I’ve seen people asking about this and getting confused so the breakdown:
Luke Prokop is an out pro hockey player. He plays in the AHL and so far hasn’t made an NHL debut.
Brock McGillis played in the OHL, another minor league. He came out after he retired. (He’s the one who talked about the first few episodes of Heated Rivalry being a bit triggering because it was so true to his experience.)
I know in the UK’s league there’s Zach Sullivan, who’s bi. I don’t know if he’s still playing but he came out while he was playing. I’m not sure if there are out players in any other countries’ leagues. (Except Russia’s KHL, which is obviously a no.)
But the NHL still has zero out players in the entire history of the league. afaik, the NHL is the only major men’s pro league in North America that’s never even had a retired player come out. No one has ever done it. EVER. I showed a non-hockey friend Breakfast with Scot and she said how crazy it was that even in 2007 him being afraid to come out after retirement was the central plot and I had to break it to her that you could still make that the central plot TODAY.
We know from the documentary about Brendan Burke there are gay players in the league. You might’ve heard the story about two players seeing each other a gay bar and having to pretend they didn’t see each other. That documentary also mentioned someone was going to come out and had the press conference scheduled, but canceled at the last minute. (I haven’t watched the documentary in years but iirc it’s mentioned there was pressure from the front office not to come out.)
The NHL is so incredibly homophobic. It’s in the entire culture. McGillis has talked about how there are definitely fewer gay guys in the NHL than statistics would suggest, because the homophobia pushes them out of the sport before they can get that far. (I’m sure that’s true of most men’s sports.) Look how Chicago’s team treated Kyle Beach when he tried to come forward about being sexually abused by one of the coaching staff. If you look into the “hazing” lawsuits coming from the junior leagues, homophobic assault is almost always part of it. Most of the youth leagues with “hazing scandals” include homophobic bullying in the locker room. It starts pretty much the second they join a team and doesn’t go away.
It felt like they were making progress, but now we’re back to some teams not having Pride night and the league banned them from wearing speciality jerseys ahead of the game to stop them from wearing Pride jerseys. They tried banning Pride tape on their sticks but luckily Travis Dermott said fuck you and used it anyway, and then other guys followed his lead and the league cut that rule.
So when we say it’s a big deal that teams are acknowledging Heated Rivalry and the hockey podcasts are doing reactions, we mean it!! There have always been some individual players who are good guys, but overall the NHL has never felt very accepting of women/queer fans. Even the tiniest concession of having a non-league-affiliated podcast talking about it feels like such a big step in the right direction.
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