Tale Of The NHL Tape: A Clash of Symbols

Acceptance. Compliance. Submission. The three-step radical plan to change society. Even in hockey. 

After a few months of doing their real jobs, sports liberals (but I repeat myself) have reverted to lecturing on their favourite trope. To wit, the NHL is anti-LGBTQ, because it decided not to play the virtue game with rainbow tape and sticks. 

In this latest case the supposedly appalling oversight was forbidding players to use LGBTQ tape on their sticks in warmups to support “inclusion” in the sport. (Inclusion being the “it” word these days.) The players’ gesture makes sense. If you think about it for fewer than five seconds. Sure, the NHL wants to have gay players so it can walk with its ESG head held high.

But how do tape symbols and rainbow flag signalling change anything? We’ve had “end racism" messaging for at least a decade, and yet we are told that racism is now worse than ever. More to the point, once you’ve allowed rainbow tape what happens when Christian players ask to use symbols in pregame that support ProLife? Or use tape that supports gun ownership or vaccine resistance? 

So the league initially called a timeout on tape after first appearing to accept some virtue signalling. Which seems prudent after the NFL and many other Woke businesses surrendered billions to BLM, only to see the recipients of that money going in pro-Hamas marches and demonstrations. Not good. 

The league apparently thought about the Kaepernick experience and decided not to be a post-it note for causes of all stripes. If players want to exhibit their LGBTQ bonafides they have the NHL’s backing to do so on their own platforms. Fill yer’ skates. After all, a player himself cannot sell space on his uniform or playing equipment. Those are the league’s to control.

But after pushback from media (their ESPN partners are full-blown Woke crusaders) the league has now backtracked— again. Players will be able to use tape and sticks to promote personal causes. No word which causes the league approves, but you can bet ProLife, anti-vixx and the U.S. Second Amendment are not in the list.

The shakedown reminded us of the classic 1987 Seinfeld episode “The Sponge”. In it, Kramer is harassed by AIDS Walk organizers for refusing to wear a ribbon as he walks in the event.

“VOLUNTEER: But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.

KRAMER: I have to?

VOLUNTEER: Yes.

KRAMER: Yeah, see, that’s why I don’t want to.

VOLUNTEER: But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon!

KRAMER: You know what you are? You’re a ribbon bully (walks away).

VOLUNTEER: Hey! Hey you! Come back here! Come back here and put this on!

Kramer supports AIDS research, but he doesn’t support meaningless symbols. So some aggressive AIDS walkers eventually track him down and beat him in an alley for not going along with the mob.  Comedian and curmudgeon George Carlin summed up Kramer’s resistance: “Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.”  But these days you must wear the shoes of the cool kids or suffer the consequences. 

Naturally, progressives pushing their myriad causes fail to see the irony— even as they laugh at the skit. Since when was it a cultural crime that 100 percent of people don't agree on any position? You don't demand everyone eat meat, worship God or write with your left hand. Why do we demand unanimity on Woke catechism? But white-guilt liberals now look for any excuse for indignation.”

Since his late son Brendan came out, Brian Burke has been a constant advocate for LGBTQ acceptance. Good on him (although the movement seems to have little trouble getting its agenda trumpeted in the media without him). Last winter, he took umbrage that Christian NHLers refused to wear rainbow-coloured jerseys in warmups. Lately he’s been the rainbow-tape bandwagon, commending Travis Dermott of the Coyotes for his stealth tape job.

Others in media have been more bullish on submitting to the crowd. Sportswriter Adam Proteau scolded one recalcitrant rainbow refusnik as a "shameful human being whose religious intolerance is only going to get more shameful over the years”? It’s a popular take in the press box.

But, as we asked in January: “Fine. Then answer this: If an NHL team held a Christian night, and players were forced to wear jerseys with a crucifix, would you defend a player who opted out because of his conscience? Or would you go full Proteau and say he's a "shameful human being whose religious intolerance is only going to get more shameful over the years”?

No one in the chattering class wants to take that on, of course. They don’t  see that rights that work for them also must work for people they consider heretics…” 

Your elites want everyone to wear the ribbon. Or take a vaccine. Or wear a mask. And in this case they exhibited enough buying power to cause the NHL to double back on tape jobs. As we said in this December column when the NHL originally announced it’s now a non-binary league, the pressure to comply and submit is tremendous. “… the NHL’s sudden conversion to trans orthodoxy is also highly instructive on how deep the tentacles of this ideology have attached themselves in ordinary culture. The NHL? Men-as-women playing against biological women? Until this radical chic agitprop thrust itself to the fore the last few years this was unthinkable for the NHL or its fans. Laughable. Fantastical.

But you have a league HQ embedded in the heart of Manhattan— where the global media, business and arts community have already succumbed to the intimidation of cultural blackmail. The NHL’s sponsors, suppliers, broadcast partners and just plain neighbours have also taken the Trans Kool Aid. At some point the NHL’s surrender must have seemed inevitable— even for a league that asks its employees to never back down to bullies.”

Something changed (probably a few powerful team owners, ESPN and its media fellow travellers). But the effect is the same. You can be an appeaser or suffer the consequences. As Churchill said, “An appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile in hopes of being eaten last.” 

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx