The Penguins are overstating NHL’s White House tradition to avoid facing reality

One of the most common things you’ll hear regarding the Penguins’ visit to the White House is that it’s about tradition.

“We respect the office of the president and the White House, and the history and tradition of the championship team getting invited to the White House,” coach Mike Sullivan said last month, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“I think it’s more about the fact that we won the championship, and it’s tradition to go to the White House,” forward Conor Sheary said recently, via the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “It has nothing to do with who’s the president or what decisions he’s making.”

Tradition is the operative word there. Teams have always gone to the White House, so they should keep going to the White House, regardless of who’s in it. It’s as simple as that, even in a world where nothing seems that way anymore. If you can’t satisfy everyone, just keep the status quo. Commissioner Gary Bettman said as much when he told players to try to be “apolitical” at the rink during games earlier this year.

Except the tradition of Stanley Cup winners visiting the White House isn’t actually that old. The Islanders first visited with President Ronald Reagan in 1983. Jaromir Jagr was there the second time in June 1991 with President George H.W. Bush, when the tradition really began, and he’s still in the league today.

Instead, “adhering to tradition” feels like a way to avoid having a meaningful conversation about why visiting Donald Trump at the White House might be problematic, or whether it should happen at all. We’re talking about a tradition that’s roughly as old as the Lightning, Panthers, Sharks, Senators, and Ducks for a league that’s about to celebrate its 100th birthday. An “Original Six” tradition, this is not.

You’d think this wouldn’t be lost in the discussion of whether teams should feel obligated to keep going to the White House, no matter who the president is. But the tradition argument obfuscates the situation, and it doesn’t confront why, say, NFL or NBA players are having their own conflict with the current administration.

The first World Series champions reportedly visited the White House in 1924, and the first NBA champions did so in 1963. Another Pittsburgh team, the Steelers, became the first Super Bowl champions to visit as part of a dual ceremony with the Pirates in 1980. President Ronald Reagan would make these kinds of visits a norm during the 1980s, but hockey didn’t become a staple until a new president had been elected. That president reportedly didn’t even recognize Mario Lemieux.

An NBA champion was invited to the White House two decades before an NHL champion, yet that tradition didn’t stop Stephen Curry and the Warriors from speaking out against going (with Trump pulling his invitation to them afterwards). The NHL may have other reasons for its attempts at political neutrality — namely, it’s a league comprised primarily of wealthy, white men who aren’t impacted in the same way by the issues being protested in the NFL — but in wake of the collision between Trump and activism by athletes, that’s an uphill climb.

The Penguins keep saying their decision to go is apolitical, and they operate in a world where many of their fans may view it that way. To them, this isn’t about fighting police brutality or racial injustice, it’s just about respecting tradition. “It’s not about politics, that’s for sure,” Sidney Crosby said recently.

Except this tradition is hardly one. It’s not even as old as Crosby. If that’s the best argument they have, then we should look elsewhere.