Other Thoughts: The Bare Minimum League
but first let's talk about P.K. Subban's accomplishments
Welcome to a new edition of Other Thoughts!
Our first edition of Other Thoughts was supposed to be last week, but Mother, aka Queen Bey, disrupted all of our plans when she announced her upcoming tour. It made us unable to work, and we spent the day figuring out how to secure our tickets. Luckily, Perrye got great tickets before dynamic pricing was activated (Ticketmaster, count your days!!), and Gaby put hers in God’s hands when she saw those insane prices - Chicago for y’all! However, Perrye has been renamed the Socialist Beyoncé Ticket Exchange over the weekend, so she’ll find a way for Gaby to attend the show at Soldier Field.
Anyway, now that the stress has passed, we’re back on our hockey bullshit.
Many things have happened since we last published an “other thoughts” issue, so we wanted to start on a positive note before getting into the uglier side of things *cracks knuckles*.
The end of an era
P.K. Subban had a retirement Ceremony at the Bell Center when the Habs were playing against the Preds.
A lot of times, looking back at P.K.’s career, there’s always the “what if” hanging over his head. What if it had stayed a Habs? What would his career have looked like if the league had fully embraced his persona? However, those “what if” didn’t matter then, and we got the opportunity to give this legend his flowers.
A *not so fun* fact that always blows our minds is that he became the first and only Black player to win the Norris Trophy in 2013.
This ceremony embodied everything about his career, from his lovely relationship with the Béliveau to his involvement with the Montreal Children’s Hospital. After his speech and a standing ovation, we saw a final triple low-five between him and Carey Price, which broke Perrye. Although Carey Price has been dropping in her esteem in the past year, a little nostalgia always does the trick.
We didn’t have to miss him too long because he got a full-time commentary gig with ESPN, where he’s been dragging his former colleagues’ lack of style. Farewell, and good luck to him!
BIPOC History Month
My (Perrye) rant isn’t about the famous saying used at every opportunity in the NHL. It has diluted its meaning and made people hide behind it instead of doing concrete action. It’s about how, in this day and age, Matt Dumba, who has *multiple times* self-identified as a South Asian, gets racially misidentified as a Black man on an official NHL website. It’s not to say that Dumba didn’t experience racism, but how is it that after three years of the NHL parading Matt Dumba around as the face of diversity in the sport, you still don’t know his ethnicity?
Side note: Matt Dumba discussed his misidentification in the documentary “Black Ice,” recently released on Crave.
How can you look at a roster and differentiate all the white players apart, but when it comes to players of color, distinguishing their race and ethnicity is asking too much of you?
In a league with a constant rotation of a maximum of 25 Black players, it shouldn’t be hard to put them forward during Black History Month. You heard me!! I said *BLACK* History Month. This isn’t People of Color History Month, so no shade at Matt; he shouldn’t be heard, only seen. Also, I expect more from someone who is part of the HDA. He should know who should direct the conversation during this time of the year.
As Black fans, we already get crumbs during this month because the league has allowed BHM to get eclipsed by equally shallow Pride initiatives. At this point in my life, I don’t expect anything from the NHL regarding initiatives, but at the very least, they could respect the Black players they employ.
The disappearance of Pride Nights
Another day, another team won’t be wearing rainbow warm-ups for Pride Night.
This time it’s the NY Islanders (There was a long pause in writing here to discuss the many, ummm, merits of Lou Lamoriello that we can’t say in public lmao - Gaby)
Hockey is embracing the anti-LGTBQ+ moral panic sweeping Western society. Provorov’s decision not to wear the jersey was less about his religious convictions and more about his consumption of hateful, right-wing propaganda. We’ve talked before about how performative NHL initiatives generally are, so we won’t go into that, but what concerns us is how, five years into Kim Davis’ tenure, the foundation of the league’s equity work is so fragile that something as minor as one player refusing to wear a warmup jersey essentially collapsed it and triggered the pattern that we’re starting to see with teams now having the option not to participate. It begs the question, what does this mean for the other initiatives that fall under this category? More importantly, the NHL is the driver of culture in the sport. They determine what is cool and what is acceptable. What does that mean for everyone else if they are headed in this direction? They made hockey an already dangerous sport for LGTBQ+ people. Their actions (or, more like, inaction) will have much more widespread consequences than just “taking the focus away from the good things happening.” as Bettman put it.
This should be a call to action for everyone covering the sport. There is only so much pressure that the fans can put on the league alone. Aside from being the right thing to do, I doubt anyone wants to work in a hostile environment.
Another (captain) bites the dust
We’re constantly shocked to see our timeline actively watch the All-Star skills events and games yearly. We don’t know why, but we expected people to be haters through and through and take a break during all-star from all this madness. Gaby hasn’t watched one since Ovechkin won that car. Even Perrye forgot to set her fantasy teams over the weekend because she made herself believe she was also on vacation in the Bahamas to deal with this year’s cold snap.
We don’t know what happened except for the trade that overshadowed the weekend.
It’s been tough years for the Canucks, and they had to make a hard wrong decision once again and decided to part ways with their former captain Bo Horvat before the All-Star Break. He got his bag to Long Island and said deuces to the West Coast.
However, since they weren’t prepared for this last-minute change, they kept him in the Pacific division wearing the fisherman logo. Unserious league!
We just thought it was funny because they made it seem like Bo Horvat was going off to war (which he is in a certain way in the Lamoriello regiment), leaving Petey behind. It’s not like they don’t have the resources to text, FaceTime or call unless Jean-Gabriel Pageau puts him on cricket wireless too.
THWL Shoutouts
We love when good things happen to our friends!
Congratulations to Jo Dabney (@notafan_jo) for designing the Black History Month Jerseys for the Erie Otters! The jersey was worn for MLK day and will be again for Black Ice Night.
PHWA x THWL Mentorship Program News
Mentee Mafe Pavellano (@mafepavanello) published her first article for the Daily Faceoff! She wrote about Ana Boghossian’s work, growing ice hockey in Brazil. We loved it, so give it a read!
The second cohort of the mentorship program has kicked off! A huge thanks to everyone that applied! We’re excited to share more stories from our mentees over the next couple of weeks :)
We’ll (maybe) see you all again next week! We’re trying to be more practical, so we will have to adjust accordingly until Perrye finishes her thesis and the other project Gaby is working on launches. However, the finish line is (finally!!!) in sight, and we’ll both be done this spring. Wish us luck!!!
With loves of love,
Perrye and Gaby