Look, Holtby isnāt perfect either, but this is a good example of an athlete surrounded by people who either willfully or ignorantly saw no problem at all with Trump, or who actively supported himā and Holtby was able to recognize that this was something with which he did not want to align himself. He didnāt let the āthis is just what you do if you winā narrative dictate his actions.
This isnāt just because Holtby is a better human than everyone else in hockey or whatever. There were several other Caps who opted out that year. Devante Smith-Pelly cited racist remarks made by Trump. Brett Connolly said, āItās about whatās right and wrong. And weāll leave it at that,ā as an explanation for his refusal to participate in the visit. (source)
Some of the guys on that team are probably actual Trump supporters and were thrilled about it. Thereās TJ Oshie, who, uhā¦ once dressed his kids up like Trump and Melania for Halloween and was recently getting some flak again for his Trumpposting, and thereās whatever the hell Ovechkinās political deal is (sigh).
But a lot of them probably just didnāt think that hard about it. If you are a straight white male professional athlete, Trumpās policies and the kinds of hate he tends to stir up just donāt impact your day to day life all that much. You have the luxury of not thinking about it if you donāt want to, and some of these guys are just not that inclined to think real hard about anything other than hockey.
The thing that I always found so interesting and noteworthy about Holtby wasnāt necessarily his moral alignmentā although I appreciated that, obviously. Itās that he was usually so smart about things. You can tell, like with this decision, and with a bunch of other stuff he found himself involved in over the years, that he wasnāt just going with the flow or clinging to tradition for its own sake, heād actually think about things and how they matched up with what he valued (or not). And when missteps happened, he usually thought about it and what he could do better, and then heād say that, instead of reflexively digging in his heels out of a sense that he couldnāt ever be criticized.
I think this, almost more than the morality, is whatās relatively rare in pro sportsā¦ and maybe especially in the NHL, where because of the high socioeconomic barrier to entry in youth hockey, the overwhelming majority of pros come from privileged backgrounds where they are insulated from the necessity of thinking about this stuff.
