Quote:
Originally Posted by bluejays
Some instances appear to be silly on the NHLs part, but I'm going to take the contrarian approach here and say I agree with the NHL. Sports is entertainment but also a business. Seemingly a lot of the social stuff the NHL has been promoting because of social norming have been marred in controversy. If now they're saying any special nights, military, LGBT, anything, is barred and they don't want these cracks to bend the rules, good. They're not against any of these things in particular, but they're saying we're in the entertainment business and not going to open ourselves up to controversy - we're just not going to open it up for anything. I have no problem with that because they're drawing the line pretty clearly now. At this point I have no problem with that approach because it's even across the board.
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That's the problem with them half-assing it like this. They didn't ban those nights, in fact, the reason he had the mask painted was because the Wild were celebrating their Native Heritage night tonight.
If the league doesn't want the teams to have these nights, tell them not to have them. Don't schedule them and then tell the players they can't actually acknowledge them.
The league still wants to have those nights and the goodwill and revenue they generate by selling the special merchandise to the fans and auctioning off the practice jerseys (that no one has actually worn).
This and the Pride Tape nonsense are just the league unnecessarily shooting itself in the foot. If they hadn't said anything, this would have been a little feel-good footnote to the Wild's game.