Hockey is for Everyone....Cardiff Devils and Pride
I had the privilege of being asked to write something for the Cardiff Devils' Pride night match program. So first up, here’s what I wrote there….
The ‘Hockey is For Everyone. movement started in the NHL in 1998. It’s an umbrella month to promote diversity and inclusivity in the sport across various groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. As part of this Pride game, Rainbow tape has become a symbol of LGBTQ+ inclusivity in hockey. The New Jersey Devils initially led the rainbow tape, where teams taped their sticks in rainbow colours for warm-up to symbolise allyship and solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.
But what does it mean? Why does it matter?
Last year, watching the players take pictures in their Pride Jerseys for puck sponsorships, I noticed Josh Batch also brought out a stick with rainbow tape. It seems so small- some tape, a jersey- but I thought of the young fan taking a picture, who knew their favourite player would welcome them, their friends, and their family if they were LGBTQ+. Maybe there’s a kid in the crowd just realising they’re part of the LGBTQ+ community, and they see their favourite players with rainbow tape and rainbow jerseys and think someone they look up to accepts them. Or they see their parents or that random guy their dad’s age in the crowd with glitter in his beard and a rainbow jersey on and think, ‘My hockey family will accept me.’ Maybe their hockey family accept them where their real family doesn’t. The LGBTQ+ community goes through so much still, and having your hockey family to fall back on when the world outside is difficult and scary means so much to us all.
When you think about it, both being part of the LGBTQ+ community and being part of a sports community hinge on identifying as part of something. But still, we often feel like we can’t be both. Too often, though, players and fans still feel like they can’t be themselves.
It starts at the top, too. The Cardiff Devils stand by Pride not just as a quick ‘rainbow jersey’ night but also take the time to promote, talk about, and include dialogue on LGBTQ+ issues across the year. That they take a partnership with Pride Cyrmu seriously and support other local LGBTQ+ charities sends a clear message that this club is inclusive and wants to be part of a more significant change. It still takes a leap of faith for sports teams to run Pride events. It shouldn’t, but it does. My Pride as a Cardiff Devils fan extends to the stance the club is willing to take on Pride as a priority.
In my first year as a Devil’s fan, I came to Pride Night alone, waved my rainbow flag and felt accepted. This year, I’m bringing five LGBTQ+ friends, all new to hockey, who are coming because they heard it was Pride night. Because they feel like they’re welcome, as their whole selves. Because they think hockey is a sport that will welcome them, they’re coming to their first game.
Pride Night does make a difference to fans, old and new. It might just be rainbow jerseys and one night a year. There might be a long way to go. But if person by person it’s making one sport more inclusive, then Pride Week and ‘Hockey is For Everyone’ are doing their job.
Getting to write the above was a huge source of Pride for me and a marker of how included I feel in the sport and the team. I never felt welcome in sports, both as, yes, an unsporty girl but also as a queer person. So, to be asked to write about Pride in a sport I love feels huge.
But personal connection and feeling welcome aside, why is ‘Pride’ at hockey important?
History of Pride and why it matters
The ‘Hockey is For Everyone. movement started in the NHL in 1998. It’s an umbrella month to promote diversity and inclusivity in the sport across various groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. As part of this Pride game, Rainbow tape has become a symbol of LGBTQ+ inclusivity in hockey. The New Jersey Devils initially led the rainbow tape, where teams taped their sticks in rainbow colours for warm-up to symbolise allyship and solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.
Out players and inclusivity in sport
We only have to look at how few players are out; Luke Prokop became the first openly gay player under an NHL contract, while EIHL player Zach Sullivan came out as bisexual in 2020. Others like Brock McGillis came out after retirement, and while the women’s game, particularly with the rising prominence of the PWHL, has many out players in it and perhaps can lead the way—there’s still a way to go on the ice.
That said, ‘She’s gay Marcus’ will go down as the greatest tweet in hockey, and it was only in January I said what I said.
But to make a serious point over a hilarious comment, the idea that Marcus (bless) did not even think, ‘Oh, these women are together,’ is why Pride matters for players and fans alike. Yes, in the women’s game, we are blessed with an array of queer women on the ice and, again, let’s face it, an army of queer women off the ice. But Marcus and his friends are still astounded at the notion of queer players. This is a branch of the sport where we have broadly accepted that there are a lot of queer folks.
(why? Partly because queer women do it better. Jokes aside, the women’s game simply being welcoming, diverse and LGBTQ+ inclusive that’s also why. Also, when women are fighting just to be visible and be paid, do you think they’re going to quibble over whether their star forward likes men, women or both?)
In the women’s game- and even less than two months into the PWHL, we’re already happily telling young fans, ‘Hey, look at these two. They’re going to get married,’ and oh my god, that we tell young women in one sentence that you can play professional hockey and be out, proud AND marry an incredibly talented player…that’s….the dream, right?
And it’s sad, too, that we don’t have that in the men’s game yet. That we can’t say to that young boy who idolises the players but is also gay or bi, that hey, see him? He’s scored three goals tonight, AND he’s going home with his husband! Or when Teams do events for wives and girlfriends, there’s nobody there with a husband or boyfriend, just included.
I think we’re getting better at the grassroots level in sports- I think there’s less ‘that’s gay’ for the kid who isn’t as good. The kids today are, on the whole, I believe, more inclusive and more open. But they still need role models. Sadly, in the age of the guys at the top of our sport right now, we didn’t allow them to be out and proud if that’s who they are, or we made it so they felt they couldn’t rise in the sport they loved if they were LGBTQ+. That’s why it’s important for the young players looking up to current ones that they see allies. So they feel safe and able to play as both hockey players and proud members of the LGBTQ+ community for the future of the sport. Saying you can wear a rainbow pride jersey, that we will put our team logo in pride colours, and you can wave a pride flag at a game sends the signal: bring your whole self to your love of the team and that you belong if you do.
The ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ initiative has become a part of the NHL and EIHL league in the UK, and it’s noticed if someone doesn’t participate. While it’s not necessarily in players’ contracts to participate, the aim is for clubs to create an environment where it would be notable not to participate.
But also for the fans, there are so many queer fans in hockey. It is a testament to the sport and the community that even pre-Pride initiatives it was a sport we somehow gravitated to and felt welcome in. But there’s always more to do. Because what about all the LGBTQ+ folks who don’t know that and want to watch hockey but worry it’s like other sports, the kind they aren’t welcome in?
Fans and inclusivity
Many of us grew up in a world hostile to who we are and a world of sport that was even more so. It's a place to fear aggressive fans and homophobic slurs. To be unwelcome in locker rooms because of your sexuality. To simply not be able to come to a game with your partner or express your gender identity through fear of what would happen. But to see instead, Rainbow Jerseys with pronouns on them, players and fans wearing rainbows and standing in allyship….tell us hockey is for the LGBTQ+ community, that we are welcome and safe. Even when a minority objects, there are enough rainbow jerseys in our arena that we feel safe.
But more to the point, many adults who could have grown up with ice hockey in the UK also grew up at a time when it wasn’t ok to ‘say gay’. This does (and granted, this is a larger thesis on sport, politics, and education) filter down to inclusivity, feeling like they will be welcomed, as in places like sports organisations. The adults the same age as our hockey clubs are people who didn’t grow up feeling welcome, and that goes for players in the 30-plus age bracket, too. So to now be part of a sport that says, ‘hey, you can be LGBTQ+, you can be whoever’ matters.
Sports encourage you to wear your identity on a t-shirt. If we’re told that we can bring our whole selves to that, wear rainbows to signify who we are as LGBTQ+ people (or allies), and our team affiliations, there’s a sense of belonging. It might just be a t-shirt, but in the tribalistic, wear your allegiance world of sports, it’s more than that; it's a signal you can be both.
And I for one, love the queer folks/hockey community crossover. I’m just sorry I didn't find it earlier. In the UK at least hockey is a niche sport, and I say with love, the place perhaps the oddballs and outliers of other sports end up as fans. It's no surprise then, in some ways that those who don’t feel welcome in other sports gravitate to this slightly odd, but utterly brilliant sport (because we’re odd and utterly brilliant ourselves maybe) and that too there’s a crossover with the LGBTQ+ community there- we feel on the outside in other areas, so gravitate to a sport that feels on the outside as well perhaps. Whatever the reason, I for one am glad so many of you are here, and that I found you too.
(As a slight sidebar, my hockey friends, if you aren’t already on the queer-hockey-fiction train, you really should be…slide into my DMs for recommendations, it is after actual hockey my one true love).
How we can do better (and why we should)
Can we do better? Yes, always is the short answer. You only have to look at the replies on Twitter to any club’s Pride tweets to know that. But that’s a sign, too, that they’re doing something right. Because every tweet also has a group of fans of that club or others stepping in and firmly halting that nonsense. So, while those ‘fans’ are out there, they’re slowly outnumbered.
The sport itself needs to step up more, like most places. One club at a time can do what it can to stamp out homophobia and transphobia and create an inclusive environment. But it takes everyone’s commitment to make it work. We need consistent, clear messaging from all levels of the sport that LGBTQ+ folks welcome. We’re getting there, we just need to keep going. Wheels of change take time, and while it's a shame in 2024, we’re still waiting on change; with the kind of commitment places like Cardiff Devils show, we can do it.
We need real commitment, too, beyond just Pride Jerseys across the board. What Cardiff Devils did this season can be seen as leading the way (more in a moment). But with both commitments to supporting LGBTQ+ charities (among others, nobody says we need to be the only group, but money does indeed talk sometimes) and educating players, being visible in social media supporting LGBTQ+ causes and education as part of Pride. It’s all that; a rainbow jersey is great. It sends a great message, but we must step up and be seen in other ways.
My Pride 2024
And the commitment shown by Cardiff Devils this Pride made me proud to be a fan and filled with hope that change is possible. In partnering with Pride Cymru, they made a meaningful contribution to conversations on LGBTQ+ inclusion. This ranged from sharing statistics on LGBTQ+ folks in Wales to sharing ways to donate and support causes, along with the usual fun hockey content. We had three players making rainbow sticks, and while it’s another fun, silly video of the guys that we all love, it’s also a powerful message- these guys are happy to be seen putting rainbow tape on a stick and competing to have the best Pride stick (yes I’m aware how that sounds…).
This tweet, too (seen here with my comments), got me this year….
Seeing the guys sharing pronouns did mean a lot. With so much vitriol against the Trans community right now, this felt like the team at Cardiff Devils had listened when asked what they could do to make an impact.
It also means the world that the guys participate in this stuff. While obviously, they’re encouraged to take part in social media stuff all year round, you can tell the guys who like to be involved, and when they’re also choosing to be actively engaged in Pride content, it means something. We can’t know all the guy's opinions on anything- nor are we entitled to it- but if they choose to show us they support LGBTQ+ rights, that they’re also engaged and learning (I imagine for some of them, the content the team put out showed them something they perhaps weren’t aware of and that’s amazing too), then once again there’s hope for the sport. And I just keep thinking of Trans hockey fans, nonbinary friends, or a kid who doesn’t know how they identify yet seeing Duggy and Joey sharing their pronouns and thinking it’s ok to share theirs. Or a kid who is straight seeing these cis guys do that and understands it’s ok for cis guys to share pronouns to make people feel included. It seems so small, but it’s so huge.
And as much as it’s ‘just’ social media content, seeing the guys take part feels like an important step. I don’t think we’d have had that a decade ago, and that gives us hope for the next decade.
Getting to write the essay above too, as a relatively new fan, but someone who spends their work and life trying to raise the voices of the LGBTQ+ community meant so much. To feel like I have something to say about a sport would actually blow younger-me’s mind. But that I have something to say and got to be a small part of furthering inclusion in that sport? so proud of that.
And what of Pride night itself? Last year, I came by myself, happily waving my little pride flag. This year, I brought four hockey newbies, all LGBTQ+ folks, to the hockey (we should have had two more, but illness kept them away). And I was able to sit with a bunch of fellow queer friends and cheer on a sport I love while the team/sport/crowd fully said, ‘Come as you are’. We saw a mascot in Rainbows….ok we didn’t see the team in Rainbows (oops, guys, mistakes happen), we saw two women get engaged (sports proposals, not just for guys…also again Marcus….they’re gay). I got to see a bunch of friends I’d made at hockey, again decked out in rainbows, many of them queer folks too! It felt incredibly…nice to feel at home in a sport, fully as I am, and able to safely bring those friends (not a thing to be taken lightly).
And I admit, when the guys gifted their decorated rainbow sticks to people in the crowd, I got a bit emotional.
Hockey should be for everyone, and I feel very lucky to be part of a community with the Cardiff Devils where that truly feels.
And if any of my LGBTQ+ friends want to try hockey, you’re always welcome at a Devils’ game with me.