NHL goes viral after making a statement on trans-women competing against women

The NHL has done a lot of work in the past decade on making the sport of hockey more inclusive for people of all gender identities and orientations. 

The hard fact of things is that hockey hasn't always been a sport that's welcoming of LGBT people but the NHL has done an admirable job of ending that with some pretty progressive initiatives. One such initiative that the league shouted out today was the Team Trans Draft Tournament held in Middleton, Wisconsin this past weekend. The league attempted to highlight the tournament, which included women, trans-women and non-binary individuals, but came up against some criticism online after posting to social media.

Here's what the NHL tweeted out:

Now, obviously the topic of trans-women (individuals who were born as male, but who self-identify or have transitioned to female) competing against biological women is a touchy subject. I'll be perfectly honest when I say that I don't know what the proper solution is to this messy problem and I'm willing to listen to arguments on both sides of the issue.

Buuuuuuut... most people aren't as wishy-washy as I am and seem to have their minds made up. These are the people trolling the NHL in their comments section:

There are literally dozens of similar comments, so I'm not sure why the NHL chose this one to clap back at but they did and here's there response:

As you might imagine, that ruffled some feathers.

Responses called the NHL out for things like grooming children, enabling abuse against women and enabling mental health disorders.

Look, I'll just state here again that I don't know what's right or wrong and I don't have a dog in this fight. But I can't help but think that arguing over this stuff on Twitter doesn't help solve things at all. For the life of me I can't understand why the NHL thinks it's a smart idea to engage in such a serious discussion on their Twitter page of all places. All they're doing is inviting criticism from both sides and driving people further and further apart.

Then again... I guess they got their viral moment and that's all that matters in the end.