Inside Toronto's inaugural Pride Hockey Tournament

TORONTO — Aside from the autographed Auston Matthews and Mark Giordano jerseys available for auction, sitting alongside a signed John Tavares stick, there are few remnants of the Toronto Maple Leafs as the sun descends at Ford Performance Centre during a Friday evening in June. The Leafs' practice facility is host to the inaugural Toronto Pride Hockey Tournament, the first-ever tournament designed for queer and trans folks in the city, along with their allies.

This year’s tournament featured eight teams of relatively equal skill level divided into two groups of four, sponsored by Peaches Sports Bar and Island Cafe. During the first intermission of Friday’s opener, a remix of Shania Twain’s iconic "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!" blares over the sound system and audible cheers emerge from the benches. It’s intentional that all of the volunteers, whether they’re working at the Woodhouse-sponsored beer garden, refereeing games, taking photos or otherwise facilitating a safe and fun event, are from queer and trans communities, a tournament unlike any that exists in the current hockey space.

After Friday’s games concluded, tournament organizers Sheri Krell, Liz Dewdney and Cagla Baktiroglu spoke to Yahoo Sports Canada to explain how the tournament was born.

Krell and Dewdney first spoke about hosting a tournament in December 2022 and when they both decided that it was something they were ready to commit to, Baktiroglu joined the venture. It was a passion project, considering that Krell, Dewdney and Baktiroglu all have full-time jobs outside of hockey, but they all wanted to create a tournament for queer and trans folks.

“This tournament came to fruition as a pipe dream that Liz and I had,” Krell told Yahoo Sports Canada. “We'd been attending a Pride tournament in London that's been going on for over 10 years at least and we questioned why isn't there something in Toronto and why isn't there something during Pride month? In light of everything that's happening with NHL Pride Nights, we thought it was even more important to have a safe space, to have a tournament for queer women and trans folks who are underrepresented when it comes to ice hockey and sports.”

Baktiroglu has extensive professional playing experience as a member of Turkey’s women’s national ice hockey team and helped build a network of players for the debut tournament.

“I loved what the vision was and I feel like sports is such an important avenue for queer individuals, trans individuals,” Baktiroglu said. “Sports has given me so much in my life. But a lot of queer individuals, anybody on this gender non-conforming spectrum, they don't have somewhere to move their bodies. And so as soon as I heard what was going on, I have a background with Sheri, I've seen Liz being involved before so I knew this was a power team and selfishly I had to be involved.”

One of the major points of emphasis is building community. Krell explained that many tournaments are often team-entry, but creating new friendships was a central part of the organizing process. All 128 individual entrants were asked to submit a self-evaluation of their skill level, then Dewdney fine-tuned the rankings to ensure that all eight teams were as equally competitive as possible. Every team was guaranteed at least three games before Saturday’s final, where Team Canada star Brianne Jenner dropped the puck before the championship game.

“We've all played in tournaments before where you have your own teams, you put in teams and people, it's a blowout,” Dewdney said. “And that's one thing we're trying to avoid, we're trying to avoid a blowout, a stacked team. If someone is winning by five goals, that's not fun for the other team. That's something we're trying to avoid for sure.”

All proceeds from the registration fees and auction items that were provided by MLSE will go to Black Girl Hockey Club, You Can Play and Sport A Rainbow, where Krell estimated that each group will receive a donation around $1,000. In addition, Pride Tape was readily available in the main concourse. Aligning with sponsors that genuinely care about queer and trans folks was of paramount importance for the three organizers, while making it clear that this year’s inaugural event was a grassroots initiative.

“If I'm sitting with a sponsorship letter in front of me, I might not feel as confident presenting it to certain organizations,” Baktiroglu said. “You go, ‘can I send this?’ because you're still really protective of your community. I'm not sure if I would send this to 'Dude Bros Inc.' That might feel different, maybe for them that's what they want, but would my community be comfortable having them as a sponsor? I feel like it's a different event in its nature because there's a lot of protection of the community and we want to shy away from tokenism.”

Peaches Sports Bar opened in October 2022, a queer-friendly sports bar that shows every major North American sporting event, with regular watch parties for Maple Leafs, Raptors and Blue Jays games. The bar also holds queer-friendly dance parties along with regular watch parties for Vanderpump Rules and are one of the two major sponsors for this year’s tournament.

“We saw an ad they posted on Instagram, we saw it online. Obviously with Peaches, with everything that we represent, it was a no-brainer they'd have our support and sent a donation and be involved,” Peaches owner Anthony Fushell told Yahoo Sports Canada.

“Year Two is going to be to see if we can get additional sponsors, which then would allow a greater charitable donation,” Krell added. “At the end of the day, this is 100% charity-run. We are not taking a penny from this tournament. Everything is in the lens of we really want to benefit these charities that we spent a lot of time carefully going through."

Toronto has long prided itself on being a queer and trans-friendly, city but it’s somewhat shocking that there was never a tournament centered around these communities. Krell, Dewdney and Baktiroglu have built a sustainable entity with the Toronto Pride Hockey Tournament, which should only grow immeasurably in Year Two with ample runaway time for further promotion, sponsorships and awareness.