After a tumultuous year, behind the scenes of the NHLs first Pride night of the season

TEMPE, Ariz. – As the Arizona Coyotes poured onto the ice for warmups on Friday evening, Reaven Fallows was pressed up against the glass behind the home team’s net.

Fallows — who made a 40-mile drive specifically to attend the Coyotes’ annual Pride game against the Los Angeles Kings at Mullett Arena — was one of a handful of Coyotes fans from the LGBTQ+ community who wanted to show their support for Travis Dermott during the pre-game skate.

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But much to their dismay, word quickly spread that Dermott, who had defied an NHL ban on Pride tape six days earlier, was not on the ice with his Coyotes teammates. He had been ruled out for the contest due to illness. And so Fallows and other fans started to scan the sticks of the Arizona players who were on the ice.

Would any of them follow Dermott’s lead by using Pride-themed tape on their sticks?

None did.

“It’s disappointing. As a queer hockey fan, you’re always hoping on Pride nights that they’re willing to include you,” said Fallows. “Had Dermott been here, I think there would have been more players showing solidarity.”

The day before Thursday’s game, Dermott said he was not going to try and coerce any teammates into using Pride-themed tape.

“I think that’s the beauty of how the rule has been changed,” he said. “Everyone can choose to support if they like. But if you don’t feel comfortable supporting, that’s completely fine. We’ll accept you and not single you out.”

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NHL players allowed to represent social causes with stick tape

The Arizona players may not have used Pride-themed tape Friday, but signs of allyship for the LGBTQ+ community were highly visible elsewhere inside Mullett Arena. Sean Durzi and Liam O’Brien walked into the arena before the game wearing the Coyotes’ Pride-themed jerseys.

Afterward, Durzi was asked what conversations took place inside the locker room about the club’s Pride night.

“The guys in this room, we stood together on that subject. Nothing changed. We came in with some Pride jerseys,” said Durzi. “We used the tape, we didn’t use the tape. Nothing changes in here.”

Matthew Spang-Marshall — who is the president of the Arizona Legacy Pride Hockey Association — dropped the ceremonial puck prior to the game. Spang-Marshall purchased 52 tickets for Friday’s game and said his group was planning a protest inside Mullett Arena if the NHL did not reverse course with its ban on Pride-themed tape. But instead of showing up holding signs with critical messaging, Spang-Marshall and his group decided to make signs to thank players like Dermott and O’Brien for being allies for their community.

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And as the evening concluded, Spang-Marshall wanted to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“It’s going to take the players who want to be brave to show representation, but it’s not always about the players and what they do,” Spang-Marshall said. “What is the organization doing? It’s not always what you see with your eyes. It’s what’s happening behind the scenes. And I still feel the love from the team. They included us on the ice. So yeah, this was a good night.”

As Lyndsey Fry settled into the broadcast booth at Mullett Arena on Friday, the Coyotes radio analyst was grateful the club hosted a Pride night.

“As somebody who is part of the LGBTQ+ community, it really means so much. You see it as a symbol,” said Fry. “Makes me feel like I belong. And I’m supported.”

Fry is the only openly gay member of an NHL broadcast team, having served as the Coyotes radio analyst since January of 2021. Fry has watched the intense debate around Pride nights over the past 10 months, but believes it is crucial for NHL teams to keep these nights on the calendar.

“There are real problems happening out there and that’s what a Pride night is for. It’s to help people get over that fear. I hear people saying, ‘Why do you have a whole month for Pride? Or why do you have a Pride night game?’ It’s because we’re not at that point yet,” Fry said. “There are cities where I don’t feel comfortable holding my wife’s hand. We have a long way to go, so that’s what these nights are for.”

Dermott said Pride nights are crucial in the NHL and he was reminded of that last week. Dermott was inundated with thousands of notes through social media from people from the LGBTQ+ community who praised him for standing up and being an ally.

“If you don’t think they need it, I’ll send you screenshots in my DMs,” Dermott said. “And you’ll pretty quickly agree this meant something to a lot of people.”

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Pride-themed nights in sports are a fairly recent phenomenon. In 2000, the Los Angeles Dodgers gave away 5,000 tickets to a home game to local LGBT groups in the first documented instance of a major North American professional sports organization formally inviting that many members of the community to a game. However, that gesture came only after two women were kicked out of Dodger Stadium for kissing each other to celebrate a home run. And the Dodgers would not formally host a Pride night of their own until 2013.

The San Jose Sharks are believed to be the first NHL team to host a Pride-themed game, when they hosted an “LGBT Night” on March 30, 2011, against the Dallas Stars. However, according to a March 2011 story from The Bay Area Reporter, which has covered the LGBTQ+ community in the Bay Area since 1971, the Sharks were reluctant hosts. There were no in-game activations to celebrate the community and the Sharks players were not involved in any capacity.

A Sharks spokesperson told the outlet, “There’s not a huge promotion. This is just another group coming to our game, buying a block of tickets to sit with each other.”

Cyd Zeigler — who helped launch Outsports.com in 1999 as a portal to cover LGBTQ+ issues in sports — said the Sharks’ first awkward attempt at hosting a Pride-themed game was not the catalyst for change in hockey. He believes the credit belongs mostly to Brendan Burke — the son of longtime NHL executive Brian Burke — who came out as gay in 2009 while working with the Miami University men’s hockey program. Shortly after coming out, however, Burke was tragically killed in an automobile accident.

“I believe change in sport has happened because people have come out,” Zeigler said. “The NHL doesn’t have these Pride nights if Brendan Burke doesn’t come out.”

Burke accelerated the conversation around sexuality in hockey, thanks largely to a push from the You Can Play Project, which was founded in Burke’s memory by his brother, Patrick, in 2012. In April 2013, the NHL and the You Can Play Project became official partners, making the NHL the first major American pro sports league to partner with an LGBT outreach organization on a large scale. As a result, the NHL was ahead of its peers in North American sports.

“The NHL sets the standard for professional sports when it comes to LGBT outreach and we are incredibly grateful for their help and support,” Patrick Burke said in a statement announcing the partnership in 2013.

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“Our motto is ‘Hockey Is For Everyone,’ and our partnership with You Can Play certifies that position in a clear and unequivocal way,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement at the same time. “While we believe that our actions in the past have shown our support for the LGBT community, we are delighted to reaffirm through this joint venture with the NHL Players’ Association that the official policy of the NHL is one of inclusion on the ice, in our locker rooms and in the stands.”

As part of the partnership, the You Can Play Project was permitted to conduct seminars at NHL rookie symposiums to educate prospects on LGBTQ+ issues. The league and its player’s association even vowed to integrate the project into their Behavioral Health Program, enabling players to confidentially seek counseling regarding matters of sexual orientation.

In February 2017, the San Jose Sharks — who had been reluctant hosts of the first unofficial LGBT night six years earlier — announced their players would use Pride-themed hockey tape on their sticks for a “Hockey Is for Everyone” game against the Sabres.

By the 2017-18 season, all 31 NHL teams were participating in a Hockey Is for Everyone theme night in their home arenas, with most teams welcoming in members of the LGBTQ+ community for those games. The following season, the Vancouver Canucks had a handful of players wearing Pride-themed jerseys — with rainbow-colored name bars and numbers — for their Hockey Is for Everyone night on March 13, 2019.

In the years that followed, more teams started wearing Pride-themed jerseys for warmups. The New Jersey Devils — who started hosting an annual Pride night in 2017 — had their players wear the jerseys for the first time in 2021. By the 2022-23 season, 14 teams — roughly half the league — used Pride-themed jerseys during a warmup.

That number would have been higher, but several clubs — including the Wild, Rangers, Islanders, Blackhawks and Blues — reversed course and scrapped plans for their players to wear jerseys in warmups toward the end of the 2022-23 regular season. Their decision came after multiple NHL players and teams opted to not wear them, citing religious reasons or safety concerns.

Several Russian players chose not to wear the Pride night warmup jersey last season as Russian anti-gay laws escalated. Russian players including Buffalo Sabres defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin did not wear the jersey and Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Ivan Provorov, then on the Philadelphia Flyers, sat out of warmups entirely. Brothers Eric and Marc Staal and then Sharks goalie James Reimer also opted out, citing their religious beliefs.

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The controversy spilled into the summer, when the league’s board of governors implemented new guidelines that restricted players from wearing specialty-themed jerseys in June. Bettman said the jerseys had become “a distraction” and he wanted the focus to be directed on the grassroots initiatives undertaken by each club.

But the measures imposed by the board of governors also quietly included banning players from using Pride-themed tape on their sticks — a decision that created shockwaves when NHL teams were informed of the decision in September.

That prompted the You Can Play Project — which had once heartily lauded the NHL for its efforts in the LGBTQ+ space — to deliver a blistering statement directed at the league after news of the Pride-themed tape ban leaked out on opening night of the 2023-24 regular season.

“It is now clear that the NHL is stepping back from its long-standing commitment to inclusion, and continuing to unravel all of its one-time industry-leading work on 2SLGBTQ+ belonging,” the You Can Play Project wrote in a statement on Oct. 10. “We are now at a point where all the progress made, and relationships established within our community, are in jeopardy.”

In the wake of a tumultuous year, there has been a recalibration of hockey’s role in the LGBTQ+ space. Once considered an industry leader, the momentum has stalled — if not taken a step backward.

“I still think we’re really lagging behind in the hockey community and showing support for this community,” Dermott said. “And I really think that us being in the limelight, you have to take a stand and show that these people matter.”

The Arizona Coyotes did not plan to be the first NHL team to host a Pride night in the 2023-24 NHL regular season.

While most places in North America host Pride-themed events in the month of June, Arizona is a bit of an outlier.

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“It’s too hot in June,” said Coyotes president and CEO Xavier Gutierrez. “So we host a lot of things in October, when it’s cooler. And that’s why we have our Pride night here.”

Teams from around the NHL were likely keen observers of the Coyotes’ Pride night on Friday, curious to see how the first game under the new regulations would unfold.

There was plenty of unhappiness, as NHL sources with direct knowledge of the situation told The Athletic that a mid-September video call between league officials and the 32 member clubs was contentious. Representatives from the community relations departments for several teams aggressively pushed back against the league’s new directives. Canadian-based teams asked if they were permitted to issue orange T-shirts to their players and staff to commemorate National Truth and Reconciliation Day on Sept. 30. Other clubs were simply confused about what constituted a breach or violation under the new rules.

The unhappiness from that video call, coupled with an extremely strong push from the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, forced the NHL to reconsider some aspects of its restrictions. And when Dermott used Pride-themed tape on his stick during an Oct. 21 game against Anaheim, the issue was pushed into the national spotlight. The league relented a few days later, announcing in a statement that, “After consultation with the NHL Players’ Association and the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, Players will now have the option to voluntarily represent social causes with their stick tape throughout the season.”

But the ban on jerseys for themed nights was still in place. Last season, the Coyotes hosted their Pride night in March, and every single player on the roster wore the Pride-themed jersey in warmup.

As they planned out this year’s event, Gutierrez and his staff knew they would need to be creative to satisfy all of the stakeholders involved.

“We are well aware of the rules the NHL had,” Gutierrez said. “We never said we would waver in terms of celebrating. It was just, ‘How do we reimagine this? How do we do this?'”

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One hour before puck drop on Friday evening, fans walked into Mullett Arena with a welcome message on the main scoreboard that read, “Pride Night,” with logos of the Coyotes and Kings against a colorful, rainbow-themed backdrop.

The national anthem was performed a cappella by four members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.

Howler, the Coyotes mascot, wore a rainbow headband as he tossed T-shirts into the crowd.

Fans who purchased mystery autographed pucks found that players had signed white pucks with a rainbow-colored Coyotes logo in the middle. Each member of the Coyotes also autographed the white Pride-themed jerseys, which were on display on the lower level of the arena for fans to bid on for an auction.

The intermission activity featured a shootout contest involving members of the Pride Growlers — an adult learn-to-play program launched by the Coyotes in 2021, with the purpose of having a safe environment for the LGBTQ+ community to learn hockey.

The Coyotes say the grassroots initiatives they’ve launched to help the LGBTQ+ community were lost in the Pride jersey controversy.

“I think there was too much attention on who was wearing jerseys and who wasn’t,” Gutierrez said. “It overshadowed all the great work that was being done.”

And after Friday’s game at Mullett Arena, Gutierrez said he believed the Coyotes set the template for what clubs can execute when they host their own Pride nights this season.

“I think the biggest takeaway is that you can continue to express your support. And you can reimagine within the new context of what the NHL would like to have us focus on,” Gutierrez said. “It’s not just because of what happened this week. This was always the plan.”

(Illustration: Samuel Richardson / The Athletic. Photos: Brett Holmes / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Josh Lavallee / NHLI via Getty Images)

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