the Dallas Stars quietly dropped Pride Night. a fan named Tori is throwing her own.

via Them and Out, reported by Gwen Howerton for Chron, with the team's statement to The Dallas Morning News.

The Dallas Stars put out their 2026-27 promotional schedule last week. Eighties Night is on it. So is Star Wars Night, Anime Night, Black History Night, Noche Mexicana and Military Appreciation Night. Pride Night, which the team had run for at least five years straight, is not.

what replaced pride night

In its place, on March 23 against the Carolina Hurricanes, is something called "Hockey Unites Us: Women in Sports Night." Stars spokesperson Joe Calvillo told the Dallas Morning News that the new night "allows our organization to use our platform to celebrate and support a different underrepresented community each season." When the paper asked why Pride Night specifically had to be the one that went, the Stars declined to comment.

Tori Copeland has been going to Stars Pride Nights for years. She clocked the absence immediately and told Chron the swap felt "really icky and targeted." She was careful about it too: "I'm a woman in sports; I understand the need for that, but we can do that alongside Pride Night, too. I don't see the reason why we can't do both."

one fan said screw it

Then she posted the sentence that started the whole thing. "Screw it. I'm throwing my own Pride Night and everyone's invited."

It went off. Other Stars fans piled in. She brought in her friend Jason, a trans Stars fan with ties to the organization who would only give his first name, and he was in within a minute: "I immediately was like, 'Yep, let's do it. Let me volunteer my resources, figure out what we can do.'"

Jason is the one who named the sting. "The Stars have always been very supportive and outspoken," he said. "It felt like a betrayal of sorts for this team that I love to all of a sudden just decide not to do a Pride Night." He is not wrong about the history. In 2017 the Stars were the first professional sports team in Texas to come out against the bathroom bill.

how to go on november 14

The fan-run Pride Night is November 14, at the Stars game against the Buffalo Sabres. It benefits Dallas Hope Charities, which works with queer youth in the city. Since it was announced, people have donated season tickets so LGBTQ+ fans can actually get in the building, and jerseys to raffle. Drag queens have offered to perform for free. Sue Ellen's, the oldest operating lesbian bar in Texas, offered to host the afterparty.

The Carolina Hurricanes lost their Pride Night too. Their fans have already messaged Copeland asking how to do this.

"It's bigger than the Stars at this point," she said.

Here is the part the front office may not have thought through. A Pride Night the team schedules is a marketing line item, and marketing line items can be deleted in a spreadsheet in about four seconds. A Pride Night the fans build themselves, with a drag lineup and a lesbian bar and a charity attached, is a great deal harder to cancel. They did not end Pride Night in Dallas. They just stopped owning it.