The white right way

I'm sure some of you have heard about Darren Pang's Freudian slip about PK Subban, if not you will in about 40 seconds:



I truly believe that Pang made an honest mistake. I don't think he meant to imply that Subban's style of play is 'too black' and he needs to 'whiten' his game but whether he likes it or not his slip of the tongue has ignited a conversation about the game of hockey, and how the NHL is a very homogeneous place, not just in the diversity of its players ethnic background but their behaviour as well.

Let's start off with the less obvious culprit, i.e. if any player has any kind of personality, he's deemed immature, too flamboyant, reckless, cocky, etc. etc. all words which have been used to describe one of the greatest players playing today, Alexander Ovechkin.

Lucky for us he doesn't give a rat's ass about what those old geezers on the hot stove think of him, or the cognitive challenged Don Cherry. He still has hilarious goal celebrations, he still gives the best interviews in the league, and he still goes end to end, making us all feel bad about ourselves but those assessments of him being too arrogant and not responsible, and the never ending comparisons to the very vanilla Sidney Crosby will just not die.

The NHL needs to wake the hell up. If they want to compete with the other major leagues in North America and potenitally expand to Europe (OMG I'm sooo out of it I almost spelled Europe like yourope, I need sleep) they need to stop hammering down players who show a bit of originality or personality. This ain't the original six league anymore, there aren't just Canadians and Americans playing, if they want to diversify and expand their fan base, they need to allow their players to be diversified as well, which brings us to my next point.

The NHL is a very homogeneous place, you'll mostly see one type of dude playing, which if you look at it historically, it makes sense but its the 21st century, so it is a little baffling when you have die hard hockey pundits like Don Cherry or even local coaches hating on Europeans entering the league hell- they even hate on French Canadians who are North American. Clearly, something needs to change within our hockey culture, because if a dude from Sweden is given the side-eye, how is a dude like Nazem Kadri supposed to fare?

Its time that the league, the fans, hell even the game realize that hockey is evolving. Players wear helmets now, and mouth guards, and even *gasp* visors, and they may even be from somewhere that isn't Saskatchewan or Alberta or Minnesota or Ontario or North America in general! Times are changing, yes one of the best players, in the league is from Europe, yes one of the most promising defensemen in the league is black, isn't it time we embrace this change, and teach everyone that no matter where you come from or what you look like as long as you work hard, persevere, and are good the people around you, you will be successful?

Racism and Xenophobia has no place in this game or in the modern world, its time we all realized that!