“I’m sick of hearing this n-ers f–king other n-ers in the ass stuff.”Ī day later, Michal Jordán of the Carolina Hurricanes alleged Peters had not only kicked him, but also punched another player in the head. In an interview with TSN, Aliu said, “he walked in before a morning pre-game skate and said, ‘Hey Akim, I’m sick of you playing that n-er s–t,’ ” with regards to Aliu’s choice of music for the session. pay for your way of life, that you enjoy in Canada.”Ī few weeks after Cherry’s firing, former Calgary Flames player Akim Aliu took to Twitter and alleged that, during their time together at the Rockford IceHogs, Calgary Flames coach Bill Peters addressed him with racial slurs during a pre-game skate. At least you could pay a couple of bucks for a. “Forget it downtown Toronto, nobody wears a poppy,” said Cherry on the Nov. The first domino to fall was Don Cherry, long known as a churlish antagonist to Québécois and European players, fired by Sportsnet for a xenophobic rant spectacular even for a self-declared “nationalist” of his calibre. Prior to the months-long pause on the season, hockey culture was already in a state of recovery from a spate of race-related incidents and high-profile firings. While protest movements roiled America after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the NHL rolled out its #WeSkateFor campaign in late July, making no direct statement on the protest movements, or any acknowledgement of the systemic reasons those protests were happening to begin with. Finally, the world caught him out.ĭespite this knowledge, the resumption of the COVID-interrupted 2019-2020 season, within the Toronto/Edmonton “bubble” of empty stadiums and hermetically organized hotel rooms, seemed to be taking place within a social bubble as well. MORE: Don Cherry was an unchanging man in a changing world. will need an intentional effort to introduce the value of the game to new parents who may not have played as children.”

“As the demographics of the labour force population continue to shift, so too does the cultural relevance of activities millennial parents will look to offer their children,” the report continues. The United States’ changing demographics through 2030 will see “a net loss of 15 million whites,” the report notes, as well as a “market gain” of 27 million minorities. In 2018, the league released a policy brief titled “Shifting Demographics and Hockey’s Future” (co-written by Davis and William H. That may be true of the league’s insiders perhaps, but according to the NHL, its fans have no such convenience. “It may be one of the places where there is great unity within a community that transcends political divide.” “People root for sports teams, follow sports, because it’s a communal activity,” said NH L commissioner Gary Bettman, in response to a question about outspoken athletes, during a 2017 panel discussion with other major league commissioners.

MORE: Hockey’s chance to reckon with its culture of abuseīut the “baseline” in hockey is that of a league slow to change in the face of a fan base and a world moving steadily away from white-dominated norms and standards. In a 2019 interview with Minnesota’s Star Tribune, NHL executive vice-president Kimberly Davis suggested the NHL may co-operate with TIDES in the future, provided its report gives context for the numbers.įor example, rather than simply assigning a low score for the NHL’s paltry number of Black players (27, as of the reporting in March 2019, and 18 in development), Davis suggested that the report be framed as “a plan of action on how you move from what is your baseline to the future.” Of the four major team leagues in North America -MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL -the NHL is the one league that doesn’t participate.

1, Dumba, a Filipino-Canadian player, became the first NHLer to take a knee, with support from Subban (left) and Nurse (Dave Sandford/NHLI/Getty Images)Įvery year, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) conducts a report card for racial and gender diversity hiring (both on the playing field and in the league and team offices) in the major professional sports.

Steve downie and akim