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NHL players late to party again on social issues

Think of the National Hockey League as a person who creates the latest technological app destined to change the world … one year after someone else did.

Hockey players aren’t just late to the party. Sometimes, they don’t even know there is one.

It’s fine that the NHL postponed two playoff games Thursday — the Golden Knights against Vancouver included — as a show of solidarity with other leagues in protesting a recent police shooting in Wisconsin.

Fine that players will stand against what happened to Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man paralyzed when hit by four of seven gun shots during an arrest. Fine for a 48-hour news cycle, as much as history suggests you can expect from hockey.

The game teaches you to hit before getting hit. Why, then, is the NHL always the one being checked into the boards when it comes to reacting to social issues?

Why did it play games Wednesday when those in the NBA and WNBA and teams from other sports chose not to?

Here’s a thought: Hockey never has a plan in these times.

Here’s another: Should we expect it to?

Existing in bubble

Hockey is a white sport of which 43 percent of its players are from a country (Canada) whose population is 73 percent white. It doesn’t mean players can’t possess a deep sense of empathy — anger, even — at yet another such consequential moment. Doesn’t mean they don’t care.

But it shouldn’t be lost on anyone how appropriate it is the NHL will conclude its season in a Hub.

After all, it has forever existed in a bubble.

“(NHL) players are the ones who fly the flag and say, ‘We are tolerant and diverse,’” Ray Ratto, longtime Bay Area columnist who has covered the NHL since 1991, told ESPN Radio. “They’re the ones who set the bar rhetorically, and the first time they’re asked to do something that really matters, that might hurt them for a day, they can’t manage it.”

This was part of a joint statement from the league and its player’s association following the postponement of games: The NHL and NHLPA recognize much work needs to be done before we can play an appropriate role in a discussion centered on diversity, inclusion and social justice.

Recognize?

How about to be inspired?

How about to be compelled?

How lost does the NHL appear here?

It’s trying to do the right thing. It is. But it’s a league whose players are 97 percent white and doesn’t know an appropriate course of action. Just that it doesn’t want to be known for not taking one.

This isn’t about evaluating another’s moral compass. Folks in my business are far too patronizing in this manner and, really, awful at doing so. We can wrongly pass judgment with the best of them

But if you’re really about changing your sport — one whose history is enveloped in a culture of racism — then it’s time to stop playing the role of copycat while trying to lead from behind.

It’s not good enough for players to say they had already arrived to a rink Wednesday and didn’t have time to properly assess what was occurring across the sports world when deciding to play.

I mean, it shouldn’t be good enough.

Just following along

“It’s kind of sad and disheartening for me and for members of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, and I’m sure for other guys across the league,” Minnesota defenseman Matt Dumba, who is Filipino, told Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver on Wednesday. “But if no one stands up and does anything, it’s the same thing. That silence. You’re just outside, looking in on actually being leaders and evoking real change when you have such an opportunity to do so …

“In hockey, that’s what it comes back to: You’re just relying on the minority guys to step up and say it. But what would really make the most impact is to have strong white leaders from teams step up and have their two cents heard.”

You saw some Thursday, when members of the four Western Conference teams remaining in the playoffs gathered for a Zoom press conference to address the league not playing the next few days. It’s not that players didn’t appear moved or passionate or unified. Not that their words weren’t heartfelt.

But whatever comes next, the narrative could define how hockey will be remembered from such a polarizing time.

Here’s hoping, for once, it doesn’t merely watch how other sports react and follow along.

Ed Graney is a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing and can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.

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