Versão em português disponível aqui.

(Co-authored by Marina Garcez)

NHeLas talked to him about his path in hockey, his social media presence and much more. You can also watch him answering Twitter questions on our channel and taking one of our personality quizzes here.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Part 1 | Part 3

You’ve been very active in supporting human rights on Twitter, in several ways. What drove you to become such an outspoken person on social media, this commitment to empowering and advocating for minorities and criticizing what we understand as “hockey culture?”

For me, it’s common sense. I don’t think it’s correct to marginalize people because you think they’re different to you. I didn’t grow up with that in my family. We didn’t do those types of things and I was always taught that you need to respect people, and you don’t treat them differently because they don’t look like you or because they don’t live a similar lifestyle to you, I think that’s completely wrong. So when people call me an activist or something, I don’t think I’m an activist, I just think I’m someone who uses common sense when I say these things. Because, at the end of the day, it isn’t right to hate someone because they’re a bit different to you. I mean, for me that blows my mind, I’m at a loss for words sometimes. I can’t even put all of it together. How does it make sense that you don’t like someone just because they’re different to you? If anything, that’s a treasure. If everyone in the world was the same, the world would be so boring. It is literally beautiful that there are so many different people out there, you can talk to so many different people, learn about their human experience, and it’s just endless possibilities of so many beautiful connections, and beautiful avenues in life where if I say something on Twitter, it’s not because I want to be like Greta Thunberg and have a speech that the entire world hears. No, I just say it because I am truly baffled by how some people will hate instead of loving, and, to me, that’s not right.

But if people do take it as activism, then I’m glad when I get these messages back, and people say “thank you for speaking up, I feel seen.” And that’s something that’s beautiful, because I feel like a lot of athletes, they just stick to sports. But the great ones, the people that are remembered throughout history are the ones that made a bigger difference off the playing surface than they did when they were playing. And that’s something that I think is very important because if you have a platform and you have a name or a following or anything, even if it is just from good intention, and not that you want to be an activist or anything, I still think you should pursue that. I’ve been getting so many messages from people saying thank you and that really just warms my heart because for me to type something up, it’s very easy and it doesn’t take a lot. But for them, it means so much. I think it’s beautiful and it’s something that my dad once told me that it’s a little bit different, but it kind of has the same message. He said, “whenever a kid or a fan asks you for a picture or for an autograph, that moment is a second for you, but it lasts a lifetime for them.” So that’s why I think it’s very important to give everyone the time of day and if you see someone who’s marginalized and being hated for being who they are, that’s wrong, and I can’t stand for that.

You mentioned how you like to use your platform to promote human rights in general. Would you like to do something about that in the future, maybe start a foundation, is that of your interest?

Honestly, I haven’t really thought much about that. But thinking about it now, if I could do something to help people, I would definitely be open to doing it because at the end of the day, it’s great to be a good player, but if you don’t really help anyone, what’s the point of getting to where you are? So I would love to do something like a nonprofit or a charity or just having hockey camps where you can help people like that or expand and grow the sport. I have no concrete plans for that right now, but now that you mentioned it, that’s definitely something I’d be interested to do in the future.

Have you ever called out a teammate on the spot for doing something you thought they shouldn’t have, like using a slur or being misogynistic?

Typically, that’s very hard in the locker room, because if you say something right away, then you become the enemy and they don’t listen to you. So it’s better to just quietly go up to someone and be like “Hey, man, I don’t really appreciate the way you’re talking because that could be taken the wrong way, and you could really hurt someone.” Which happened a couple times this year, but it was mostly Russian guys who heard these words in English and they didn’t know what they meant. They were just repeating it. It’s sort of like when you hear a kid say a swear word, they don’t know what it means. They’re just saying it because they heard it on TV, or they heard mom and dad say it. Here, there were a couple of times Russian guys would say something that you just don’t typically hear in a North American locker room. When that happened, I told the guy “Look, man, you really can’t be saying stuff like that, because that’s just not okay. I understand, you don’t know what it means. I understand that in your culture, it’s something totally different. But if you’re going to speak English and you have aspirations of playing in North America, that’s something you have to forget.” There’s been other moments when guys have tried to show me some stuff which I just didn’t think was right and I straight up said “I understand you want to show me this, but I’m not interested,” like, stuff to do with women or anything like that, I just straight up say, “thank you for offering but no, I’m not interested.” So that’s how I look at things.

Have you ever been in trouble for something you said or something you did that you thought you were doing the right thing, but it wasn’t expected of you to do as a hockey player?

I haven’t really been in trouble for saying anything because I feel like I’m pretty good with my words, I know when to pick and choose my fights. And in locker rooms I don’t really speak up on these terms because a lot of times guys feel threatened when you do that. It’s better to just, like I said, one on one with someone just quietly mention something. But one time, when I was playing in the OHL, I did a curling celebration, which is actually the pinned tweet on my Twitter. And it was during the Olympics, I scored a goal, I tossed my glove and my teammate was sort of sweeping. And after that I got benched for the rest of the period, I scored in the first shift of the game. In between periods, my coach comes up to me, in front of the entire locker room starts screaming, “how can you do this? You’re a disgrace to the game, you can’t be acting like that, blah, blah, blah.” He told my other teammate “I’m gonna send you back to Russia,” (laughs) like, all these things. And he didn’t play me much in the second period, then we went down I think 3-1. He put me back on the ice, I ended up getting two more assists. I was the first star that game. Afterwards, they come up to me, they said “we’re going to talk to you tomorrow. That’s not okay. You know, you’re not off the hook because you played well,” and I’m thinking “the game is fun.” (laughs) The next day I show up, and overnight that video went viral, it was shown on ESPN, on TSN. Pretty much every major sporting broadcast in every country that shows hockey.

Brazil included. (laughs)

Really? Yeah, so I guess it really went worldwide. And our next game, the next day, it turned out to be sold out because so many people saw the video that they got tickets, it was our first sellout in I think a year and a half. At that point no one ever said anything again to me. One of my coaches said “where did you even figure that out?” I said, “Oh, I saw an NFL team do that.” He was like “yeah, well, we’re not the NFL.” And I said “yeah, I know, we make a lot less money and a lot less people watch us.” (laughs) So I said something like that, and he didn’t really agree, didn’t really disagree, but he just nodded and walked away. That was it and nobody ever mentioned that again. So it was interesting, it was fun for me and a lot of the guys enjoyed it. A lot of people did enjoy it if it made it on so many platforms.

It’s funny, we look at the history of sports in the US and football, baseball, then basketball, they all had that moment in history when they started really marketing themselves and you see how much the game grows because of that. And then hockey is just there.

Exactly. I always bring this example up: the NBA and the NHL weren’t that big in the 80s. And their two biggest stars started playing at the same exact time, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. They pretty much started in the same generation. Look at what Michael Jordan did to basketball and look at what Gretzky did to hockey. Basketball is all over the world where hockey, it’s grown. I’m not gonna say it hasn’t grown. But it hasn’t nearly grown as much as basketball has. You look at a team like PSG has the Jordan’s logo on their jersey, a soccer team has the Jordan’s thing, whereas hockey is still just hockey. It hasn’t really reached the international stage like basketball has because of, you know, what Michael Jordan was able to accomplish on the court, but also off the court. He did so much.

Do you worry that being so outspoken about those issues would impact your chances of making an NHL roster?

Obviously, that’s in the back of my head. They don’t really like it when people speak up. But at the same time, what they do not realize is, if you look at me, like I mentioned, I have had more points than a lot of guys that are playing in the NHL right now this season and in a lot less games. So clearly I can play at that level if my colleagues and counterparts are able to do that. But one thing that they’re not able to do is if you look at my social media, I have a lot more followers in all of my platforms than, I would say, most NHL players, and if I were able to get to that stage of the NHL, I would be able to make a team so much money just based off of off the ice endorsements, all these different things.

Just put me in front of a camera and let me be myself and I can literally help a team make so much money and grow the team’s revenue. And if they were to understand that, I feel like that could definitely be something that could help. I feel like a lot of teams, like, you look at the Lakers, Kyle Kuzma, he’s an average player. He’s not a superstar. But he brings in so many fans based off of his fashion, how he dresses, his aura, his lifestyle. Same thing, Manchester United, they had a player named Jesse Lingard who didn’t play for almost 16 months, but he had his little celebration, he had merch, he had dance moves, he had all these things, and he has more followers than any single NHL team. He makes so much money for the team because his jerseys are always one of the top sold, his merch is always one of the top sold, but also his Instagram game and his social media brings in so many fans from all over the world. And I can do something like that for any team, but also when you look at these young guys who are my age and they produce less than me, I can produce at the same level if not better than these guys. And I’m still young, so over time I can only improve all these factors.

If I was an NHL team, I would see a guy like myself and think “alright, so we have a potentially good young player who was able to play in the second best league in the world at such a young age, but also he has such a big following already that if we bring him and market him, not even well, just barely market him, he can grow to an extent where he can become someone that brings in new fans and new audiences and make us a whole lot of money.” Because at the end the day that’s what most teams care about, making money. So I think it’s a win-win for any NHL team and I’d be glad to jump at any opportunity because I obviously know that I can play at this level and I feel confident that I can do both the job on the ice and off the ice, and I’d love to do that for any team.

It’s not that hard, NHL, come on. It’s the best sport in the world and it can be so frustrating sometimes.

Exactly. That’s what I always say, hockey is the only sport where the best product is the actual gameplay. You look at any other sport, you look at the NBA, it’s the off the court antics. It’s the games where the Kylie Jenner ex-boyfriends are playing against each other getting the most views. Whereas (in hockey), the best of our sport is what’s going on on the actual surface. Everything else is incomparable. You can’t even compare it to golf or to anything else. It’s just so much worse than every other sport and that’s really, really hurting the league. More people deserve to watch hockey but they’ll never get a chance because it’s just not entertaining enough. There’s no drama. That’s basically what it is.

Part 1 | Part 3