Andrea Barone nearly quit his job as a minor league hockey referee after years of hearing coaches and players use anti-gay language during games.
This is a story about love and betrayal.
Andrea Barone was barely 18 months old when he first set out on the ice, his tiny legs shaking and pushing behind a chair along the cold surface. If, in Montreal, hockey is religion, then this was baptism by ritual, every morning practice, every unsteady drag of his skates, drawing him closer to the game he was falling for.
“We never had to wake him up in the morning,” Barone’s mother, Beba, said. “If the practice was at 7, he’d be up dressed and ready to go. He just fell in love.”
Barone is 28 now, many years removed from those innocent skates under the eye of his father, Remo. Late last summer, during an interview at a Toronto coffeehouse, he was upset.
Barone is sure of two things about himself: He is a hockey man, and he is a gay man. In the sport he has devoted his life to, this has proved an untenable intersection.
In February, the N.H.L. sponsored “Hockey Is for Everyone” events at games throughout the league — to foster more inclusive communities in the sport, it said. Players used rainbow-colored tape on their sticks, and teams hosted pride nights.
And yet, for some time now, Barone has been trying to decide if hockey is still for him.
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