On Sept. 3, just past the midway point of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, the NHL issued a 2,500-word press release cataloguing, as the headline declared, "Initiatives to Combat Racism and Accelerate its Inclusion Efforts."
It was a sensitive moment for the league. A week earlier, after police in Kenosha, Wis., shot a 29-year-old Black man named Jacob Blake seven times in the back, player-led protests in the NBA, WNBA, MLB and MLS spawned a night of unprecedented work stoppages. The NHL, meanwhile, had continued to hold games inside its Edmonton and Toronto bubbles, provoking outrage. “[T]he lack of action and acknowledgement from the @nhl [is] just straight up insulting,” tweeted Sharks winger Evander Kane, one of the league’s few Black players.