from Sam Fels of Deadspin,

It’s obviously awkward for the NHL and its players to find a way to join in on the Black Lives Matter movement and protests before and during their games. It’s an almost entirely white league, with a majority of players not even from this country — and even the ones who are come from a generally affluent background where these issues never touch them. It is a sport and culture rife with racism throughout every level on either side of the border, although that’s probably an even better reason for those players at the top to speak out and change that. The NHL could show that these issues, these protests, and the need to keep fighting applies to everyone.

This is also the NHL, a league that would struggle to manage a booze-up in a brewery.

So it isn’t much of a surprise that in its return to the ice, NHL players completely mangled whatever it was they were trying to say. Unless they were trying to say the exact opposite thing that every other athlete in the world has been saying. Which we can’t rule out, because this is hockey, after all.

Maybe Canadian players don’t feel it’s their place to kneel during the American anthem. More likely, hockey players are just petrified, or dismissive, of kneeling at all. While white athletes kneeling during the anthem can be construed as performative, and oftentimes is, it’s at least showing solidarity with the whole movement. It’s the absolute minimum, or so you would have thought.

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