%20copy.png)
The Quiet Persistence of Belonging: Luke Prokop's Story of Person, Player, and Purpose
- Jun 29
- 22 min read
Updated: 11 minutes ago
Interview by Christina Winnegar | June 29 2026
The first time Luke Prokop tried to say the words he had been carrying for years out loud, they stalled at the edge of his lips.
Those words had followed him for years. Through bus rides between rinks. Through the move to Kelowna, British Columbia, at 14-years-old. Through practices, road trips and every version of himself that hockey demanded he become. They remained quiet. Constant yet unspoken.
But when it came to finally allowing those feelings of identity to exist outside of his own head, they stopped short.
It was late, the house had already gone to sleep, and his family's home was quiet. The kind of quiet that does not leave much room for those reserved thoughts to hide, but leads him to leave nothing behind.
Lying in bed, he sent his sister a simple text. He had something to say to her, went up to her, but when he reached her, the words disappeared. “I started crying; she started crying. She had no clue what was going on,” he remembered.
Ultimately, he spoke the words that freed what he had been holding on to for so long; he came out to her. Within seconds, he was wrapped in her arms, which he described as the best coming-out experience he could have asked for.
Years later, the world would remember the statement Luke Prokop shared publicly.
Few would ever know this was where his story truly began.
Long before Luke Prokop ever struggled to say those words, another language had already shaped his life.
Hockey.
In a place like Edmonton, Alberta, the game is not introduced; it is inherited.
It is ingrained in the city's culture: the expectation that if you can walk, you will lace up skates.
For Prokop, it started early: he grew up with skates on his feet since age 3. His brother played. His father played. His grandfather played. Hockey was not just a decision in the Prokop family; it was a generational direction.
And almost immediately, it became a structured lifestyle designed to give the best, to become the best.
Not just the expected practices, but additional practices. Not just development, but steps to acceleration past the masses. The kind of upbringing where time is measured less by age and more by progression, what comes next, what needs improvement, what separates potential from reality. The kind of dedication that comes coupled with sacrifice.
“It was almost like it was a job to me from 10 years old, when I was just still a little kid in school and getting taken out of school and going to all these tournaments and extra sessions I didn’t want to go to,” he reflected. “But I also wouldn’t be where I am today with him [Prokop’s father] and how hard he pushed me.”
At an age when most kids were still figuring out the hobbies or interests that they enjoy, Prokop was already committing to something that required everything.
By 14-years-old, that commitment meant leaving home and moving to Kelowna. Nearly 600 miles away from everything he knew, family, familiarity, in an environment designed to sharpen players to accelerate them to the next level.
It was necessary for his development, but it was also isolating. And in that period of separation, something else began to surface.
At first, it did not arrive as clarity; it arrived as a disconnect to the spaces he grew up in.
Locker room conversations did not land the way they were supposed to. The rhythms of adolescence, the shared language, the expected interests, all felt slightly off, just enough to internally take note of, not enough to understand why fully.
“The first time those conversations kind of came up, it was like, okay, well, what’s wrong with me? And why am I not feeling the same way as my teammates and my friends at that age?” he remembered.
At 14 years old, that period of realization did not come with a resolution; it came packaged with questions born of uncertainty.
A couple of years later, the internalization of said feelings became something harder to ignore.
“So after kind of understanding what it was and then learning to ignore it when I was probably 16,” Prokop said. “ I think it was like, okay, there’s definitely something different about you, and it’s going to kind of come to a point where you can’t ignore it anymore.”
But understanding did not mean acceptance in the world built around the pillars of strength and internalization, not in a space where there was no visible version of what the truth could look like.
So it stayed contained and controlled in small, private ways, within the constraints of his phone.
There were moments when he tried to explore it, downloading apps, creating profiles, allowing himself brief windows of honesty as he explored away from the world of pressure—then deleted them—repeating the cycle again and again.
“Looking back on it, the major thing was I wanted to be able to express myself, and hopefully try to find a partner or something, but at the same time, looking back on it, it’s like, well, if you were you wouldn’t be able to hang out with them unless it was kind of in secret,” Prokop shared. “But the fear of being outed was the main reason why I would delete them after a week or two.”
Because in the world of being known, visibility comes at a cost. And for a long time, that cost felt too high.
When the calendar year hit 2020, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, where everything, everywhere, completely shut down, and the one similarity everyone shared was that quarantine was the new normal.
With the season shut down and the structure of hockey temporarily paused, Prokop found himself back home, surrounded by his family in a way he had not been in years. There were no daily practices to rush to, no travel schedules to follow, no built-in distractions to keep him focused on anything other than what had continued to reveal itself quietly in the background.
A time he noted as a big blessing in his life. Not because of the circumstances themselves, but because of what they allowed to foster. For the first time in a long time, there was space. Space to think, to reflect and to reconnect with the people he had spent years only in passing between seasons.
That shift was most noticeable in the relationship with his sister.
Before that period, they were not particularly close. Their lives had moved in different directions, interactions limited by schedules that rarely aligned. But during those months at home, that distance completely dissipated. They spent time together as a family in ways they had not before: playing games, staying up late, talking without any urgency to move on to the next topic.
“I just felt this connection with my sister that was super strong,” he recalled.
With that level of closeness came something he had not had before, the sense that he had someone he could trust with something he had not trusted anyone in his life to hold.
One night, his confidence was palpable. Following a text sent while lying in bed, he walked into her room, knowing it was time, even if he did not yet know how to say it.
At first, she did not understand what was happening. There were no words to explain it, no context to guide that moment. But then, as the meaning became clear through their bond, her reaction came without hesitation.
“She told me she loved me – it was truly the best experience for coming out for the first time that I could have asked for with my sister,” Prokop reflected.
After that, the process became more comfortable, but not easy by any means.
He began telling members of the family, then close friends, each conversation building on the last. With every person who responded with acceptance, something shifted, not just in how he saw himself, but in how he allowed himself to exist in the spaces where he felt safe.
The comfort reflected in the openness in conversations, the willingness to engage and be less guarded in moments with those close to him.
But that comfort did not extend everywhere. Because the other part of Prokop’s identity did not know, hockey did not know. By that point, it was not just about managing one identity, but two parts of himself that made him whole.
Everything remained the same on the surface, but internally, the gap between those two versions of his life continued to widen. He was stepping into rinks every day, rinks that once felt like home, carrying a weight no one else in that space knew, and that lack of alignment made a lifestyle that had once felt routine feel foreign.
It was not about hiding anymore. It was about sustaining something that no longer felt sustainable.
By the time Prokop entered the 2020 National Hockey League (NHL) Draft, the path, at least on paper, looked clear for a player of his caliber with strong development and high-level competition—a player who had gone above and beyond on the stat lines. From the outside, it made sense.
However, inside, it was more complicated.
Some teams showed interest, asked questions, evaluated his game, projected what his career could become, all of the typical. And then there were the ones that passed.
At the time, that assessment existed without context. The adversity they were looking for was one they expected to see in performance history, in visible challenges that could be measured and understood. However, what they could not see was the hardest battle that he had been internalizing beneath the surface.
“I wanted to be a professional hockey player for as long as I can remember,” Prokop reflected. “And then that thought of trying to tackle that beast of what that was going to be like, and maybe not being able to play hockey. That’s what I had to come to terms with.”
The reality he faced did not fit the way players are typically evaluated. It did not show up with statistics or scouting reports, but it shaped everything about how he moved through the sport during that time.
When the Nashville Predators announced his name was selected as 73rd overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, the moment carried great significance, even if it did not unfold the way he had imagined growing up.
There was no stage, no arena, no formal setting that marked the occasion. Instead, the memory took place in a location very significant to his upbringing. A family-owned restaurant in Edmonton, where meaningful connections gathered to watch the moment Prokop’s dream came to fruition.
“I’d ask my agents who they thought would be really interested in me. It was Edmonton and Nashville,” he said. “Sure enough, it ended up being Nashville, which was really cool, because growing up, they’d been my favorite team. My favorite players were on that team.”
Once Prokop had gotten the call from Nashville, a celebratory aura took over the room, filled with friends, family, and a couple of coaches who had guided him along the way, as tears, laughs, and nerves were shared on the most perfect draft day amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
A moment that reflected all of the sacrifices and dedication put into the dream, all of which had finally paid off. Representing the next step in his career.
But even as he progressed professionally, the separation between the two versions of his life remained.
If the draft revealed what others could see, the season that followed exposed what they could not.
The 2020-21 season was unlike anything players had experienced before. The structure of the bubble ironically eliminated distance while projecting it onto the outside world – between teams, between players, between the personal and the professional.
There was no separation for Prokop. The days became repetitive, spaces became limited, and conversations carried on longer than they normally would. And in that fostered environment, things that had and might have stayed contained for much longer did not.
A dreaded reality surfaced: rumors.
Not directly, not all at once, but enough to be felt.
At first, they came through someone else, a teammate on another team, a conversation that reached his ears secondhand. But that distance did not make it easier.
If anything, it made it worse because it provided fear from not knowing where it had reached.
Or how far it had gone.
That uncertainty became a constant.
Every day, he walked into the rink without clarity about what had been said, who had heard it, or how it might change the way he was perceived by his teammates or those within the organization around him.
“I felt like I was walking on eggshells everywhere I went,” Prokop recalled.
The ice, which had always been a place where all other thoughts, feelings and insecurities were left, became another space where the dark cloud of rumors followed him. The feeling no longer existed outside of hockey; it existed within. What was once a sacred space became one surrounded by stress, and performance was no longer the only variable that mattered.
After that season, the sense of manageability ended. The silence that had once felt like protection began to feel like something else entirely – something heavier, something that did not stay the way it used to.
By the end of the season, the answer was already there. Not fully spoken, but understood.
“I ended up leaving that season with the full idea of coming out publicly,” he expressed. “That was a major process in terms of getting myself confident that it was the right decision to do… not knowing how it was going to affect my hockey career was super stressful.”
When his agents asked which path he wanted to take – whether he wanted to continue to keep this part of his life private or make it public - Prokop knew the answer.
Not because the decision was easy, but because he had reached a point where the alternative felt impossible to continue.
“I had around eight months to really think about it,” Prokop said. “My agents wanted me to be 100 percent because once you do it, you can’t really take it back.”
There would be no rushing the process. Every conversation, detail and piece to the overall picture mattered.
Before anyone else could read his words, the people who had shaped his hockey career would hear them first. So then, one by one, the phone calls began.
The NHL, the NHL Players’ Association, Hockey Canada, the Nashville Predators and the Calgary Hitmen.
Each conversation carried the weight of the same question that had quietly followed Prokop like a shadow for years: Would hockey still want me if it knew all of me?
Instead of uncertainty, he found reassurance. Instead of hesitation, he found support.
“Each time I had one of those conversations, everyone was saying, ' This is the right thing to do,” he reflected.
Every conversation, every confirmation, chipped away at a fear that had lived with him since he was 16-years-old, downloading dating apps, finding connection, then deleting them out of fear of losing everything he spent his life working towards.
Then came the call from Nashville. For Prokop, this one resonated more deeply.
Just a year earlier, the Predators had called to tell him they believed in him enough to make him the 73rd overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft. Now, many of those same figures - the executives, coaches, scouts and staff who had welcomed him into the organization - were welcoming him again.
One after another, they shared the same sentiments: they were proud of him, they supported him, they were behind him.
When the call ended, the emotion had finally caught up to him.
“I remember crying on the way home,” he said. “Just knowing that this was going to be okay… that this decision to come out isn’t going to affect my hockey career. I’m still going to be able to play the game I love.”
For years, his greatest fear had never been telling people the truth; it was believing the truth might cost him the one thing he had spent his entire life working toward.
That drive home was the first time he truly believed he would not have to choose between the two.
Still, aside from the conversations that happened and the statement being written, with the support system in place, everything had been prepared for that moment.
All that remained of being free was pressing one button.
By the morning of July 19 2021, there was nothing left to rewrite.
For months, Prokop had carefully worked through every conversation that would make this moment possible. Every phone call answered a question that had lived in the back of his mind for years. Every show of support had chipped away at his greatest fear.
Still, knowing he was ready did not make that Monday morning any easier.
“The night before, I did not get a wink of sleep at all,” he remembered.
The reality of what was about to happen had settled in long before the sun came up. By the time he arrived at his agent’s office, everything had already been prepared.
His media manager had logged into his Instagram on her phone. The statement had been finalized. Every word had been reviewed. Every conversation concluded.
“I just had to press ‘Post’ on the phone,” Prokop said. “Sit in a chair and kind of watch the chaos ensue from what was about to happen.”
He pressed it, then waited.
Within minutes, the statement had traveled far beyond the room he was sitting in. Messages poured in from teammates, coaches, executives, friends, reporters and strangers.
“I had no clue it was going to be as big as it was,” he said.
The response stretched far beyond the hockey community.
News organizations around the world had picked up the story—national broadcasts led with it. Athletes from across professional sports voiced their support. Fans shared his words with people they loved. Parents sent the statement to children who were still searching for the courage to tell their own stories.
At just 19-years-old, Luke Prokop became the first openly gay player under an NHL contract.
Almost overnight, his name became synonymous with trailblazing in history.
In the midst of it, he faced a reality that had changed in a matter of minutes. One that had silenced all of the ruminating thoughts, questions and fears that held weight since he discovered his true self.
The response of overwhelming support was not perfect because the world had suddenly become perfect. It was powerful because it challenged every possible negative outcome he had quietly carried since he was a teenager.
The headlines focused on history, but the headlines could not capture what mattered most to Prokop.
When he thought back on that day, he did not remember the articles or television interviews. He remembered something much simpler: He was still a hockey player. And that was forever waiting for him on the other side of the truth.
Looking back now, Prokop does not describe July 19 as the day everything changed: he describes it as the day he finally stopped dividing himself into pieces.
For the first time in years, the version of his true self and the version on the ice were no longer separated by silence: they had become the same person.
And for the first time, he was a child stepping onto the outdoor rinks in Edmonton; he could chase the NHL, carrying only one version of himself.
The days following July 19, 2021, unfolded faster than Prokop could process. His phone buzzed relentlessly with calls, text messages and interview requests as news organizations across North America rushed to tell the story of the 19-year-old who was rewriting century-old history in a prestigious organization like the NHL. For a brief moment, it felt as though the hockey world had paused to acknowledge a milestone much larger than the game itself.
Eventually, though, it was time to go back to work.
“I’ve had some of the best hockey years of my life and career since I’ve come out,” he stated.
For years, stepping onto the ice had meant more than a stick and a pair of skates. Every practice, every game and every locker room conversation existed alongside an unspoken edge of himself he felt he had to protect. The emotional energy required to maintain that separation had quietly become part of his daily routine, even if no one around him realized it.
Once that weight disappeared, so did the fear that accompanied it.
“My trainer definitely noticed it right away,” Prokop said. “He was like, ‘You just look so much more confident in yourself.’”
The change was not something Prokop had consciously noticed in himself. It was reflected to him by the people who saw him day in and day out. His confidence showed up in places beyond conversations or interviews. It carried into his training sessions, where he was surpassing personal records almost immediately after coming out, something he credits less to physical changes than to the mental freedom he had finally found.
The real test came only a few months later: walking into an entirely new locker room.
As he prepared for the following season, Prokop was not returning to teammates he already knew. He was joining a new group of players, many of whom learned his story through headlines rather than introductions. After spending years wondering how hockey would respond, he suddenly found himself facing the very situation, coupled with the rest: earning the trust of people who knew his story before they knew him.
“I think coming out is one thing,” Prokop said. “But then switching teams, going into a different locker room with a bunch of players you don't know-that can definitely be nerve-racking.”
The uncertainty, however, never materialized.
That acceptance he received changed far more than his comfort inside the locker room. It changed the way he approached the game itself.
“My life was a lot easier in hockey,” he reflected. “Being able to go out there and not care about what other people think… no rumors are going on about me, just being able to go out there and play really good hockey, that’s all I had to focus on.”
The simplicity became the greatest freedom of all.
For the first time in years, hockey was only hockey again: the sport he devoted his life to, made sacrifices for and intertwined itself into who he is at his core. The statistics reflected it. More importantly, so did the experience.
“If you look at it from a statistical point of view, it was my best season I’ve ever had,” Prokop said. “And easily the most enjoyable season I’ve ever had as well.”
Coming out had not changed the player Luke Prokop could become. It finally allowed him to become that player.
In truth, coming out was never meant to be the defining accomplishment of his career.
It was simply a moment that allowed the rest of it to continue.
The goal had never changed. Every off-season workout, every practice, and every game still revolved around the same dream he had carried.
Yet as the months passed, Prokop began to realize his story no longer belonged solely to him.
Messages arrived from parents, trying to support their children. Young hockey players reached out with questions. They had never felt comfortable asking anyone else. The family shared stories about conversations. They had finally been able to have after reading his statement.
As years passed, the significance of the date slowly became less central to his own life. Not because it mattered any less, but because it had become part of who he was.
“I think sometimes I forget about my story and how much it actually helps and affects people,” he admitted.
Then, about a month ago, his father received a phone call. The caller was someone neither of them knew.
A 70-year-old man had somehow found the work number and left a voicemail.
For 67 years, he had hidden who he was from nearly everyone around him. His family. His friends. The people who had known him for decades had never known him completely.
Then he had seen Luke Prokop’s story.
“He said the main reason he came out was that he saw my story,” Prokop said.
His father listened to the voicemail. Then called Luke.
As he retold the story, his voice began to break. For a moment, hockey disappeared. None of it mattered as much as one stranger. Finally decided he no longer wanted to spend the rest of his life pretending to be somebody he was not.
The voicemail was not the only reminder.
One afternoon, curious, Prokop scrolled back through messages he had received in the days immediately following his announcement. Buried beneath thousands of notifications were conversations he had not looked at in years.
One person thought about him before coming out to their parents the following day. Another returned later with an update.
“I came out yesterday because I saw what you did,” they wrote. “It went great.”
Reading them years later carried a different weight than they did in the moment. Back then, everything happened too quickly to process fully.
Now, with distance, he could finally understand what those messages had really meant.
Confirmation that the uncertainty, the fear and every difficult conversation leading up to that day, how to reach people he would likely never meet, but somehow had the biggest impact on their lives.
For someone who had spent years wondering whether telling the truth would cost him in the game he loved, the realization was almost difficult to comprehend.
His story had not taken anything away from hockey. It had quietly become part of someone else's life.
And somewhere, in a voicemail left on a work phone, that reality became impossible ever to forget.
For someone who spent years protecting his privacy, agreeing to spend three years in front of a camera felt almost contradictory.
Long before audiences would see ‘The Hockey Player’, Prokop had quietly wrestled with whether he wanted the documentary to exist at all.
For years, privacy had been a form of protection. Before July 19, it was how he navigated a world where only pieces of his life felt safe to share. Even after coming out publicly, that instinct never completely disappeared. He still viewed himself as a fairly private person, someone whose life away from the rink belonged to the people closest to him rather than the public who had come to know his name.
Saying yes to a documentary meant opening a door he had spent years trying to keep closed.
This commitment was not for the weekend, not for a single interview; it was for three years.
Cameras followed him through practices, road trips, training sessions, and the quieter moments in between, documenting a chapter of his life that extends far beyond the Instagram post that introduced him to much of the world. Rather than revisiting a single moment in history, 'The Hockey Player' follows everything that came after – the uncertainty of chasing an NHL career, the pressure of becoming an unexpected cultural figure and the everyday reality of balancing both.
“It took a lot for me to say yes to this documentary,” Prokop admitted.
Yet every hesitation eventually led him back to the same place. The same reason he decided to press “Post” years earlier.
Helping those who have not yet found their voice.
When he had come out publicly, it was for him. At first, that was enough.
He wanted the freedom to play the game. He loved without carrying the weight of secrecy. Everything that followed, the headlines, the interviews and the attention, was never something he set out to chase.
But over time, he realized his story was not something he could simply leave behind.
Some organizations leaned into it more than others. In Milwaukee, the Admirals created a prime night around his visit, invited him to lead the city's Pride Parade as the Grand Marshal (a high honor for Pride) and embraced the opportunity to celebrate what his journey represented. Other stops allowed him to focus almost entirely on hockey. Both experiences taught him something valuable: There was not one right way to carry the responsibility that had found him.
Instead, he learned how to balance both parts of his life.
That balance became increasingly important because, even years later, He continued to see the impact of visibility in places he never expected.
“I think it’s important for me to be a little bit more public about it,” Prokop said. “When fans come to a game, they can actually see the representation on the ice. They can feel more accepted.”
For years, he searched for someone who understood what he was experiencing. He never found that person.
That memory of feeling alone in many moments is why helping others has never felt like an obligation to him. It feels personal.
Growing up, friends and parents jokingly named him “The BFG” – the Big Friendly Giant. Long before hockey became his profession, kindness had become part of who he was. Looking back now, he sees a direct line between that child and the person he hopes to be remembered as.
The documentary became another extension of that philosophy.
Not because he wanted to revisit the day that changed his life. Because he wanted someone else to see their own life in it.
“If I could help just one kid, one adult – no matter who it is, their age, their gender, whatever profession they’re doing –if they see my story and gather some confidence from it, that’s a win for me.”
Throughout his career, Prokop has celebrated championships, personal milestones and victories that come with chasing a professional dream. Yet when he reflects on what he hopes remains long after his skates are hung up, his perspective reaches far beyond the rink—an everlasting legacy.
Rather than being remembered solely for goals, statistics or championships, Prokop hopes his career's lasting impact is measured differently.
“I love winning championships and accolades,” he said. “But I believe what your legacy is going to be outweighs championships and accolades. I’d rather be known as someone who helped a lot of people.”
In many ways, ‘The Hockey Player’ (now available to rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV) exists because of that belief.
Not to relive history, but to leave behind something far more lasting – a reason for someone else to believe their story is worth telling, too.
Nearly 5 years after sharing a few hundred words that changed the course of his life, Prokop found himself sitting in the dark in theaters, watching those years unfold all over again.
Only this time, he was not experiencing them alone.
‘The Hockey Player’ made its world premiere at the historic Frameline International LGBTQ+ Film Festival in San Francisco before returning home to Edmonton, where friends, family, and the community that watched him fall in love with hockey gathered to see his story from the beginning to the end. Days later, the documentary concluded its premiere run in Toronto, bringing the journey back to one of hockey's most recognizable cities.
Each screening represented something different.
San Francisco celebrated the film's introduction to the world.
Edmonton brought it home.
Toronto reminded audiences that while Prokop’s story has resonated far beyond hockey, it has always remained rooted within it.
For Prokop, however, the Premieres were never about watching a documentary. They were about revisiting the moments that shaped him.
"San Francisco, I knew nobody there. That was the one I was really nervous for... I didn't know what their reaction was going to be, but it was extremely positive," He said. "Edmonton was super cool because all of my family and friends, people who have been on this journey with me for so long, were able to experience it in full detail... For them to be there, share it with them, see it on the screen, it was just awesome to have my loved ones and everyone that I care about there."
By the time the credits rolled for the final time before the film was released to the rest of the world, ‘The Hockey Player' had become more than a documentary, chronicling one announcement.
It would be kind of a record of everything that came before, everything that followed, and the people who helped carry him through both, as he carries on the next generation of the brave, courageous to share their story alongside his.
Some journeys only make sense when viewed from the other side.
At the time, they feel uncertain. Heavy. Unfinished. Each step seems disconnected from the last, making it nearly impossible to believe they are guiding anywhere at all.
Only with distance do they begin to reveal their shape.
The little boy racing home after school to spend every possible minute on an outdoor rink could never have imagined the silence he would one day carry. The teenager who questioned whether honesty might cost him the only dream he had ever known could not yet see the family waiting to embrace him, the teammates who would welcome him without hesitation or the strangers whose lives would quietly intersect with his own.
None of those moments erased what came before them. They gave it meaning. The fear. The loneliness. Each became another step toward something he simply could not yet see.
Today, Luke Prokop continues to chase the same dream that first carried him onto the ice as a child. His days are still marked by training before sunrise, competing for opportunities and measuring success by strides in growth and sacrifice, in the hope of one day getting the call to be called up to the National Hockey League.
The difference is that the journey no longer belongs only to him.
Somewhere, another young athlete is wondering if they have to choose between authenticity and ambition.
Somewhere, a parent is searching for the right words.
Somewhere, someone is standing in the same uncertainty Luke once believed would never end.
Comments