Hockey has become more diverse over the past five years,\u00a0Popyon said, but there\u2019s still a need for these players and their families to come together and share their experiences in the sport, the triumphs and the setbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are putting it out there that Black boys, Black females, Black players exist in hockey, and not only do we exist, we\u2019re doing well in it,\u201d\u00a0Popyon said. \u201cIt also goes along with the fact that there are more Black players in the NHL who are really good, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the Panthers, bonding occurs on and off the ice. Scott and\u00a0Popyon said the Panthers always have a \u201cden,\u201d an Airbnb rental at tournaments where players and coaches gather, play games, talk about hockey and life.<\/p>\n
Miles Hess, a 16-year-old forward who played with the New Jersey\u00a0Jr. Titans 16U AAA team last season, experienced that camaraderie while playing against the Panthers during a previous Vegas tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey let me come to the den and hang out with them for the few days that they were there, even though I was on a different team,\u201d said Hess, who joined the Panthers at a Vegas tournament last year. \u201cGrowing up, I\u2019ve been the only African American on my teams. This definitely boosted everything, my confidence, my morale. It made me realize that even though hockey\u2019s not viewed as an African American sport, it shows that there\u2019s a group out there trying to change the game and give inspiration to more young African American kids that maybe don\u2019t think they can do it just because they\u2019re Black.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hockey has become more diverse over the past five years,\u00a0Popyon said, but there\u2019s still a need for these…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-797002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}