Not One Play­er Kneels At NHL Games, Two Teams Show ‘Uni­ty Sup­port­ing Equal­i­ty’ Dur­ing Anthem In Dif­fer­ent Way

Buck­ing trends in oth­er pro­fes­sion­al sports, not a sin­gle play­er kneeled dur­ing the play­ing of the nation­al anthem at three dif­fer­ent NHL exhi­bi­tion games played this week.

The Philadel­phia Fly­ers and the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins all stood for the anthem on Tuesday.

“The Pen­guins and Fly­ers, two of the fiercest rivals in sports, unit­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty this after­noon, to stand up against social injus­tice, racism, and hate,” a post from the Pen­guins said. “The teams stood as one across each club’s respec­tive blue lines pri­or to today’s game.”

Dur­ing an exhi­bi­tion game between the New York Islanders and New York Rangers in Toron­to Wednes­day, all play­ers and coach­es stood as the Cana­di­an and Amer­i­cans nation­al anthems played before the game started.

The fol­low­ing day, Dal­las Stars and Nashville Preda­tors play­ers stood dur­ing the nation­al, as well. Instead of tak­ing a knee, play­ers locked arms before the exhi­bi­tion game “as a show of uni­ty sup­port­ing equal­i­ty,” Dal­las News report­ed.

Kneel­ing dur­ing the nation­al anthem began back in 2016, when then-San Fran­cis­co 49^er’s quar­ter­back Col­in Kaeper­nick took a knee to protest what he described as sys­temic police bru­tal­i­ty against black Amer­i­cans. Kaepernick’s mes­sag­ing has since includ­ed pro-com­mu­nist sig­nal­ing and gen­er­al anti-Amer­i­can sentiment.

“You’ve seen all the oth­er teams do it,” said Stars cap­tain Jamie Benn, refer­ring to play­ers link­ing arms. “We had some chats with Nashville and talked with [cap­tain] Roman Josi. We thought it would be good to mix it up, link arms. We stand for equal­i­ty and I think it’s impor­tant we keep talk­ing about it and keep improv­ing it.”

Accord­ing to Dal­las News, “Benn and Stars for­ward Ty Del­lan­drea also wore hood­ies to their postgame inter­view that read ‘#WeSkate­For Equal­i­ty,’ part of the league’s ini­tia­tive that allows teams to choose a cause that they skate for. Play­ers can indi­vid­u­al­ly choose a cause for the league’s #ISkate­For campaign.”

As part of the #ISkate­For cam­paign, report­ed Matthew DeFranks, play­ers can choose from slo­gans that range from hon­or­ing front­line essen­tial work­ers to pro­mot­ing social justice.

Source: Dai​ly​Wire​.com