If you ask Nora Cothren about her role in the NHL’s LGBTQ inclusion efforts, the league executive no doubt will talk about the overall teamwork, other people who have contributed to the space, her mentors, legends who came before her, her colleagues, and everyone else… except herself.
Those would all be valid points. Yet when you ask around the NHL and the LGBTQ hockey space, one name around the league’s inclusion efforts keeps coming up.
“Nora.”
“Nora.”
“Nora.”
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Joey Gale, a Seattle-based gay hockey player and organizer who promotes the sport in his local LGBTQ community, said Cothren — who joined the league in early 2022 — is an inspiration for LGBTQ people on the ice, someone who has lent her increasingly powerful voice to ensure they feel welcome in the NHL.
“Her passion is hockey, her profession is hockey, and she is LGBTQ,” Gale said. “It’s so empowering to see the impact she has had leading the LGBTQ outreach in the NHL.”
As you read this, Nora, in all of her true humility, is bristling. The consummate teammate, Cothren sees herself as one of many.
To be sure, Cothren isn’t a team of one. In fact, as a manager of multicultural content, audience development and social impact in the NHL front office, she’s not even the head of a wide, diverse team.
Yet something has put the name of Nora Cothren on the lips of every person Outsports has asked over the last year about the NHL’s efforts to place a rocky 2023 behind the league.
Nora Cothren found a home at the NHL. But how?
As she’d probably tell you, Cothren wasn’t even supposed to be here.
Having been out as a hockey player at Smith College, she went back in the closet when she moved from the confines of Northampton to big city of Philadelphia, where she chose to coach youth hockey.
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Her angst about being an out gay coach sent her back in the closet at the time as she coached youth. Yet that time being inauthentic with the very kids she aimed to inspire has fueled her decade-long efforts to ensure a more-welcoming sports space for youth like a 12-year-old Nora.
“I’ve become more authentic to myself and more empowered with my voice,” she recently told Outsports.
“I started my work in this space just over a decade ago. I was a bit quiet and nervous then.”
When Outsports met Cothren over a decade ago, at some initial meetings for what would become the LGBT Sports Coalition, her persona was well-defined by those two words: quiet and nervous.
Not anymore.
“That’s the biggest thing that’s changed, coming into myself. I owe a lot of that to other out LGBTQ people in the sports space who’ve helped me grow into myself.”
She is effusive about some of the people who opened her eyes to the possibility that, yes, the sports world was ready for a gay Nora Cothren. And, maybe more importantly, where people weren’t ready… she could change that.
“Anna Aagenes brought me into GO! Athletes,” Cothren said. “And Patrick Burke brought me into You Can Play. He’s been a huge influence on my personal growth, and he’s a big reason why I’m at the NHL right now.”
Burke is not LGBTQ, but rather an NHL executive whose brother came out publicly shortly before tragically dying in a car crash.
“Anthony Nicodemo and Conner Mertens and Kirk Walker have long been huge influences in my life,” Cothren added.
Nicodemo, a high school basketball coach and athletic director, told Outsports that Cothren is one of the most-beloved people in the LGBTQ sports movement.
“It’s been a pleasure to watch Nora grow professionally,” Nicodemo said. “She understands the needs of the LGBTQ community through personal experiences and is a needed voice in professional sports.”
The lessons she learned about LGBTQ inclusion in sports from organizations like GO! Athletes and You Can Play have shaped her approach to her current engagement with the NHL front office.
Gone are the days of a meek Cothren on a chair at the far corner of a conference room table over-thinking what she might say.
Cothren’s voice in 2024 is, after all these years, that of a powerful, humble champion for her community, elevating others in the sport like Justin Rogers, the first publicly out gay head trainer of an NHL team, who is also a 2024 Outsports Power 100 honoree.
Continually so proud of you, my friend. https://t.co/dlCkO18KL6
— Nora Cothren (@NoLowCo) June 21, 2024
“I have a position I never thought I’d be in. The excitement around what people I work with can do, it fuels me.
“I can’t think of that 2012 Nora,” she said remembering her younger self going back in the closet and silencing her own voice.
“I’m such a different person.”
Resetting the NHL’s commitment to the LGBTQ community
No doubt, 2023 was a rough year for the NHL’s relationship with the LGBTQ community.
A small handful of players refused to wear a rainbow, commissioner Gary Bettman defended them, and the league temporarily banned Pride Tape on the ice. It continues to ban Pride jerseys on players.
Yet underlying all of the very real public missteps was a true desire in the league front office, NHL team front offices, and even many players, to build on years of LGBTQ inclusion efforts by the league, not take away from them.
Late last year, an opportunity to right the ship came into view: The 2024 NHL All-Star Game. The Pride Cup was going to take place in Toronto that weekend, and the NHL had the platform to elevate the entire event.
“When we were thinking about ways to incorporate the LGBTQ community into the All-Star festivities in Toronto, this was the first thing that came up,” Cothren said.
“The thought process was, ‘How can we use our platform to help the Toronto Gay Hockey Association?”
To his credit, Bettman attended the event, expressing support for gay, bi, lesbian and trans people.
“That was really impactful for me as an NHL employee who put work into this event, knowing NHL All Star is big event,” Cothren said of Bettman’s participation at the 2024 Pride Cup.
“In Toronto it’s another level. For him to take time out of his extremely busy schedule, for him to come and to stay on the bench and talk to players, it was really meaningful. And I think people took a lot from that.
“It was impactful for me.”
Cothren said the Pride Cup was just one of the NHL’s efforts over the last year. She said the league has donated about $75,000 to LGBTQ organizations and has even donated Pride Tape to hockey events, in addition to many other efforts by individual players and teams.
“I’ve tried to focus on the next thing,” she said. “How can we take the next step to grow in this space? How do we make people feel not just welcome, but wanted?
“A lot of what I’ve been doing the last year or so is focusing on the local LGBTQ hockey organizations, the exact overlap of these two communities. And being able to go to Madison, Wisconsin, and skate in the team trans friendship series and talk to people and listen to them, and let them know there is someone like them at the league front office.
“That would have helped little Nora, to see that. And there’s a wide range of people doing this work.
“I’ve looked at the last year as an area of growth and surpassing where we’re at, and making people feel wanted.”
For local organizers like Gale, having someone like Cothren at the league front office — a true partner in what he’s trying to build in Seattle — has been priceless.
“I find myself always cheering for Nora,” Gale said. “She understands my perspective, she understands my story. It feels like we’re always on the same page.
‘It means a lot to have Nora fighting our fight with us.”
You can follow Nora Cothren on Instagram and on X.
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