“My Teammates are Like Family”

Shawn Thornton, on the reaction if a teammate came out as gay:

Honestly, my teammates are like family so there would be support. I would personally [support] him and I’m pretty sure everyone in our locker room would. We’ve got a pretty good bunch of guys. I don’t think there would be any issues.

How is it that hockey—often ridiculed as the most backwards of the major team sports—is seeing the most progressive activity to accept gay players? From the players and staff in the You Can Play project to outspoken guys like Thornton and ex-NHLer Sean Avery (who I consider to be a jackass in just about every other respect), I certainly didn’t expect to see this much open support. Perhaps it’s because the NHL is not as big as those other sports. Or perhaps it has everything to do with that word “family”, which Thornton repeatedly uses during the interview to describe the locker room. Lots of pro sports teams use a similar cliché, but with hockey’s blue-collar roots you get the sense that it still rings truer than most.

He also had this to say, which Esquire was right to use as a pull-quote:

The hockey culture is that we’re just a bunch of average guys that hang around each other a lot, and if anyone steps out of line you’ve got 19 other guys in the locker room that will bring him back into line. I think that helps create the atmosphere we have.

At first I read this and couldn’t figure out what Thornton was trying to say. Did he mean that the team would keep an openly gay player “in line”? Re-reading it, I then realized he most likely meant the opposite—anyone not supporting a gay teammate would be brought into line by the other members of the family. As it should be.