ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Jon Merrill describes the hockey slang term "beauty" as someone who does something great, something extraordinary on or off the ice.
To Merrill, an ally to a marginalized group is a top-tier beauty. That's why the Minnesota Wild defenseman, in collaboration with the NHL Player Inclusion Coalition, announced the start of Hockey's Beauty Club, an initiative to help remove bullying in the hockey community.
"We're creating an environment where we're helping each other," Merrill said Sunday before the announcement. "We're using the tight-knit hockey community as our advantage and leaning on each other to be better people. To ask questions of each other and to have conversations with each other about better ways to handle bullying incidents or handle different players on different teams that maybe you're not familiar with and you can reach out to us to help."