Highlights: Rainbow-colored Pride Tape has been part of pro ice hockey for seven years, symbolizing the sport’s pledge to be welcoming and inclusive. But the NHL has banned the athletic tape, quickly sparking a backlash.
“I’ll use the tape — if I have to buy it myself, I will,” Philadelphia Flyers forward Scott Laughton said on Wednesday, discussing how he would mark his team’s Pride Night.
The NHL announced over the summer that its players will no longer wear special jerseys during warmups to mark “theme nights,” when teams show support for a variety of groups, from the LGBTQ+ community to Indigenous groups, the military, and people fighting cancer. But as the NHL prepared to start a new season, it sent a memo announcing the ban also applies to Pride Tape.
The abrupt shift came after several NHL players made headlines last season for refusing to wear Pride Night themed jerseys, citing religious or other reasons.
The multicolored Pride Tape quickly became an “ingrained part of hockey culture” — and that quote comes from the NHL’s own website, in a story from 2021.
Pride Tape was backed by a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, as a simple way to encourage LGBTQ+ youth to get involved in team sports.
I don’t think James Reimer doesn’t want you to exist.
I seriously doubt you knew who James Reimer was until someone complained about him on Twitter, honestly.
Did you notice that the best hockey player in the wold was supporting you though? Because if that was the conversation you were having about this, instead of saying a couple medicocre NHL players have closed minded views, you’d probably have felt a lot happier about the situation then and now, and the league would probably still be having players do pre-skates with pride jerseys on the ice.
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/oilers-mcdavid-wants-nhl-to-reverse-ban-on-theme-tape-including-for-pride-1.6595846
Who gives a fuck about what provorov thinks. Connor Mcdavid is the mother fucking GOAT