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Deep Blue Sea: On the fraught relationship between NHL, HDA

The Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA) scored a major marketing opportunity in a recent partnership with Budweiser. The pair came together to create an advertisement that confronts the audience with the slurs nonwhite and people of color in hockey have been called because of their involvement in the sport, as well as a fundraising campaign featuring custom #TapeOutHate hockey tape.

One thing noticeably absent from the spot? Any NHL branding.

Since its formation in June 2020, the HDA — which is made up of nine current and former NHL players — has made themselves available to work with the NHL to achieve what presumably would be their mutual goal of eliminating racism and bigotry in hockey.