the norm to invite their players to use rainbow tape or whatever kind of self-chosen positive expression they want (Chabot was wearing the team's pride hat after the game during interviews etc.), but mandating a jersey to be worn is inviting negativity by putting people who don't support in the headlines and just is more headache than it is worth when they can do 100 other things that achieves the same positives as a practice jersey would (or more) without inviting any negativity over a player's personal decisions or making the player's personal feeling be a bigger headline than the team's positive initiatives.

**_Blitz_** · 03-08-2023, 01:26 AM

03-07-2023, 11:44 PMluke Wrote: And it was a boring hockey game to watch. Karma?

Is it still karma if it could have been expected? That franchise earned their "Mild" nickname. Takes a while for that to go away.

**_Blitz_** · 03-08-2023, 01:39 AM

I think ultimately, while it hurts, this rejection of the LGBTQIA+ community is a byproduct of the same shitty culture we've seen around hockey in other facets lately. The toxic man-bro bullshit that has players pissing on their teammates, using all manner of slurs, assaulting each other, and sexually assaulting women is the same reason that players won't wear a rainbow jersey. They have grown up with and into, "What, are you gay or something?!" being a heavy rebuke, and they don't want it. It's sad. It hurts. It's stupid. But, it's happening.

Until the culture around hockey changes, all of these things that are coming to light that make this sport difficult to enjoy are going to be part-and-parcel to the experience of being a hockey fan. Luckily, the rugs are being lifted and it's an opportunity for that detritus to get swept out and away, but it's still going to take time.

PremierBromanov · 03-08-2023, 10:37 AM

"State" of "hockey" has zero cups, not surprising they are massive shitbags.

***boom*** · 03-08-2023, 03:42 PM

03-08-2023, 12:48 AMspooked Wrote: Yeah, organizations are doing it and I expect it to continue, not because they are not doing anything, but because it carries risk of being a distraction if one of any of their roster is a little shit about it, from now until the end of time. Sens had rainbow tshirts around the whole stadium making a rainbow and had it broadcast multiple times across multiple platforms on multiple days, and had an LGBT hockey team invited to a private pick up game with the alumni, and a bunch of other stuff I am sure I didn't know about since I have moved away and don't keep up with the non-hockey stuff much anymore, but they too did not have anything in their practice uniform (but are auctioning off pride jerseys silently I think as well it has been reported, so they can probably be added to the list).

I would expect it to be the norm to invite their players to use rainbow tape or whatever kind of self-chosen positive expression they want (Chabot was wearing the team's pride hat after the game during interviews etc.), but mandating a jersey to be worn is inviting negativity by putting people who don't support in the headlines and just is more headache than it is worth when they can do 100 other things that achieves the same positives as a practice jersey would (or more) without inviting any negativity over a player's personal decisions or making the player's personal feeling be a bigger headline than the team's positive initiatives.

we're not asking for much here. it's wearing a rainbow for 15 minutes. letting homophobes run under the radar is not the solution. these jerseys do have an impact in that the game-used jerseys are auctioned off for queer charities in the area, and nixing the jerseys at the last minute stabs those organizations in the back by reducing the funding they would have gotten. something like this would be a complete blindside to those charities and fans who were going to be in attendance.

this was an organization that had no issue announcing a law enforcement appreciation night in august with some iffy imagery. an organization that plays near minneapolis. but pride night was a step too far. if a player ever refused to wear a camo warmup they would be raked over the coals.

we know wearing the jersey is performative, as is rainbow capitalism in general. we're realists. but it's still nice to feel seen, especially for queer youth for whom this team could have been a role model in the community. especially with how this last week has gone in the USA in particular, it's just feeling like nhl teams care less for trans people whose lives are under attack (and who have historically faced an unwelcoming hockey culture) and more about the comfort of homophobes. do better nhl.

spooked · 03-08-2023, 05:16 PM

03-08-2023, 03:42 PMboom Wrote: we're not asking for much here. it's wearing a rainbow for 15 minutes. letting homophobes run under the radar is not the solution. these jerseys do have an impact in that the game-used jerseys are auctioned off for queer charities in the area, and nixing the jerseys at the last minute stabs those organizations in the back by reducing the funding they would have gotten. something like this would be a complete blindside to those charities and fans who were going to be in attendance.

this was an organization that had no issue announcing a law enforcement appreciation night in august with some iffy imagery. an organization that plays near minneapolis. but pride night was a step too far. if a player ever refused to wear a camo warmup they would be raked over the coals.

we know wearing the jersey is performative, as is rainbow capitalism in general. we're realists. but it's still nice to feel seen, especially for queer youth for whom this team could have been a role model in the community. especially with how this last week has gone in the USA in particular, it's just feeling like nhl teams care less for trans people whose lives are under attack (and who have historically faced an unwelcoming hockey culture) and more about the comfort of homophobes. do better nhl.

Lets just say if I was from Russia, had trouble getting into the US already, and knew what my government has done to people who didn't follow their ideals, and had family there still or had any reason to go back at any point in time, I would probably want to avoid being photographed in a pride-related anything for the time being. Wasn't too long ago they had some hockey players bound for North America enlisted wasn't it?

You will never know the full reason or hear the full discussion on why the jerseys weren't worn, but having very little detailed knowledge about geopolitics, and even me being able to have an idea that it wouldn't be good for Ovi to be seen in a pride jersey back home, makes me put a little bit of pause on judging this situation for now. It's not morally correct, but I am not going to pretend that for every single player the decision is as easy as just wearing a jersey.

spooked · 03-08-2023, 05:20 PM

I think it is also important to note that the players choice, and organizations choices are not the same thing. The organization also has a responsibility to shield the player from the media, but they also won't come out and say why they pulled the jerseys either because there isn't any positives to that really for them, but I don't think they would have done so without a good reason either. I also don't think we would be seeing it happen en-masse without the reason being serious either. Hopefully the organizations can figure out something that works going forward and continue to build onto their support like they have been over the past decade, but its a bit quick to pull out the pitch forks now. Give the actual investigative journalists some more time to get some info in my opinion.

scudmuffin19 · 03-08-2023, 06:02 PM

03-07-2023, 11:43 PMboom Wrote: Wild are, if I’ve been paying attention, the third team this season to nope out of wearing Pride jerseys at the last minute, reportedly an organizational decision.

tired. this week has been so hard and while it’s performative it’s still nice to feel seen when these things do happen.

hockey is for everyone feels hollow.

sending love.

ily boom <3

*sköldpaddor* · 03-08-2023, 06:13 PM

the organization absolutely does not have a responsibility to protect players from the consequences of their bigotry.

Teams have been wearing pride jerseys for a long time, it's not like this is a new initiative for this season. I could be wrong, but to the best of my knowledge, no Russian player has been slapped by Putin for wearing a pride jersey in a team initiative pride night (if anyone has any examples to the contrary, please let me know). The fact that it's now appearing as a "choice" and something that players can just opt out of it and the onus is shifted to the team to "protect" them by saying "okay guess we just won't wear them at all, we wouldn't want this one guy to look bad" is absolutely unacceptable. When it wasn't optional, they could participate and have deniability back home - just doing what the club requires of them. Making it optional, caving to the hatred, puts the risk back on the players, because now, if a team does have a pride jersey night, you know how that looks? Looks like none of the Russian guys on the team put their foot down hard enough! This isn't protecting anybody. It's taking away this teensy, tiny little thing that teams did as a show of support, and now we don't even get that because a couple of assholes decided they needed to use their chosen religion as an excuse to be bigots.

spooked · 03-08-2023, 07:17 PM

03-08-2023, 06:13 PMsköldpaddor Wrote: It's taking away this teensy, tiny little thing that teams did as a show of support

This is demonstrably false for some teams at least though, and like I said you can say the organization did the wrong thing because they made a choice on their own, but from what I have seen no one has come out with any credible information around why so many teams are doing this at the same time as each other, which is where I think it would be a good idea to wait a little bit before going all in on an opinion beyond it being bad in general and wanting to know why they are all doing a bad thing now. I will be waiting until some more information actually comes out about why this happened this season specifically and I am sure there are at least a few journalists actually trying to find out why, so hopefully some more info comes out soon so we can figure out why all these teams decided to take massive marketing losses this season for no reason and cause harm to people they really didn't need to.

spooked · 03-08-2023, 07:33 PM

I actually did look into it and apparently as of last December Putin did "make it illegal to promote or “praise” LGBTQ relationships, publicly express non-heterosexual orientations or suggest that they are “normal.”" The players could probably pay the fine, but because of their status I don't know if that is what it would be limited to, but it could be a reason why this could be happening this season if you accept the theory.

***mer*** · 03-08-2023, 07:58 PM

03-08-2023, 12:38 AMkit Wrote: i think its prob an organizational decision so kaprizov doesn't get singled out, purely speculation and its still shitty.

[Image: Fm1-KDXXEAI_g1D?format=jpg&name=small]

fair speculation, but want to point out that he did wear one for their inaugural 2022 pride night.

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