FR

Also the gambling ads that are everywhere, including on helmets and jerseys?

That would save so much time

Not singing national anthems would be too political, it seems.

It probably also means no military jerseys, or any of the cultural jerseys. Like the Winnipeg Aboriginal artists logos. Sadge. This logo was one of my favourites: https://www.nhl.com/news/jets-indigenous-inspired-logo-profound-experience-for-artist/c-314090206

Was anybody unaware that major league sports are among the most homophobic communities on the planet?

The first contracted NHL player to come out as gay was literally only 2 years ago. So for 103 years they either did not contract LGBT people or they were still forced to be closeted because of the environment NHL fostered.

Inciting bigots to out themselves is too political, it seems.

Agree completely.

I mean I think gambling should be legal because it's going to happen anyway. But it's not a good thing and it should be illegal to advertise it.

And the animated ads on the boards? What's wrong with these people?

So glad that I'm not the only one who reacted this way. When I say that I'm done caring about the NHL, I don't mean it as an angry protest. I mean that this news broke what was left of my ability to care.

I hope that the things you replace hockey with are more fulfilling!

That's why. Too much politics in showing support to any minority group. (And if someone says a team could show up with a swastika -- firstly, okay I'd like to see that and secondly, they could just ban hate-messaging.)

This is the result of the NHL being an old boys’ club and always afraid to go against the grain.

They can’t stand for anything and they can’t speak out or have true leaders because anybody that does is blackballed or told to pipe down.

I really hope we see the youth take the game from their old wrinkly hands one of these days.

They praised some random logistics active serving member at the home opener CFL argos game and it felt pretty awkward how they did it. It just felt so forced. Really I just want these things to stick to the sports. I find that they often do these nights because they just don't know what the hell to do while there are 100 intermissions for "ad breaks".

It's too political to not encourage nationalism, it seems.

This is indeed a really cowardly stance.

You're probably not wrong.

When I was in grad school, we had a "graduate student association", which was basically a student union. People would come to us with proposals to allocate $1000 to various causes. We would always vote them down. Not because we didn't support the causes (most of us did -- grad students notoriously lean left haha), but because we drew our fees from all the grad students at the university with no way for them to opt out of the collection of those fees. Basically, we were in a position where we could forcibly collect money from students and assign them at will. It would have been a terrible precedent to abuse that power, as it was a surefire way to cause the grad students to revolt against the mandatory fees. So we had to say no. And every time we said no, there was outrage -- the campus newspaper would make us out to be heartless power hungry monsters or whatever.

I think, in the end, this is a somewhat similar situation. If things are mandatory, you have to include all causes. And inevitably some players will protest and opt out. And the outrage news story will happen every time. You're right that, in the end, this may end up being better. You'll have individual players still supporting causes, and becoming mouthpieces for the change they want to see, without forced organizational participation.

At the Winnipeg Pride rally, a few weeks ago, someone was holding a sign: "If you're here because you were forced to be, you are part of the problem."