Hockey Intersecting With Politics Is Like Death & Taxes…Inevitable

Canadian politicians aren’t the only ones who like to associate themselves with hockey players. Russian President Vladimir Putin often plays in exhibition games. In 2019, with his popularity waning, he laced up to play in a game against former Russian NHLers. He marked up the score sheet for a remarkable eight goals with the opposing team seemingly unable to contain him. 

Not to be outdone, American presidents have a long tradition of feting members of the Stanley Cup championship team at the White House every year. As yet, no president has slapped on the blades to play against them.

American, Canadian and Russian politicians are certainly not the first to hope that some of an athlete’s public appeal rubs off on them. Take Julius Ceasar for example. He put on lavish shows in Rome at which he associated with the greatest gladiators of the day, casting himself as a leader of strength and courage. So too did Nero who often competed in Olympic games declaring himself the winner of chariot races.

It’s Risky for Politicians to Tie Their Fortunes to Hockey Players

As Nero found out, associating themselves with sports and athletes can backfire on a politician. In his case, Romans laughed when he fell off his chariot in one Olympic race. Putin humiliated himself when he fell on his face during a postgame victory lap (yes, the one in which he scored eight goals). It wasn’t clear from the video whether any Russians laughed at him the way Romans had at Nero.

A more recent example of the perils of politicians hitching their fortunes to hockey teams is the 1972 Summit Series. Heading into an election campaign as the series began, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said his Liberal party would win just as surely as Team Canada would defeat the Soviet Union. The series was far closer than Canadians had ever expected. They were in a foul mood when their team fell behind the Soviets and party strategists were concerned that the election would be lost should Team Canada be defeated.

Hockey is often used as both an instrument of propaganda and a tool of diplomacy. As preposterous as it may seem today, the Summit Series for many Canadians was a way to demonstrate the superiority of the Canadian political and economic system over the communist principles by which the Soviet Union governed itself. 

As for hockey’s value in international diplomacy, Putin proposed a hockey series between Russia and the United States to American President Donald Trump during their recent talks about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The players would be Americans and Russians from the NHL and the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). He claimed that Trump supported the idea, even though the White House failed to mention the proposed series in a readout of the call. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt later brushed off the idea saying, “We’re more interested in securing a peace deal than scheduling hockey games right now.”

Putin’s enthusiasm for the series goes beyond his love for the game. If it came off, the series would mark the return of Russian sports to the international stage with the United States as a willing participant and sponsor of Russia’s international rehabilitation. Whether that explains the Trump administration’s tepid reaction to the proposed series is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s as simple as the image-conscious American president being worried about presiding over the losing side. After all, he had to endure that in the Canada-USA championship game in the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off this past February. 

Yet it’s not just the politician who faces potential problems when they decide to draw close to hockey. 

Cozying Up to Politicians Is Risky for Hockey Players

Wayne Gretzky is a cautionary tale for any hockey player who becomes too close to a politician. The Great One’s standing among Canadians (and perhaps among many hockey fans around the world) lies in ruins because of his association with Trump. We’re all judged by the company we keep and while in normal times most people wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at a hockey hero dining with a President or attending his inauguration, Trump is altogether a different matter. He is loathed by most Canadians and being his friend made Gretzky a Canadian Judas.

If Gretzky seems cavalier about choosing his political friends it may be because he had made controversial choices in the past and escaped the consequences. He enthusiastically endorsed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and gave his seal of approval to out-of-favour Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the run-up to his defeat in the country’s 2015 general election. What was vexing for many of his Canadian fans at that time was that he hadn’t lived in Canada for over three decades, and as a non-resident, couldn’t even vote in Canadian elections. Why, they asked, would he go out of his way to take positions that were sure to be unpopular with huge swaths of his Canadian fan base?

Gretzky is not the only Canadian hockey legend to run afoul of public opinion because of the political company he keeps. Bobby Orr came out in support of Trump just before the 2020 presidential election with a full-page advertisement in a Boston-area newspaper. In Canada, as much as Orr is revered, Trump is despised, and across the country, people reacted with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief at Orr’s endorsement. Most of his fans seemed to be able to separate Orr, the player, from Orr, the Republican Party activist. Yet, the only possible result of the endorsement was damage to his brand.

It’s not just Canadian hockey stars who have deliberately entangled themselves in the politics of the day. Alex Ovechkin, up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had been a vocal supporter Putin, even founding in 2017 a “social movement” he called “Putin Team.” Fellow Russians Evgeni Malkin of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Hall of Famer Pavel Bure and retired NHL player Ilya Kovalchuk are part of the group whose aim Ovechkin says is “to support Putin” (from “Alex Ovechkin is one of Putin’s biggest fans. The question is, why?” The Washington Post, 11/25/17).

The difference between Ovechkin and Gretzky is that he’s stopped talking about Putin. He seems to understand that supporting the Russian dictator in North America carries very little upside for him and huge risk.

It’s not only some NHL veterans who supported Trump and paid a public relations price for it. Vegas Golden Knights’ goalie Robin Lehner proudly adorned his mask with a Trump sticker in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election. In 2020, he posted on Twitter that he wouldn’t make that mistake twice. Either way, he’s damned – a portion of his fan base is going to be unhappy regardless of what is on his mask.

All of this is why some image and brand experts cynically take the view that a player can only lose by taking public positions on political and social issues. They often cite basketball legend Michael Jordan explaining why he refused to endorse a credible black challenger to Senator Jesse Helms in his home state of North Carolina, saying, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” Ironically, he said that 25 years ago, and it has come back to haunt him even though now he says he was joking.

Sometimes Politics Finds the Player

There are times when hockey players are swept up in the politics of the day. That happened to the Montreal Canadiens’ Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, whose suspension by then-NHL president Clarence Campbell late in the 1954-55 season for both the remainder of that season and the playoffs, sparked the “Richard Riot” in which a mob of 20,000 Habs fans protesting the suspension smashed the Forum and surrounding businesses in downtown Montreal.

In Quebec, the suspension was regarded as an injustice and proof of unfair punishment meted out to a French-Canadian hero by an arrogant and bigoted English-Canadian establishment. The rioting ended when officials asked Richard to take to the radio to admonish fans to end their protest and go home.

Richard had unwittingly become a lightning rod for nationalist sentiment in Quebec. The riot in his name is regarded as one of the first stirrings of “La Revolution Tranquille”, which ultimately laid the foundation for the province’s nationalist politics and several referenda on Quebec independence. 

Politics Can Also Find the NHL

The NHL itself can unwittingly get caught up in international politics. The proposed USA-Russia hockey series that Putin and perhaps Trump are pushing could saddle the NHL with a serious problem that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman may soon have to grapple with.

If the league agrees to allow NHL players to participate in the series as part of either team, then those players may be disqualified from participation in tournaments organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) including the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan. Following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the IIHF suspended all national teams and clubs from Russia and Belarus from taking part in any of its international events.

For its part, the NHL suspended relationships with business partners in Russia, paused its Russian language social and digital media sites and said it would not consider Russia for any future competitions after the invasion began. Participating in Putin’s proposed tournament would undermine that commitment.

Bettman’s comments on the possibility of the NHL participating in the proposed USA-Russia tournament were indecipherable with the Commissioner explaining, “I’m not going to speculate or anything else. It is what it is.” Saying much else risks annoying Trump, Putin and the IIHF. Even so, if it were to include NHLers, he must see the potential for the tournament to tarnish the NHL brand, supported as it would be by two controversial, if not very unpopular world leaders. 

Yet, neither is the NHL immune from becoming embroiled in domestic politics through no fault of its own. That is a lesson the NHL learned when it drew criticism for not supporting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of the George Floyd murder by Minneapolis police.

During the 2020 Playoffs, the Minnesota Wild’s Matt Dumba, a Canadian of Filipino descent and a founding member of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, took a knee during the American national anthem in the opening game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Oilers to draw attention to the BLM movement. Dumba was joined by two other black players — the Oilers’ Darnell Nurse and Malcolm Subban of the Blackhawks.

To the displeasure of many fans, the NHL barely mustered the courage to flash the insipid slogan, “End Racism” on the Jumbotron above the ice. The league has gone to great lengths to avoid using the term “Black Lives Matter” and seems doggedly determined to remain “apolitical”. 

In trying to straddle both sides of an issue it wanted no part of but that was thrust upon it, the league has satisfied no one. Socially progressive fans are unhappy with the league sidestepping the use of the term BLM, while the remainder, whether they are people who just want to enjoy hockey without the politics or those who oppose the BLM movement, are annoyed. 

Fans Can Put Politics Into Hockey

The championship game in the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off last month between Team Canada and Team USA was more than just another hockey game – at least for Canadian fans. Riding on the outcome of that game was Canadian pride not only in their game, but in their country. For Canadians, a victory for Team Canada meant striking back at a country whose President was threatening the annexation of their country and attacking them economically.

Canadians are not the only hockey fans to inject national pride into important international games. Who could forget the spirited play of the then-Czechoslovak national team, spurred on by their passionate fans, when they took on the Soviet Union’s national hockey team in Olympic competition. Most of the Soviet players were members of the Soviet Red Army who enforced Soviet domination of their country. It was always more than a hockey game for the Czechoslovaks.

Politics in Hockey Is Here to Stay

In one way or another, hockey will inevitably become entangled in the big political and social issues of the day. As long as hockey is a part of our lives and we continue to put our hockey heroes on a pedestal, we will continue to seek out their opinions and beliefs about those issues. Some players will be only too happy to share them with us and our politicians only too eager to help them do that in their pursuit of power. And if our hockey heroes hold back from sharing their opinions and beliefs, then we will project ours upon them. It’s simply human nature.