This moment is different from any other in NHL

Davis says league will become more diverse

The person in charge of making the NHL more inclusive wants you to know 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 so-called “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. 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 it’s the players who are calling for 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 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.”

Indeed, 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 resigned from his job with the Calgary Flames as a result and the NHL implemented a multi- pointed “zero tolerance” approach to inappropriate conduct.

But the difference then was Crosby, Mcdavid and others didn’t make statements. With the season still on, they went back to their day job. The momentum didn’t carry.

Now, with the season on hold because of the coronavirus, there has been ample time to listen, watch, and ask hard questions. It’s a perfect storm, said Davis.

“In my household, we’ve been talking a lot about what makes this moment different, because this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen the kind of blatant injustice and frankly chilling abuse on the main global stage,” said Davis. “I think what’s different about this moment is that we were all paused. We all had a moment where we weren’t in constant movement and we saw it and we were consumed by it and were already stressed about the COVID pandemic and to face a racial pandemic across the globe, I think it was just a pivot point.”

Since then, Davis has been spending a lot of time talking on the phone with Kane, and other black players, such as J.T. Brown, Joel Ward, and Anson Carter about what comes next. She wants to get to a point where there is more than just the average of one black player per team.

“We need training programs in place, mechanisms to remove the impediments that youth have ( to play hockey),” said Davis. “Getting more coaches of colour in internship programs. Those are the things that are going to sustain us in the long haul.”

At the same time, Davis is cautious about moving too fast. There is a three-dimensional framework to all of this, she said.

The final step is advocacy. But if the league is going to have the sort of change that she envisions, then the first two steps — awareness and allyship — cannot be skipped.

“Typically, people in positions in power want to jump right into advocacy without walking through the steps of awareness and allyship.”

“… It’s a long game. If we think we’re going to go from 29 current black players to 50 in a year, we’re fooling ourselves.”