A couple of National Hockey League players have refused to be bullied into wearing pride jerseys during pregame warmups and much of the response has been madness – and worse. It’s another sign that Western culture is in a steep decline.

In 1980’s “The Sweater,” an animated short that gets its title from the traditional term for a hockey jersey in Canada, a boy in Quebec accidentally receives a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey rather than the Montreal Canadiens No. 9 Maurice Richard jersey that his mother had ordered, and the jersey all his friends wear. As a Quebecois, he is humiliated by the Toronto jersey and benched by his coach. The peer pressure he feels to fit in is enormous.

Now in the 2020s, the pressure from radical activists and the corporate cowards who take a knee to them at every opportunity is on players to wear jerseys during warmups that celebrate the ​​LGBTQIA+ community.

But even in 2023, when so many among us are either part of the social bullying culture or so fearful of it that we’ve surrendered to it, there are still men of strength and principle. On Jan. 17, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov declined to wear a pride jersey in warmups, citing his Christian (Russian Orthodox) beliefs. So he sat in the locker room, banished, while his teammates took their pre-game skate.

“I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said after the game. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”

He mistreated no one yet he was viciously maligned by those who self-identify as inclusive, tolerant, and righteously fair.

However, within days, No. 9 Provorov game replica sweaters were selling out on the NHL Shop and at Fanatics, indicating that despite the hatred that was heaped on him – shameful hockey media hack E.J. Hradek suggested that Provorov return to Europe and “maybe get involved” in Russia’s war in Ukraine, while sports writer Cyd Zeigler huffed that “Proporov chose to embrace prejudice” – not just a few appreciated his position.