User:BKilkenny/Athlete activism in the United States

National Hockey League
In addition to other sports leagues in the United States, the National Hockey League (NHL) has taken part in activist movements regarding anti-racism and LGBTQ+ inclusion. As the National Hockey League has tried to promote these movements, issues have occurred amongst players and teams causing complications to the movements that the league is attempting to implement.

Beginning in 2020, the NHL and NHLPA (National Hockey League Players Association) announced they would be partnering with the Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA) to administer trainings and education on anti-racism within the league that the players and NHLPA staff would partake in. The HDA work towards their goal to "... eradicate systematic racism and intolerance in hockey," by having their partners and associations that partner with them to sign their pledge stating their commitment to:


 * Create policy and rule changes that make the culture of the game more inclusive
 * Establish specific targets for hiring, promoting and partnering with Black individuals and businesses
 * Execute educational programming to increase awareness of racism in hockey
 * Fund impactful social justice initiatives

As the NHL has begun to work on their activist movements and make it more accepted league wide, there has also been great backlash that these movements have faced. Starting in 2013, the NHL became an official partner of the You Can Play project, which was designed to fight homophobia within sports, which include events like pride nights where they include jerseys made by pride members and performances in the stadiums. Nights and uniforms like these across multiple sports have begun to receive backlash from the players on the teams participating due to various religious and political beliefs. This caused the league management to reconsider the effectiveness of these events as well as their possible discontinuation due to the political pressure of multiple political facets that have caused negative responses to events meant to promote outreach and support for the pride communities. Many players from Russia often opted out due to political and religious beliefs that made it difficult to return home back to Russia when they had partaken in the Pride Nights held by the teams around the league. Evgeni Malkin of the Pittsburgh Penguins was one NHL player from Russia that did not decide to opt out of the pride nights, whereas players like Philadelphia Flyers defensemen, Ivan Provorov, who chose to opt out due to his Russian Orthodox Religious beliefs and Minnesota Wild wingman, Kirill Kaprizov, who chose to opt out due to his difficulty returning back home to Russia due to Russia's ban of "Gay Propaganda" that has begun to evolve into a law within their country. The Russian ban is described as "... [prohibiting] sharing positive and even neutral information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and publicly displaying non-heterosexual orientations, with hefty fines for noncompliance". These restrictions have caused many players from Russia to struggle with the values that the National Hockey League is trying to instill while trying to follow the rules and beliefs of their home country's laws and religious orientations.