(Photo Credit: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

NHL representatives headed to Africa on Monday in efforts to grow the game and boost diversity. They will start their African tour in Cameroon the home country of basketball star Joel Embiid. The NHL has been criticized recently on American social media for not being diverse enough. Commissioner Gary Bettman was excited about the opportunity saying “We are listening to our fans on social media and the losers on Twitter who say growing the game is vitally important to them.” Bettman hopes the NHL hopes it can become as popular in Africa as soccer or even the NBA. He plans to meet with Embiid’s extended family and give them some skates and two pucks. “We just need to plant the hockey seed and the rains down in Africa will do the rest… if it freezes.”

Despite being a diverse league made up of mostly Canadians playing in the USA, the NHL is looking to increase skin colour diversity, which of course is the most important type of diversity. “We are still analyzing why we are having trouble getting hockey players from Africa and other regions like South America, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean” said Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell with a puzzled face, “If MLB can get players from the Dominican Republic, I don’t see why we can’t.”

At the moment most NHL players come from Canada, Russia, the USA, Sweden, Czech Republic and Finland, which are identical countries without diversity.

On Tuesday night Bettman gave a speech about how hockey will be played in the “Heart of Darkness” because he is a POS and even he made another reference to the band Toto. The Cameroonian audience demonstrated their hockey sense by booing Bettman until he had his photo taken with the microphone and handed it to the next guy, proving there is hope for hockey in Africa.