NHL's move away from Pride jerseys 'really disappointing,' advocate says

The NHL said this week its teams will no longer wear special jerseys in support of Pride and other causes during, as they have for some time, pregame warm-ups on theme nights starting next season. 

That the news broke during the height of Pride festivities was just one problem with the policy shift, say advocates for more inclusion in sport.

"It's a really disappointing decision and it's really, really poor timing," Harrison Browne, the first transgender athlete in pro hockey, told CBC News Network on Friday.

The NHL did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.

But NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has indicated the change is because some players refused to wear Pride jerseys, which created a "distraction" that overshadowed the causes those jerseys were intended to highlight.

"This way we're keeping the focus on the game. And on these specialty nights, we're going to be focused on the cause," Bettman told Sportsnet on Thursday.

Teams will produce special jerseys for those events, though players won't wear them on the ice.

All the NHL's 32 teams hosted Pride events last season and it appears most players — "a supermajority" according to one labour leader — wore special jerseys.

You Can Play, an organization that has worked with the NHL to improve representation and inclusion of LGBTQ people, said in a statement over 95 per cent of players had chosen to "wear a Pride jersey to support the community."

Yet Kurt Weaver, chief operations officer of You Can Play, says he was not surprised that a relatively small group of opponents could cause a "headache." 

"We're finding organizations like the NHL are having decisions to make around this — are we going to obligate players to do this and fight that fight, or are we going to make a change here and do something different?"

Though disappointed with the league's decision, Weaver said he was "heartened" to hear Bettman say Pride-themed nights would continue.

"We had 32 teams do is last year and we're hopefully going to have 32 teams do it next year," he said, adding that last year set a record for the amount of money raised for LGBTQ causes.

With league-wide promotion of these events and many players taking part in them, it raises the question why the league is paying such attention to voices that aren't.