queeraspuck

Luke Prokop was driving his car, so he couldn’t totally freak out.

But man, what he was feeling at the moment.

The 2020 third-round draft pick of the Nashville Predators was on a call with the NHL club’s key front office people including GM David Poile.

Their message to Prokop? They were all proud of him. They had his back. He didn’t have to worry about anything.

“When I think about the feeling of being free, that was the closest I think I’ve been to it so far,” Prokop, 19, said.

A dressing room can be an incredibly lonely and dark place for any player who doesn’t conform to hockey’s culture.

“I felt like an outcast,” confessed Duplessis.

Duplessis’ life as he knew it started to unravel. The skilled winger knew he had to protect his secret at all cost.

“Obviously at that point I couldn’t tell my teammates I was gay.”

“It was very hard,” admitted Duplessis when asked about protecting his secret.

“I didn’t want to say something or do something that would reveal that I was gay.”

“It was like an act, I wasn’t myself.”

The once outgoing fun-loving kid who sat at the back of the bus with “the boys” became a recluse.

Duplessis started to push everyone away. He welcomed the solitude, but deep down hated every second of it.

The fear of someone finding out his secret haunted his thoughts; his only escape was playing the game he loved.

As Quebec Major Junior Hockey League players gear up for a season they hope will change their lives, a goal-scoring 17-year-old New Brunswicker decided not to wait for the puck to drop before changing his.

Yanic Duplessis, an elite-level player who was drafted by the QMJHL's Drummondville Voltigeurs in 2019, revealed he is gay earlier this week.

In the hockey world, that qualifies as significant news. One of the reasons the native of Saint-Antoine, N.B., decided to step forward is to help make such announcements unremarkable.

"It was a struggle for me, and it shouldn't be," he said in an interview with CBC's Quebec AM, later adding "it shouldn't be a big deal."