NHL Backpedals Minority-Only Qualifications for Hockey Summit after DeSantis Outcry

The National Hockey League is no longer making its upcoming career conference open only to “diverse” job-seekers after the association faced backlash from the DeSantis administration.

The Pathway to Hockey Summit, scheduled for February 2 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was originally open only to female, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or disabled registrants.

In a revised advertisement posted Saturday, the NHL removed the minority-only qualifications, while noting that the event is “to encourage those that historically have not been exposed to hockey.”

“The Pathway to Hockey Summit is an informational and networking event designed to encourage all individuals to consider a career in our game – and, in particular, alert those who might not be familiar with hockey to the opportunities it offers,” the NHL spokesperson told Florida Politics.

Last week, the office of Governor Ron DeSantis caught wind of the summit and called out the discrimination in barring candidates who don’t identify as members of “underrepresented communities” initially named by the NHL.

“Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic,” DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said.

“We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity. We call upon the National Hockey League to immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit,” he added.

Participants in the conference will be given the opportunity to meet with recruiters from the NHL league office and at least eleven NHL teams, including the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals, and Florida Panthers.

The organization has a record of engaging in diversity-equity-inclusion initiatives and social-justice activism.

“The NHL is proud to support this past weekend’s Team Trans Draft Tournament in Middleton, Wisconsin. This was the first tournament comprised entirely of transgender and nonbinary players, with around 80 folks participating! #HockeyIsForEveryone #NHLPride,” the NHL tweeted in November.

“Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real,” the NHL added in a subsequent tweet.

In the last couple of years, the league has worked to expand its pride-month campaigns, including pronoun inclusion in company communications.