The Silence is Deafening

Last night the Montreal Canadiens played the Boston Bruins. PK Subban scored the overtime winner. Following his goal Twitter exploded with racist tweets about him. Today Cam Neely stated that those people do not represent the feelings of the Boston Bruins organization. He is right, they don't. The Boston Bruins were the first team to break the colour barrier in hockey with Willie O'Ree, and has had many black players in their organization throughout the years, including Subban's younger brother Malcolm who plays for their AHL team. And yet there is one massive voice missing, one voice that means more than one organization and addresses more than one incident; the NHL.

The NHL has a program called "Hockey is for Everyone". They say that the game is diverse and growing in diversity and maybe it is, but their inaction as racial comments fly about on the internet speaks louder than any program they run. "It isn't our problem" the NHL seems to say. "Nothing to see here". But it is their problem and there is something to see here.

Black athletes are a minority in the NHL. Unlike the NBA they have a very small voice even if they band together with their voices because there are not many black NHL players. They need the majority to stand up for them because they do not have enough power to stand up to everything themselves. They need their teammates and opponents to speak up (and they have when asked about it), but they also need their league to stand up for them. Racism is not a Boston problem, a Montreal problem, a London Ont. problem, or a Pittsburgh problem; it is a human problem and it needs to be addressed on a larger scale. The NHL should be responsible for eradicating racism from the NHL, not any one team.

The burden of responsibility here should fall on the NHL. The NHL has done nothing. They have sat by idly as player after player has been criticized racially for doing their job. The responsibility falls onto them now to show that they care about a player who is being berated for being born a certain way. Thanks to their partnership with You Can Play the NHL has a way to deal with homophobia and they deal with it swiftly. Yet they have no way to respond to racism. The NHL responded to Sean Avery making unsavoury remarks about an ex-girlfriend and yet they do nothing as a player is attacked over social media for the colour of his skin. When Krys Barch was suspended for asking Subban if he "slipped on a banana peel", there was no sensitivity training and no counselling, there was a two game suspension and that was it. Sean Avery had to go to counselling and enter the NHL's behaviour program for his comments. He also got suspended for 8 games. Barch got one game.

They say actions speak louder than words. The NHL's lack of action in regards to the repeated racist behaviour of their fans and their players should speak loudest of all.