For Akim Aliu, Hockey Diversity Alliance’s commitment remains its ‘grassroots program’

Akim Aliu grabs the football like a well-schooled quarterback – four fingers across the laces, index finger at an angle – and spots Luke Willson, the retired NFL tight end, trotting along the edge of the turf field at Canoe Landing Park in downtown Toronto.

He cocks the ball by his right ear as Wilson, fresh off an early morning flight from Winnipeg, raises his right hand. It’s football semaphore that speaks two words.

“I’m open.”

Across 13 seasons in pro hockey, Aliu earned an on-ice reputation as a bruising power forward. He’s listed at 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, and the muscles bulging out of his sleeveless white t-shirt hint that, even though he’s a free agent at age 37, he might not be finished playing. Then he unspools a high-arcing spiral that Wilson reaches high to grab with two-hands, snatching the ball at a high point, the way well-schooled pass-catchers do.

A few dozen kids and parents witness the cross-sport pass play, which unfolded early in the Hockey Diversity Alliance’s (HDA) second annual Summerfest. Other participants were busy with drills run by volunteers from the Peel Panthers and Durham Dolphins football programs, and by Marshawn Lynch, the retired NFL star in town to lend the HDA some much-needed support.

The half-day football clinic is a new wrinkle for an organization devoted to promoting diversity in hockey, but the move is less a shift in focus than a programming adaptation that highlights the power of networking. Corporate North America may have cooled to the HDA’s mission in the six years since the advocacy group first formed, but fellow athletes still believe in its purpose.

Saturday’s gathering is a case in point.

Two retired NFLers joined forces with current and former NHL players for a day-long event that would promote both sports to members of underserved communities. But, as Aliu points out, the HDA’s main focus remains on hockey.

“Across completely free of cost, 22 to 26-week program,” said Aliu, who was born in Nigeria and lived in Ukraine before his family moved to Toronto. “They get out on the ice, falling on their face on day one and they’re flying around a couple months later. It’s been amazing.

During a short break in day’s programming Aliu, who spent the winter working out at arenas in Toronto’s west end, ticks off the HDAs successes.

In 2020, the group’s first year, roughly 200 kids across Canada participated in their grassroots hockey programs. By this year, Aliu says, that number had climbed to roughly 2,100. Those numbers reflect both enrollment growth and enrollee retention. According to Aliu, 86 per cent of the kids who participated in 2024-25 came back for 2025-26.

Meanwhile, hockey at the top level is more diverse than ever – the 2025 NHL draft saw more than 20 non-white players selected, and this past season 23 Black players saw NHL ice time.

But HDA leaders say they’re less concerned with developing NHL talent than they are with ensuring as many young people as possible can participate in organized hockey.

“Collectively, we’re just trying to do the right thing here,” said Nazem Kadri, a centre for the Colorado Avalanche and an HDA founding member. “And advocate for introducing kids to the sports we love.”

The HDA enjoyed a high-profile coming-out during the summer of 2020, when corporations and sports leagues wrestled with entrenched racial discrimination in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. 

Four years previous, Colin Kaepernick’s practice of kneeling during the national anthem to protest racialized police brutality led to NFL teams shadow-banning him from the league. Post George-Floyd, knee-taking became a pre-game ritual. The NFL emblazoned its end zones with the slogan “End Racism,” and HDA founding member Matt Dumba made an impassioned speech during the 2020 playoffs about the harms of systemic racism, with microphone and platform provided by the NHL.

“Racism is a man-made problem, and all it does is deteriorate from our collective prosperity,” said Dumba, who was wearing an HDA hoodie, and players from the Chicago Blackhawks and Edmonton Oilers circled around him at centre ice. 

But by October of 2020, the partnership between NHL and HDA had already dissolved, and in 2023 the league announced its own diversity committee featuring coaches, executives, and high-profile current and former players like Anson Carter and P.K. Subban.

Meanwhile, sponsorship support for the HDA has eroded. Signage on display Saturday featured just one big-ticket corporate sponsor – Canadian Tire, an HDA partner since 2020 – another signal that after a surge of motivation during the summer of motivation, much of society has settled back into old habits. 

An October 2025 investigation by the Globe and Mail found that five years after roughly 500 Canadian corporations signed a pledge to boost recruitment of Black talent, a majority of companies had quietly backtracked on that commitment. South of the border, the Trump administration has used the White House website to call Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs “radical and wasteful.”

Aliu says those trends also affect the HDA’s ability to rally corporate support.

“I was disappointed and shocked in so many ways,” he says, listing off corporations, like Scotiabank and Kraft-Heinz, that have discontinued their sponsorship of the HDA. “This topic was trendy and cool at the time, but we were trying to make a real difference that’s going to take more than a few years to fix.” 

Financial backing is key. Aliu says providing 2,100 Canadian kids with a cost-free hockey programming requires about $1 million a year. And if the HDA can’t always count on 2020 levels of corporate sponsorship, its members can tap into their pro athlete networks.

So when Aliu asked Lynch if he’d be interested in running a free clinic in Toronto this summer, Lynch opted in. And when Lynch facetimed Willson saying he needed volunteers, Wilson, who grew up in the Windsor suburb of LaSalle, Ont., made plans to participate, even if it meant wrapping up a CFL broadcast late on a Friday night, then boarding a plane in Winnipeg at 6:15 a.m. to arrive in Toronto in time for the event.

“It’s a very cool program, first and foremost,” said Willson. “And as a white guy, I always… make sure to show support. I have no idea what guys like Akim have had to go through.”

Lynch spent Saturday afternoon ambling around the field, directing drills and signing autographs. He’s still a man of few on-the-record words and didn’t address the media, but left day-campers with a parting message.

“Thank you all for letting me come to Canada,” said Lynch, who rushed for 10,413 yards in his 12-year NFL career. “I appreciate it, and God bless.”

For his part, Aliu remains committed to the HDA’s core mission. While Willson, Lynch and community football coaches worked with kids on the turf field, another cohort of young people played ball hockey on basketball courts in the community centre next door.

He doesn’t judge success by the number of HDA participants who graduate to elite-level hockey. Instead, he measures it by how many kids return from year to year, and the extent to which they stay engaged with sport in the long term.

“The goal of the organization is not to make the next NHL player,” he says. “It’s about building confidence, camaraderie, teamwork. All those things that come with sport. It’s a true grassroots program.”