After the NHL celebrated individual achievements in Nashville with their annual awards ceremony, the second day of the week-long takeover of the town by the League saw the introduction of the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition. The group is made up of current and former NHL players and women’s professional hockey players that are working to advance equality and inclusion in the sport both on and off the ice.
The Dallas Stars were represented on stage by Al Montoya, their current Director of Community Outreach. Montoya was hired in 2021 in the newly-created role to help the team continue growing the game in Dallas. He was the first player of Cuban heritage in the league and spent nine seasons as a journeyman goaltender before retiring in 2019. At the time of his hiring, Montoya was a member of the NHL Player Inclusion Committee, the precursor to today’s Coalition.
“When I retired from hockey, I knew I wanted to get back in the game. I knew I wanted to stay in the game, the game that gave me so much. I wanted to give back,” Montoya said. “I struck up a connection with Kim Davis, senior executive at the league, and Bill Daly, and really wanted to make a difference. Not too much later, this committee was formed and I knew I wanted to be part of it. As a Hispanic player, as a player being one-of-none in the locker room growing up my whole career, being raised by my mother (single parent), I knew representation mattered. I knew our fresh perspective, whether having played the game now to working on the business side of the game, would be valuable.”
The Committee undertook a name change to reflect the group’s new purpose, which is intended to start doing the work of making the game more accessible to members of historically underrepresented communities in hockey, such as the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, and women, among others.
“We started off as a committee that would send up recommendations to make the game better,” Montoya said. “Now, with the backing of the League and the NHLPA, we’re really united on all fronts. We’re allowed to put plan to action.”
In Dallas, that action comes in the form of a scholarship supported at the University of Texas-Arlington. “One of the pillars that we created was to accelerate the pipeline to bring in more diverse candidates for whether it’s on the ice, hockey operations, whether it’s business executives – this is another way to do it,” Montoya said.
“For me, [success is] getting out into the community, being intentional, going to the places where communities aren’t inside of a rink where they are and making them feel like the Dallas Stars are their team,” Montoya said. “The ultimate win is when we start talking about these underrepresented communities in the rink and that everyone feels represented in the American Airlines Center.”
The timing of the introduction of the Coalition comes at a weird time in the NHL. Just last week, Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that no team would have themed jerseys next season and referencing reports of players refusing to wear Pride-themed jerseys this season as a “distraction”. Though the work by the Coalition has been happening for years now, and the timing of the announcement was set weeks ago, the skeptical hockey fan might see this as a response to the criticism the NHL has come under for their decision to do away with the most visible parts of these inclusionary efforts.
But for Montoya and others in the Coalition, they said that they won’t let a decision they had no say in stop them from making sure that everyone is welcome at a rink and hockey games everywhere at any time.
After all, actions speak louder than words.