This was personal, not business, for Gary Bettman.
This was Bettman officially positioning his league to lead the fight in North American pro sports against bigotry and ugliness, and this was the commissioner joining with Don Fehr and the NHLPA constituency to do the right thing.
History was made, all right, and it was made on Thursday when the NHL and NHLPA codified its relationship with the You Can Play Project, the organization whose mission is to end homophobia across the sweeping tapestry of athletic competition.
Hockey has taken the lead in this comprehensive alliance with YCP that will feature seminars regarding gay equality matters at the league’s annual rookie symposiums and integration into the NHL/NLHPA Behavioral Health Program, in which players may seek confidential counseling or further education.
Those, however, are details. This is an alliance of spirit. It is a tribute to the work of YCP founder Patrick Burke, a Flyers scout who is the son of longtime NHL executive Brian Burke and the brother of the late Brendan Burke, who came out while manager of the Miami (Ohio) hockey team in late 2009 before perishing in an automatic accident just a few months later.
The Burke Family has conducted a righteous crusade on behalf of LGBT athletes that has been joined by the NFL family. Brian Burke has marched in Pride Parades in Toronto. Manny Malhotra marched on behalf of the Canucks in Vancouver. Brent Sopel and his wife rode in a float with the Stanley Cup during the Chicago parade.
People in the sport like to call hockey a “man’s game.” It is at times too macho for its own good. But under the leadership of Bettman and in lockstep with the players who have always been the very best of our professional athletes, the definition of what it means to be a man has become all inclusionary.
This about the NHL officially placing a welcome mat outside of an open door. This is about the league and its players’ union uniting for social justice. “You Can Play” is not simply a slogan, it is a way of life in hockey.
“To me it is not even a question,” Henrik Lundqvist said on Friday. “Everybody deserves to play this game, it doesn’t matter who you are.
“I think it’s important that everybody knows that we respect everybody. It’s not really a discussion to me. It should be there. I think we should embrace it and we should support it.”
Sean Avery, when still a Ranger, lobbied in Albany for passage of the Marriage Equality Act, signed into law in June 2011. But Avery, who tried to prod the NHL into taking a leadership role in LGBT rights, simply was too white-hot of a messenger for his message to be fully appreciated by the powers that be.
The message now is perfectly clear, and it goes forth from a generation of hockey players and hockey executives and from the commissioner himself that intolerance and bigotry are unwelcome in the locker room and on the rink — that all men and women who wish to participate in this great game are created equal.
“If someone is gay, I hope he feels comfortable talking about it. I don’t have a problem with it at all,” Lundqvist said. “I hope everybody is comfortable being themselves and stop feeling any pressure when it comes to everything, religion or whatever that might be.”
This is the week we are again honoring the unconquerable and incomparable historic American, Jackie Robinson. This is the week of “42.”
This is also the week in which the NHL and the NHLPA made history on a grand scale. This was personal for the players and for Bettman, not business.
And personal is where the NHL and its commissioner did everyone proud.