‘Seize the opportunity’: Race issues will improve, NHL says
The person is charge of making the NHL more inclusive wants you to know that things are going to get better.
Change is coming, said Kim Davis. And it’s coming soon. The league will be more diverse. There will be black coaches. Black general managers. Even more black players.
“All of that is happening,” said Davis, the NHL’S executive vice-president of social impact, growth initiatives and legislative affairs. “And I’m excited.”
Two years ago, when the league hired Davis to be its socalled “social justice warrior,” it might have been easy to brush off her optimism as overly ambitious. This has predominantly been a white man’s league. It still is, with all the trappings that come with it.
But in the last several months, we’re seeing a change in how the NHL wants to do business.
And the most telling part is that it’s the players who are calling for that change.
The daily protests that have occurred across the United States following the senseless murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police have caused everyone to look at the world differently than we might have before. Things are broken. They have been for a while now.
It’s not just in the U.S. — it’s everywhere, including the NHL, where systemic racism has gone unchecked for generations.
So, it was refreshing to see Sidney Crosby release a statement saying, “I will listen and educate myself on how to make a difference” and for Connor Mcdavid to say, “the time is now for all of us to get out of our comfort zones.” From Jonathan Toews and Blake Wheeler to Patrice Bergeron and Alex Ovechkin, more than 100 players — most of them the stars of the league — have spoken out against racism and the social inequalities that continue to exist.
For Davis, who praised Evander Kane for getting the conversation started and calling upon others to lend their voices to the cause, it’s the kind of snowball effect that she believes could lead to a watershed moment for the NHL.
“I am so thoroughly appreciative and optimistic about the voices that we have heard,” said Davis. “We have been planning for this work for as long as I’ve been here and before. But what this does though is it affirms that we’ve got allies and champions and partners that we’re going to be able to access in new and different ways. To have your players involved is a huge acceleration point. That’s what is different about this moment.
“We’ve got to seize the opportunity.”
The NHL was presented with a similar moment in November, when Akim Aliu came forward with allegations of racial abuse at the hands of Bill Peters, when both were in the minors. Peters lost his job with the Calgary Flames as a result and the NHL implemented a multi-pointed “zero tolerance” approach to inappropriate conduct.