With the timing and everything else, we didn't think we could," Campbell said of Pride Night. "We want to affect change in the things that we do. The team's promotional calendar is mostly 2-for-1 ticket nights. Patrick's Day to benefit the team's education fund, but "didn't do any cause-marketing ones" during the season, he said. For the 2022-23 campaign, the Thunderbirds had a specialty jersey on St. With the supply chain and all of these things, it really needs to be planned well ahead of time."Ĭampbell said the team has to order its game jerseys a year and a half before wearing them. "This year, we were still coming out of COVID from the previous two years and so we didn't put it on our promotional calendar. "Our philosophy is when we do these things, we really want to be able to impact the cause," he said. Seattle Thunderbirds president Colin Campbell - no relation to the longtime NHL executive of the same name - said the team had held a Pride Night "a number of years ago" but hadn't planned on another one this season for a variety of reasons. "I mean, I don't want to give them a ton of credit, but that was the start of it." "You see Portland do something and you think, 'We're a better city than them, we're a better team than them,'" Shelton said. One primary catalyst for Seattle's Fan Pride Night? The fact that the Portland Winterhawks hosted one Jan. THERE'S NOTHING THAT gets fans' passions stoked more than a bitter rivalry with a geographic rival. It's about being able to come to a hockey game and feel like you're in a safe space to watch that game." "Seeing all the fans that enjoyed the night. "It meant a lot to me," Prokop told ESPN in late March. The fans would organize one on their own, creating a DIY Pride Night on March 23 that was memorable and to Prokop quite significant. At a time when some NHL teams are reconsidering their approach to Pride Night, Seattle fans approached their team with a grassroots solution to their lack of a Pride Night. Thunderbirds fans decided to fill that void. "It just seemed like a really weird void to exist." "If there's a team in the WHL or anywhere right now that should be having a Pride Night, it's the team that has Luke Prokop on it," said Jarred Shelton, a Thunderbirds fan. He was acquired by Seattle - a hockey team that did not have a Pride Night scheduled for this season - in an October 2022 trade with the Edmonton Oil Kings for three draft picks. Prokop is a defenseman for the Seattle Thunderbirds, a major junior hockey team in the Western Hockey League. "Pride Nights are an essential step towards fostering greater acceptance and understanding in hockey." "Everyone is entitled to their own set of beliefs, but I think it's important to recognize the difference between endorsing a community and respecting individuals within it," Prokop wrote. The New York Rangers, Minnesota Wild and Chicago Blackhawks - all of whom have Russian players - decided no player would wear Pride Night warmup jerseys despite previously announcing that they would. Some Russian players, such as Buffalo Sabres defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin, cited a recently passed anti-gay propaganda law by the Kremlin that they said could put their security at risk if they wore a Pride jersey. Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, San Jose Sharks goalie James Reimer, Montreal Canadiens forward Denis Gurianov and Florida Panthers players Eric and Marc Staal all refused to participate in warmups because their teammates wore jerseys that symbolically welcomed the LGBTQIA+ community to their games. "I share the disappointment in what feels like a step back for inclusion in the NHL," he said in a statement in March. This year, he has watched as Pride Nights in the NHL have met with player boycotts and teams lowering their levels of participation. In 2021, the Nashville Predators prospect became the first active player under NHL contract to come out as gay. Pride Nights have extra meaning for Luke Prokop. How Seattle Thunderbirds fans made their own Pride Night You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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