On Tuesday night, ahead of a match up against the Detroit Red Wings, the Wells Fargo Center was lit up rainbow. Sticks were taped with pride tape, pride merch was on display, and Gritty proudly waved the progress flag at center ice. It was the Flyers’ annual Pride Game, a celebration and recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, and this year it felt more important than ever. We spoke to four openly queer Flyers fans to talk about why.
Pride nights and inclusivity in the NHL have taken multiple blows in the last two years. As the political climate has grown increasingly hostile towards the LGBTQ+ community, the NHL’s former pledges towards progress, their “efforts” to make the league a safe and welcoming place for minorities, proved utterly hollow, discarded the instant it was no longer convenient.
It started with the specialty warm up jerseys for pride nights in 2023, when players like the Staal brothers and Ivan Provorov suddenly refused to wear them, citing religious beliefs. Teams with Russian players claimed it wasn’t safe for their players to wear pride jerseys either, and in fact they’d best just cancel their pride nights altogether.
The NHL, with a passionate dedication to being both wrong and spineless at all times, responded by first banning all themed jerseys for specialty nights, and then banning pride tape too. The pride tape ban was thankfully overturned after mass backlash and defiance of the ban by then Coyotes’ player Travis Dermott, but the jersey ban remained.
Since then, several teams have taken the opportunity to roll back their pride nights. They either don’t have one at all, or they technically do, but don’t promote or acknowledge it. That’s why it’s so significant when teams like the Flyers do go all out. When team’s proudly acknowledge it, celebrate it, partner with charities and local organizations– it matters. 20-year-old Colette knows this first hand.
“I took a friend of mine who’s trans and they were SHOCKED at how much the team did for the community. She said to me when it ended ‘I never would have thought a hockey game could feel this welcoming’ and it really stuck with me.”
Growing up, Colette steered clear of sports. As a lesbian, it never felt like sports were for her. Then in her senior year of high school, she saw a video the Flyers did with You Can Play. It featured Scott Laughton, Travis Konecny, and Van Riemsdyk, and yes, it’s the one where Konecny says “homophomic.” But that video in all its stilted stone-faced glory, and learning about the pride initiatives behind it, made Colette feel just a little bit more welcome. She soon discovered there was a large community of queer hockey fans and quickly became a part of it.
Particularly impactful for Colette were the actions of Scott Laughton and former Flyer James Van Riemsdyk. “Learning just how invested Scott Laughton (and James van Riemsdyk) were for the queer community absolutely made me feel proud to be a Flyers fan, and like I could tell my other queer friends ‘Hey, we’re welcome here!’” Colette said.
Laughton’s role was notable for others too, despite him unfortunately having to miss the game on Tuesday due to personal reasons. “I really appreciate that the Flyers get the community involved, and that they have player ambassadors [Laughton and Farabee],” Toby, 27, told Broad Street Hockey. Toby is a new fan, who started getting into sports a few years ago so he’d “have something to talk about with my co-workers.” Even then he started off with baseball, only getting into hockey later in an attempt to “fill the void” of the Phillies off-season.
While he thinks pride nights are nice, what impressed Toby with the Flyers was the way they involved the local queer community. “There’s an actual pride fest and everything! It’s not just a pride hat giveaway or something like that,” he said, adding “the Flyers Pride night felt like more than just token appreciation to me.”
So many of the elements of the Flyers Pride night that fans like Toby and Colette appreciate the most (Pride fest, the centering of the local queer community, and the Flyers Pride initiative) are quite recent additions. Before 2022, the Flyers pride night was rather lackluster. It was actually Laughton and van Riemsdyk who helped make the Flyers Pride Game what it is today, beginning with the launch of their Flyers Pride Initiative in 2022.
The initiative aims to grow the game by partnering with local LGBTQ+ organizations and hosting members of the community at multiple games a season. Laughton, van Riemsdyk and after his departure, Joel Farabee, also meet with their guests afterwards, chat with them and take some pictures. By all accounts, it’s been a resounding success. For many of the guests, it’s their first ever hockey game, but by no means their last, thanks to the warm welcome from the Flyers pride ambassadors.
This year, and last year too, the comments under any team’s pride night social media posts are a truly depressing read. The milder comments are things like why the hell pride nights are even a thing or no one cares if you’re gay, just stop rubbing it in people’s faces. The rest are usually just gay slurs and homophobic rhetoric. We think the gay slurs and homophobic rhetoric answers the first question, but let’s try and engage anyway.
Queer fans love this sport passionately, just like all fans do. But unlike most fans, they are told they don’t belong here. They can face harassment or even physical violence, just for existing in hockey spaces. Ultimately, queer fans want to be able to go to a hockey game knowing they’re going to be safe and welcome, just like everyone else, and that’s what pride nights represent to them.
“Teams having pride night is incredibly important to me. Not only does it help me feel safer as a fan of this team, but it really shows me that this hockey club cares about its fans, no matter what,” was how one queer fan, Trish, put it to us.
Trish, 30, is a Philly native who has followed the Flyers since high school. When they were growing up, they thought sports “weren’t queer-friendly spaces” and have been delighted to see a slow but real shift in the last few years. Trish is now a Flyers season ticket holder, and was at the Pride Game on Tuesday. He was the one to point to the connection between the Flyers Pride Night and Philadelphia’s history.
“Laughts and Beezer being proud activists for the LGBT+ community is even more important to me, not just as a hockey fan, but a born and raised Philadelphian. Queer history is integral to our city– from queer spaces as old as the 1920’s, to our current day Gayborhood.”
Of course, the impact of pride initiatives isn’t just limited to fans. It’s about making a larger change to the entrenched homophobia in hockey culture at every level. A young queer hockey player being able to see their favourite NHL player up there showing support for people like them can make a huge impact. So many LGBTQ+ youth are forced to leave a sport they love due to the toxic homophobic culture in hockey. Or in some cases, they stay in the sport and wind up completely suppressing who they are, leading to a great deal of distress, as in the case of former professional goaltender-turned-advocate Brock McGillis.
Ultimately, pride nights are about making a space for and celebrating a community in a sport that has long shut them out. It’s saying welcome to those who have usually been told to get out. For Bry, a Flyers fan and the proud owner of a Travis Konecny-signed lesbian pride flag (on the Flyers orange part, obviously), it’s also a message of defiance to the ones who say “Get out.”
“Pride nights to me mean celebrating joy and community. Queer happiness belongs everywhere and that includes on the ice, whether or not there are people who don’t believe so.”
As homophobia and transphobia worsen in North America, and the league rolls back support, every bit of allyship has become something to cling to for queer fans. Even something as minimal as pride tape and some rainbow graphics from a team’s socials are noteworthy. So when organizations like the Flyers and their players go beyond that token gesture and into genuine support and advocacy and engagement with the queer community for their Pride Games, it really truly matters to fans.
“Overall, it just feels good to know that the team I spend so much time and emotion on cares even a bit about me. It wasn’t a good feeling when the Provorov sh-t went down and it hit me how much some people don’t. Watching the organization prove him wrong has been very nice,” Colette concluded.
For Toby, it meant a place for queer fans outside of just the queer hockey community online. “There’s definitely the active online community that I’ve already felt welcome in, but last night gave me a little hope for acceptance with the general public.”
If we could sum all this up in two words, it would be simply that pride matters. It matters to queer fans. It matters to queer players at all levels. It matters to local LGBTQ+ organizations. It matters to queer hockey writers like myself. It matters to the young queer kids unsure of their place in hockey. It just matters. We’ll leave you with one final quote from Trish that caps things off better than we could.
“They say Pride starts at home, and when you walk into your barn and see welcome signs with the progress pride flag strung up in the concourse, THAT feels like home to me. We come to watch hockey, but it’s so much more of a community than I could ever imagine finding in a sport.”