The timing could not be more damning. In late 2025, a six-episode HBO Max drama about two male professional hockey players falling in love became one of the most-watched television events of the year, averaging 10.6 million American viewers per episode. StubHub reported a 40% surge in NHL ticket sales in its wake. The NHL itself called Heated Rivalry “the most unique driver for creating new fans in the NHL’s 108-year history.” Commissioner Gary Bettman binged the entire series in a single night.
Then, in late August 2026, the Dallas Stars quietly released their promotional schedule for the upcoming season. Pride Night — a fixture for at least five consecutive years — was gone. In its place: a new rotating event called “Hockey Unites Us: Women in Sports Night.”
A fan commented on the Stars’ Instagram page: “No Pride Night in ’26 after the boost of hockey ticket sales from the drop of ‘Heated Rivalry’ is crazy work.”
It is. And it is only the latest chapter in a story that reveals something uncomfortable about professional hockey’s relationship with its LGBTQ+ fans — a relationship built on celebration when it was convenient, and quietly dismantled when it became politically inconvenient.
How We Got Here: A Fifteen-Year Arc
The NHL’s first Pride Night was held on March 30, 2011, when the San Jose Sharks hosted the Dallas Stars. There is a historical irony in that sentence that practically writes itself. By the 2017–18 season, all 31 NHL teams hosted some form of Pride Night. The Edmonton Oilers became the first team to use Pride Tape on sticks during warmups in 2016, and the practice spread steadily across the league. Connor McDavid was vocal about it: “I know here in Edmonton we strongly believe hockey is for everyone and strongly support Pride Night. We were the first team to use the Pride tape in warmups so we’re firm believers in the celebration that is Pride Night.”
By 2022–23, roughly half of all NHL teams had players wearing rainbow-themed warmup jerseys. Pride Nights had become, as the Sports Business Journal put it, a “staple of every team’s promotional calendar.” The NHL’s “Hockey Is For Everyone” initiative — created in 1998 by the NHL’s Diversity Task Force and formally launched as a campaign in February 2017, with the NHL and You Can Play Project becoming official partners in April 2013 — had become one of the league’s most visible commitments to inclusion.
And then came January 17, 2023.
The Unraveling: One Refusal That Changed Everything
Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov became the first player of the 2022–23 season to decline to participate in Pride Night warmups, citing his Russian Orthodox Christian faith. The refusal went viral. Within weeks, it had inspired a cascade: San Jose Sharks goaltender James Reimer cited the Bible as “the highest authority in my life.” Florida Panthers forwards Eric and Marc Staal followed, also citing Christian beliefs. Russian players Ilya Lyubushkin, Denis Gurianov, and Andrei Kuzmenko cited Russia’s expanded anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda law, passed in late 2022 — though notably, Russian goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky of the same Florida Panthers team wore the Pride jersey on the very night the Staal brothers declined.
Teams began retreating at the organizational level. The New York Rangers publicly advertised Pride Night jerseys for their January 27, 2023 game, then wore regular jerseys with no explanation. The Minnesota Wild quietly removed a Pride jersey auction website from circulation on March 7, 2023 — with speculation swirling that the team was protecting Russian star Kirill Kaprizov. The Chicago Blackhawks, following both the Rangers and the Wild, became the third team to decline wearing Pride jerseys, and the first to officially announce the decision, citing “security concerns for Russian players” under Kremlin law.
Commissioner Gary Bettman’s response ahead of the 2023–24 season managed to be simultaneously practical and devastating: he banned themed warmup jerseys for all events — Pride, military, Hockey Fights Cancer — to eliminate what he called “distractions.” His framing was careful. The jerseys had become a flashpoint, he argued, forcing players to declare a position. By banning them universally, no player would have to choose.
What that framing obscured was a structural reality: no comparable controversy had ever erupted over military night jerseys. No player had publicly refused to wear a Hockey Fights Cancer sweater. The “distraction” was not about warmup apparel. It was specifically and exclusively about LGBTQ+ inclusion.
The situation worsened in October 2023, when the NHL sent a memo to all 32 clubs banning Pride Tape from sticks at any time — not just warmups. Outsports called it “the most stifling, anti-LGBTQ policy any pro sports league in North America has ever issued.” Arizona Coyotes defenseman Travis Dermott defied the ban directly on October 21, 2023, using Pride Tape in his team’s home opener. Three days later, facing pressure from the NHLPA and the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, the league reversed the Pride Tape ban. Over 200 players used Pride Tape during the 2023–24 season. The jersey ban remained.
The Quiet Erosion: 2025 and 2026
The controversy of 2023 was loud and public. What followed was quieter, and in some ways more corrosive.
By January 2026, The Athletic had documented that three NHL teams had moved away from Pride Night for the 2025–26 season: the Carolina Hurricanes replaced it with a “Hockey Is For Everyone Night”; the Los Angeles Kings shifted to “multiple Pride/LGBTQ+ endeavors” without a dedicated Pride game; and the Utah Mammoth announced no Pride-related events at all, declining to respond to multiple media requests. That last detail is particularly pointed. Utah’s legislature passed a bill (HB77) banning Pride flags from state schools and government buildings on March 6, 2025, and Governor Spencer Cox allowed it to become law without his signature on March 28, 2025, with the law taking effect on May 7, 2025. Days after the bill passed the legislature, the then-Utah Hockey Club had unveiled a “Utah HC Pride” logo on its video boards. By the time the 2025–26 schedule was set, the logo was gone and the team had gone silent.
Worth noting: the Boston Bruins have never held a formal Pride Night, instead hosting “Hockey Is For Everyone Night” since 2017–18 — a fact Commissioner Bettman overlooked when publicly claiming every team hosted Pride Nights. Bettman’s praise of the league’s inclusive record has an increasingly hollow ring when measured against what individual teams are actually scheduling.
Hudson Taylor, executive director of Athlete Ally, had warned in 2023 that the political landscape was “helping to sort of normalize people for opting out of the optional ways that they have been asked to show support for marginalized members of society.” That normalization is now measurable in promotional calendars.
The Dallas Stars Decision: What Was Said, and What Was Not
When the Stars released their 2026–27 promotional schedule, the absence of Pride Night was not accompanied by a direct explanation. Team spokesperson Joe Calvillo offered this: “The new Hockey Unites Night allows our organization to use our platform to celebrate and support a different underrepresented community each season.” When asked why both a Pride Night and a Women in Sports Night could not coexist on the schedule — as they had for years in various forms across the league — the organization declined to comment.
That silence is itself instructive. The Stars will still host Black History Month, Hockey Fights Cancer, Noche Mexicana, military, first responders, and teachers theme nights. Those nights are not rotating. They are not being replaced by a generalized “community celebration” framework. Only the LGBTQ+-specific event has been absorbed into a broader category — a category that, by design, will spotlight a “different underrepresented community each season,” meaning LGBTQ+ fans may not be spotlighted at all for years at a time.
In the same promotional announcement, the Stars revealed a tie-in event celebrating the 2023 romantasy novel Iron Flame, with proceeds going to the Trevor Project — an LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization. The juxtaposition struck many observers as tone-deaf: charitable support for LGBTQ+ youth, without the in-arena visibility those youth could actually see themselves in.
Ralph Strangis, a Dallas Stars Hall of Fame member who spent 25 years with the organization, offered the most unsparing assessment: “The Dallas Stars have caved to conservative forces outside and in… Sports teams don’t take sides — or shouldn’t — we welcome all fans and all those who will spend. And so at its core — these celebratory nights — all of them — were designed to sell. Simple. Increase market share. Get groups in that we don’t have yet — or make those we already have feel special. That’s it. That’s all it was. Business. Now — it’s something else. All of it. But that’s where we are now in America in 2026.”
Strangis frames it as a business decision that has been corrupted by politics. That framing has the uncomfortable virtue of being accurate.
The Fans Who Were Left Out
The human cost of this decision is not abstract. LGBTQ+ Stars fans spoke openly about what Pride Night meant to them — and what its removal signals.
Izzy, a 21-year-old LGBTQ+ fan, said: “I feel betrayed. More than ever we need this representation.” Lifelong Stars fan Tori Copeland, who attended every Pride Night, called the decision “super disappointing” and put it plainly: “It just feels like you’re backing down to the pressure.” For Jason, a transgender Stars fan who had previously coordinated with local charities to make Pride Night meaningful for his community, the sting was personal: “The Stars have always been very supportive and outspoken. It felt like a betrayal of sorts for this team that I love.”
Vanessa Caprio described being bullied in hockey locker rooms as a young person, and what Pride Night ultimately represented for her: “Being in those locker rooms was a terrifying thing to go through, and I was bullied a lot. Pride Night felt like a reminder that there was a place for someone like me in hockey.”
These are not abstract constituents. They are paying customers who made hockey part of their identity and their community. The Stars’ decision did not happen in a vacuum: it happened in the same political moment in which the Trump administration has banned transgender service members, removed a rainbow flag from Stonewall National Monument, defunded LGBTQ+ health research, and issued executive orders recognizing only two genders. On July 31, 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order revitalizing the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, appointing Gary Bettman to the council alongside multiple other sports figures including Wayne Gretzky, Matthew Tkachuk, Roger Goodell, and Bryson DeChambeau, among others. The political current is not subtle.
The Family Research Council — designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — celebrated the Stars’ decision in its Washington Stand publication, arguing that celebrating LGBTQ+ people was “deeply intolerant.” LGBTQ Nation’s Molly Sprayregen reported on September 5, 2026, that right-wingers were circulating the news as evidence that “not every sport is woke.” When the people celebrating your scheduling decision are the Family Research Council, that is information worth sitting with.
The Heated Rivalry Paradox
Here is what makes the Dallas Stars’ decision — and the NHL’s broader drift — particularly difficult to accept on its own stated terms.
Heated Rivalry, adapted from Canadian author Rachel Reid’s bestselling hockey romance novel, arrived on HBO Max in late 2025 and became a cultural phenomenon. Its 10.6 million average American viewers per episode drove LGBTQ+ fans to hockey in documented, measurable numbers. Outsports found scores of LGBTQ+ people attending NHL games or watching hockey for the first time specifically because of the show. StubHub’s 40% ticket sales surge was real. The NHL called it, without irony, the greatest driver of new fans in the sport’s history.
The show’s lead actors, Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, were selected as torchbearers for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Hudson Williams revealed publicly that he and author Rachel Reid had received private messages from active players in the NHL, NFL, and NBA, sharing their own experiences of concealing their sexual orientation. Professional hockey player Jesse Korteum came out publicly in the months following the premiere. The show was named among the best television of 2025 by Cosmopolitan, the New York Post, Refinery29, The Seattle Times, and the Toronto Star. By April 2026, British Vogue had placed it among the best television shows of the century.
The NHL embraced every word of this. Bettman praised the show. Teams sold jerseys. New fans filled arenas.
And then the Dallas Stars removed the one night a year designed to make those new fans feel like they belonged.
A comment on Threads captured the contradiction plainly: “All that bullshit about the NHL being able to ‘accept’ the queer community when Heated Rivalry was funneling them fans and money was all just talk.”
As of September 2026, none of the four major North American men’s professional sports leagues — the NHL, NFL, NBA, or MLB — has an openly gay active player. That absence has not stopped the NHL from marketing itself through the cultural resonance of a story about two gay professional hockey players falling in love. Luke Prokop, the NHL prospect who came out in 2021 as the first openly gay player under NHL contract, has spoken about what Pride Night means from the inside: “Pride nights are an essential step towards fostering greater acceptance and understanding in hockey. As someone who aspires to play on an NHL team one day, I would want to enter the locker room knowing I can share all parts of my identity with my teammates.”
The closet does not empty when the in-arena celebration disappears. It just becomes less visible — which is precisely the point.
The DFW Context: A Region Without a Flag
The Stars’ decision does not exist in isolation in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. The Texas Rangers hold the distinction of being the only MLB team in America never to have hosted a Pride Night, instead scheduling a “Faith and Family Night” in June 2026. Rangers owner Ray Davis has made significant donations in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, whose administration has been among the most aggressive in the country in restricting LGBTQ+ rights.
With the Stars’ removal of Pride Night, both of DFW’s flagship sports franchises head into the new season without formal LGBTQ+ celebrations. The Dallas Mavericks and FC Dallas continue to hold Pride events. But for the NHL and MLB franchises that dominate the region’s sports identity, LGBTQ+ fans have been effectively told their visibility is optional — and currently not on the menu.
What Resistance Looks Like
The most important counternarrative to the Stars’ decision is not coming from league offices. It is coming from fans.
Tori Copeland and Jason — the same fans who described feeling betrayed — are organizing their own Pride Night for November 14, when the Stars host the Buffalo Sabres. They have named it “Y’all Means All,” and structured it as a benefit for Dallas Hope Charities, which supports homeless LGBTQ+ youth. Jason’s framing deserves to be quoted in full: “We’re always going to be here as queer fans. They’re not going to scare us away by choosing not to have Pride Night. We’re always going to be here, and we’re just going to do our own thing.”
That spirit — showing up anyway, building community in the gap left by an institution — is not new for LGBTQ+ people. But it should not be necessary for paying fans of a team that recently benefited from a cultural moment they did not build and cannot fully claim.
Elsewhere in the league, the Washington Capitals provided a template for what genuine commitment looks like. Their 2026 Pride Night featured the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, nods to Heated Rivalry, a ceremonial puck drop with four PWHL players including Hayley Scamurra, and a sold-out pre-game block party under the banner “All Caps, All Love.” The event sold out the 18,347-seat Capital One Arena. The Los Angeles Kings, who stepped back from a dedicated Pride Night in 2025–26, are restoring it for 2026–27 — a reminder that this trend is not irreversible. The Philadelphia Flyers, whose Ivan Provorov saga in 2023 helped ignite the broader controversy, continue to host an annual Pride Night. More than 28 teams across the league continue to celebrate Pride in some form.
The league also invested $125,000 in LGBTQ+ organizations and hosted its third annual NHL Unites Pride Cup in Vancouver in early 2026. These are not nothing. But they exist in tension with a growing list of teams for whom LGBTQ+ inclusion has been quietly reassigned to a rotating slot, a softer brand, or a silence so complete that media requests go unanswered.
The Question That Won’t Go Away
The Dallas Stars’ official explanation is that the new “Hockey Unites Us” framework will allow the organization to “celebrate and support a different underrepresented community each season.” That is a reasonable-sounding sentence. It collapses under a single question: why does celebrating a different underrepresented community require removing LGBTQ+ fans from the schedule entirely?
Black History Month is not being rotated out in favor of a generalized “community night.” Hockey Fights Cancer is not being replaced by a “Health Awareness” event that might or might not address cancer in any given year. The military night remains. The first responders night remains. Teachers remain.
Only LGBTQ+ fans have been placed in a category that requires them to compete for their own visibility against other groups — and may lose that competition in any given season. The mechanism is elegant in its plausible deniability. But the outcome is the same as a cancellation, dressed in the language of expansion.
Brock McGillis, the first openly gay men’s professional hockey player, who came out in 2016, put the stakes clearly: “Hockey, like all sports, has the power to either be a force for inclusion or a force for exclusion. When teams strip away Pride Nights, they are making a choice about who they see as belonging.”
The Dallas Stars made a choice. They would prefer not to discuss it in any detail. Their LGBTQ+ fans — the ones who attended Pride Night, who felt the crowd cheer for them on the jumbotron, who found in that arena a version of the sport that finally had space for them — are now being asked to accept that the choice was made for their benefit, as part of a broader and more inclusive vision.
Jason, the transgender Stars fan organizing “Y’all Means All” for November, offered the most honest summary of where things stand: “We’re always going to be here.”
He is right. LGBTQ+ hockey fans were here before Heated Rivalry made it profitable to acknowledge them, and they will be here after the league moves on to the next cultural moment it can capitalize on without committing to. The question is whether the teams that took their ticket money, celebrated their fandom, and wrapped their marketing in rainbow colors during boom times will have anything to offer them when the political winds blow cold.
In Dallas, for the 2026–27 season, the answer is a Women in Sports Night on March 23, and a suggestion that LGBTQ+ fans wait their turn.