The National Hockey League initially launched a “Pathway to Hockey Summit” that was only limited to individuals who “identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability.” However, the NHL has apparently reversed course by opening up their summit to individuals ages 18 and up after the office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pressured the sports organization to open its access to people of all races.
According to a report by Florida Voice, the change came after DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin commented about the NHL’s move in a press release, where he stated the following:
Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity.
Similarly, Christina Pushaw, who previously worked as DeSantis’ press secretary, tweeted, “@NHL: You are officially on notice about your planned events in Florida. Unlawful discrimination will not be tolerated.”
In November of 2022, the NHL started to issue race and gender report cards from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports following a discovery from the internal demographics study of the NHL’s 32 franchises. This report found that 83.6% of the NHL’s workforce is white and about 62% is male.
Per a Fox News report, the NHL wrote about their admittance policy for the “Pathway to Hockey Summit,” at their 2023 All Star Festivities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in a LinkedIn post that is now deleted. Joshua Young of The Post Millennial noted that the summit was originally slated for February 2.
In the summit’s original description, it noted that the NHL was looking for “diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey.”
“Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability. Veterans are also welcome and encouraged to attend,” read the full description.
“We call upon the National Hockey League to immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit,” Griffin declared in the release.
Sports leagues across the US have largely bought into the woke mania and have helped promote this agenda. It’s not just through political means that cultural leftism is being disseminated. Privatized means are also being used to spread these toxic ideas. Hence, the need for right-wing governments to crack down on private entities that actively spread such degenerate concepts.
Florida is showing other red states what must be done to ensure that private entities actually comply with a given state’s norms and cultural values.