But this, too, is about hockey, where everything is usually reduced to the simplest denomination. Don Cherry makes fun of gays by dressing up in earrings before an episode of Coach's Corner. Toronto is abuzz all spring over innuendo concerning the possible sexual orientation of certain Maple Leafs. One of the players' names undergoes gender reconstruction in the media. If the NHL could be carbon-tested, it would probably come out somewhere around 1957.
Men are men and they never cry.
Women stay home. Some players even go to bed as a team. But the sexual orientation of a player is never questioned except as a putdown in jest or an invitation to a fight. Protection in the NHL still means having a tough wonger to back you up. Unlike tennis, football, baseball, and so many other professional sports, no NHL player has ever come out of the closet.