Colorado Avalanche Drop the Ball on the Hockey is for Everyone Initiative

The Colorado Avalanche failed to promote their Hockey is for Everyone night, thus enforcing the opposite of the initiative’s purpose.

Hockey is for Everyone month is officially over. If you watch the Colorado Avalanche, you wouldn’t even know the HIFE month had begun.The Colorado Avalanche held their Hockey is for Everyone team night on February 16 during the game against the St. Louis Blues. Don’t be surprised if you missed it. The team was woefully lukewarm in its observance of this important initiative.

The purpose of the initiative is “to drive positive social change and foster more inclusive communities,” per the NHL website. The idea is that anyone who has a passion for hockey — be it as a player, fan, or coach — should feel included within the hockey community. The goal is to create “safe, positive, and inclusive environments” around the game.

That’s what makes the team’s lackluster approach so frustrating. The purpose of HIFE is to foster a cultural change. But when teams such as the Colorado Avalanche give it only the most perfunctory of allegiance, it actually enforces the status quo.

This is the full extent of what the Avalanche did to observe HIFE:

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The players — some of the players — skated in warmups with rainbow-colored tape on their sticks. Rinkside commentator Alexis Perry said two or three sentences about the initiative during the first intermission. That’s it. That’s the extent the Avs went to in reaching out to just one of the groups HIFE represents.

And they never even acknowledged the group. That’s a serious failure.

Whether some folk like it or not, other sort of folk exist. There are brown folk and darker brown folk and folk with olive or golden undertones. There are folk that worship god in different ways and some who worship not at all. There are folk who want to start families with a male and female as parents. There are folk who want to start families with two males or two females or only one of those genders. And folk who don’t want to start families at all and folk who don’t feel they fall within any of those familial groups or even either of those gender designations.

These folk exist. They exist. That’s it, they exist. And many of those folk have money. And many of those folk like watching other folk skate around on the ice, chasing after a little black circle of rubber in an attempt the bat it into a net. Those folk see beauty or savagery or simple athletic brilliance in the game of hockey.

But some of those folk don’t feel welcomed into a community that’s been mostly homogeneous.

And now I’m going to get specific and stop with the folksy “folk.” People who identify within the LBGTQ+ community don’t feel welcomed into the hockey community. People who are Hispanic or African American or Asian-American don’t feel welcomed into the hockey community. People who are Muslim or Jewish don’t feel welcomed. People who are female don’t feel welcomed.

We. Don’t. Feel. Welcomed. And some of us, like myself, persist anyway because, hey, I got some of that time and money to devote to the game of hockey. I’m not being prevented from spending my time and money on the Colorado Avalanche. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that I’m tolerated, not welcomed. And, like I said, that won’t stop me.

But it ain’t right, Seymour. And no, I, for one, am not going to stand by without at least using platforms such as these to speak up on this topic. Nor are some of my fellow contributors.

Hockey is for everyone. The Colorado Avalanche is for everyone. You don’t have to like it. The team even doesn’t have to like it. I don’t care. But I’m also not going to stand quietly by while an initiative like Hockey is for Everyone that’s supposed to promote inclusivity in the hockey community is blown off by my favorite team.

‘Cause it ain’t right.