My opinion on Ryan Price’s sexuality in Tough Guy is that it actually makes complete sense that he was never formally “outed” despite the fact that he was, by his own admission, not particularly subtle about hooking up with men.
A lot of the discussion around Ryan seems to assume that hockey culture is so uniformly hostile that even the rumor of a player being gay would immediately become a scandal, but I think Ryan’s specific social position changes that equation entirely. He is not Scott Hunter, a charismatic franchise player heavily invested in being liked by his teammates and the league at large. Ryan is a 6’7” enforcer with severe anxiety, almost no close interpersonal relationships, and a career defined by constantly moving between teams. He exists socially on the periphery of hockey culture rather than inside it.
The implication is less “nobody knew” and more “nobody asked.” Straight hockey players are not accidentally identifying Grindr notifications for ten years across nine teams with zero rumors circulating. But there is also a significant difference between privately suspecting something and publicly confronting someone about it, especially when that someone is both physically intimidating and emotionally withdrawn. Realistically, most homophobic players are not going to walk up to the league’s scariest enforcer and ask him if he sucks dick. Ryan’s entire role on the ice is violence, that alone discourages a certain kind of scrutiny.
I also think his indifference toward being “found out” is tied to his self-esteem issues. Ryan does not carry himself like someone hiding a secret he believes people are deeply interested in discovering. He carries himself like someone fundamentally convinced he is unimportant and undesirable. His sexuality is not a central source of anxiety because his self-hatred manifests in a different direction entirely: he assumes nobody is paying attention to him enough to care.
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