EA Sports has a feature in its NHL 15 game that allows you to create a player, with the option of starting with either a male or a female.  But apparently someone forgot to tell the announcers.

I usually play what they call GM Mode, which allows you to take control of both personnel moves and play the actual games.  I wanted to boost our lineup with a new left winger, so I created a female player named Nadja Backstrom, the fictional (as far as I know) younger sister of star center Nicklas Backstrom.

See, clearly female.  She doesn’t get a lot of playing time on the fourth line, but she’s easily the fastest skater on the team.  That leads to occasional breakaways when she’s on the ice, and in a game I played this morning she managed to score twice.

The announcers though, are locked into male pronouns.  When she gets the puck, “he” gets the puck.  When they talk about her speed being an asset, “his” speed is an asset.

Even the neat dipsy-do move and game-sealing goal didn’t earn Nadja the basic pronoun respect she deserves.  Maybe next time she’ll have to fire a slapshot up into the announcer’s booth the get some results.

Or if EA is going to have the option for female players, it could put more than seven seconds into coding and voicing and add language that actually makes sense.