In the four months between the NHL halting its season due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resumption of the campaign this week, the world changed in no uncertain terms. The pandemic imposed a new reality on us, and the economic struggle combined with increased global awareness of how the police attack and kill blacks with impunity led to a widespread call for change.
Perhaps it is naive to expect the NHL to become better known now, despite establishing its Declaration of Principles and running an inclusion campaign under the subdued and vape banner “Hockey is for everyone” when it is anything but. Once again, the NHL completely missed the mark on Tuesday when it resumed its pre-playoff schedule.
We have seen the Toronto Raptors and other NBA organizations make a demonstrated commitment to anti-racism and eradicate police brutality, while focusing on the lives of blacks rather than combining the problem with the BIPOC umbrella (black, indigenous and others). of Color) as society faces a highly anticipated calculation of how it treats blacks.
The Raptors entered the NBA bubble with three buses that read “Black Lives Matter,” a gesture that caught the attention of the basketball community. If this gesture were not supported by the organization’s strong commitment to community participation, the fight against anti-black racism and speaking out with direct action against police brutality against blacks, this would also feel empty. This is what happens when well-intentioned gestures support real leadership, as opposed to hollow gestures that try to make the relevant issue disappear from the national discourse.
In the absence of real leadership, the NHL and its teams, in particular, but not exclusively, the Boston Bruins, made numerous gestures that sounded hollow, with players from opposing teams joining arms in an attempt to solidarity. These acts by the teams and the league do not match their record of disregard for black lives, and worst of all, it was the performance announced as genuine progress by all actors involved, including the media.
Let’s start with the Bruins, who rightly paid the most attention for exacerbating this disaster on Tuesday. Although the Bruins did not play, the players issued a statement saying that they would close their weapons during the two national anthems in an act of solidarity with the black community. There are a lot of things wrong here, so let’s check it out.
The Internet remains undefeated and its history is easy to verify. During the initial stages of the pandemic when multiple teams were forced to fire their workers, the Bruins did not act at all, then came up with a plan that said they would donate $ 1.5 million to their workers with the massive contingency that they would only implement, planify said if the regular season was completely canceled. An organization that has done the least for workers’ solidarity cannot respond with an empty gesture and hope that we will not all see it.
After Boston Bruins goalkeeper Tuukka Rask wore a Boston Police cap during an interview Tuesday [& Bruins releasing a statement about racial equality], his teammate Brad Marchand insulted a journalist for pointing out the conflict.
Will the Bruins journalists question Marchand and the team about it? pic.twitter.com/wGzCXeMBRx
– Salim Nadim Valji (@salimvalji) July 29, 2020
However, it does not stop there. Tuukka Rask wore a Boston Police hat during an interview, undermining the Bruins’ attempt to convince the public that they care about the lives of blacks, which in itself is disappointing. When the Boston Globe’s Matt Porter highlighted this discrepancy, the Bruins’ superstar Brad Marchand broke into the journalist, claiming that he is “part of the problem” before removing the tweet. Are we all going to back down because it’s just awkward, or are we in the media to do our jobs and ask awkward questions in an awkward economic and racial climate?
WEEI’s Scott McLaughlin followed up with Marchand in a conference call on Wednesday. Marchand’s response was equally disappointing.
Marchand said a friend gave Rask the hat and that the interview was recorded before the team’s statement. He says that everyone wants to be part of the solution and that he did not appreciate the negative buzz caused by the reporter for the sake of taste.
– Ian McLaren (@iancmclaren) July 29, 2020
Marchand’s claim that a journalist asking for public interaction on social media amounts to chasing his influence is downright ridiculous, and perhaps unintentionally, an attempt by one of the top NHL stars to silence a journalist for holding him accountable players and teams for their actions. This is doubly hateful if they try to convince both the public and the media that they are now engaged in a true partnership with the black community.
The media have a responsibility to hold players accountable and, in general, those in the bubble abdicated this part. We’re all excited about the return of the games, a hopeful conclusion to what has been a fascinating season across the board, fueled by a boom in young talent who are fast becoming the new faces of the NHL. But it’s not all about determining line combinations, expected targets, or how saved targets above expectations can fluctuate in a best-of-five format, or in any case. If the media can’t hold players accountable, it’s just fandom with more access and clarity.
Through a noncritical lens, the image of the Maple Leafs and Canadians standing shoulder to shoulder before a game can evoke feelings of nationality or brotherhood or some ambiguous term about nation-building that often exists in haughty monologues from the game. . Assigning credit to teams for tweeting #BlackLivesMatter just isn’t good enough.
This is what happens when the actors enter the political space only through symbolic gestures; This is what happens when you don’t listen to the black leadership, or take the cues from what other black people say. It is very easy to point out that many in the world of hockey do not have a genuine proximity to Blackness nor do they significantly examine class privilege, but this has to change. And if you don’t want to do the job, open your bag. If you don’t know what to do, and if you’re an athlete with disposable income, you can simply donate money to organizations fighting anti-black racism, which is better than an empty performance.
NHL is white by design. Satisfy white supremacy and sell white masculinity. They know who their audience is and they are not willing to give that up. Stop waiting for them to actually do something profoundly meaningful. These are just pointless gestures!
– “Science ?!” by Jonathan Toews (@dcolonizehockey) July 28, 2020
It is disappointing that the world of hockey often feels that it is the responsibility of blacks, and other people of color, in the hockey media to critically examine any gesture related to race, and furthermore, systemic racism and police brutality spread. They concentrated largely towards black and indigenous people. Gestures may have been enough in the world we lived in, but nothing we used to know, both the ice product and the climate of letting injustice pass, no longer exists. The NHL has to do better. Let the games and work begin.
