That’s not at all what they’re saying. This is the fault of the Twitter crowd who harassed the league about players who didn’t want to wear the jersey’s in warm ups.
Twitter made such a massive deal about 2-3 players not wearing the jersey and turned what was supposed to be a great thing for the lgbtq community, with hundreds of players wearing them proudly into a shit storm of negativity.
Unfortunately, this put the league in a really impossible spot. Either they allow the terrier mob to blow the situation way out of proportion with negativity surrounding these inclusivity celebrations or they would have to mandate players wear them and punish them for not wearing them.
That would likely lead to problems with the union, possible issues with the next CBA and possibly lost season(s).
What we should learn from this, I think, is to just ignore people who have dumb beliefs and celebrate the ones who have it right.
Instead of making fringe players like provorov or Reimer the entirety of the publicity and the story and amplifying them, we should be talking about the actual GOATs proudly wearing them and turning it into a positive thing for the league.
Amplify the fact that the best of the best players in the world want everyone to feel included.
I feel bad for the league, they obviously wanted to do these things, they did them for years, until it turned into really really bad press for the league.