Former NHL official claims league fired him for being whistle-blower on racism

Once again, TSN’s Rick Westend has come out with some shocking report, one that will get many people reacting across the National Hockey League especially since it has attempted to make efforts with the ongoing racism in hockey world, over the world for that matter. On Thursday night, Westend revealed that “former National Hockey League off-ice official alleges in a newly filed lawsuit that he was fired for reporting a colleague who for years used racist and sexually charged language while working for the league.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, lawyers for Laurence Sullivan, a former crew official who recorded in-game statistics during Lightning games in Tampa Bay, wrote that Sullivan should be rehired by the NHL and that he should receive punitive damages for his treatment.”

Sullivan was working for the NHL for close to seven year, he who was hired back in August 2013 and fired on Feb. 26, 2020. As of now, the NHL has not filed a statement of defence and we don’t know know the amount Sullivan is suing for. He revealed the situation he witnessed, more than once, and how he went on to handle it and improve climate in the NHL. 

“During his tenure with the NHL, Sullivan alleged that colleague Pat DeLorenzo Jr. repeatedly used the N-word and other racist language at work.

“DeLorenzo, at work in the booth and with other co-workers around to hear, told [Sullivan] that ‘chocolate was his code word for [the N- word]’,” Sullivan’s lawsuit alleges.

Sullivan alleges that he reported DeLorenzo’s behaviour to Ron Brace, the NHL’s former crew chief in Tampa. Sullivan alleges Brace failed to take any action for five years.”

Westend points out that back in December 2019, during the course of investigating the conduct of another NHL employee in Tampa, NHL vice-president of human resources Patrice Distler and Katherine Watson, an NHL lawyer, were put in contact with Sullivan.

“Sullivan alleges that after Distler and Watson promised him that he would be protected under the NHL’s whistle-blower policy, he provided them with six recordings of DeLorenzo’s “racially discriminatory behaviour including his use of the [N- word], along with videos of DeLorenzo making other comments such as ‘once you go black, you never go back,’ asking someone if they wanted ‘head,’ and saying that others were ‘internally retarded.’”

The result? Brace and DeLorenzo were fired on Jan. 2, 2020. However, Sullivan alleges that he then became, “the target of a proactive, vengeful, campaign to solicit a pre-textual reason to terminate him for reporting the offensive and discriminatory behaviour of DeLorenzo and the protection of that behaviour by Brace.”

On Feb. 26, 2020, the NHL terminated Sullivan, “for allegedly being a part of a 2016 group message thread of DeLorenzo’s.” Sullivan alleges in the lawsuit that Watson wrote to him and told him to “destroy any and all videos that you have recorded in the workplace.”

Sullivan therefore came out to say that the NHL  fired him for being whistle-blower on racism. 

“[The NHL] did nothing to stop the racially discriminatory comments that were broadcast to its employees and crew every night on its communication system and in the booth shared by the off- ice officials,” Sullivan alleges. “Instead, only after being confronted with video evidence of the wrongful behaviour, [the NHL] terminated DeLorenzo and Brace, and then terminated the whistle-blowers, including [Sullivan]. [The NHL] then promoted Gary Reilly, another NHL official that heard – and stayed silent – for all of DeLorenzo’s racial slurs.”

This comes out on top of the Hockey Diversity Alliance who recently cut ties with the NHL. The HDA called the league’s recent equality work “performative” and expressed disappointment with the NHL not being committed to ending “systemic racism in hockey.”

This is just sad…