On Friday, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman said the decision to allow the league's best players to participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia was "in many ways, a difficult one", but that it would be "well received" by the players and international fans. Indeed, it seems he was right.

Canada's 2014 chef de mission, the former Olympic downhill skier Steve Podborski, declared the news to be an "early victory for Canada and our medal hopes in Russia". The NHL Players' Association was equally thrilled. "The players are very pleased that an agreement has been reached," the NHLPA executive director, Don Fehr, reportedly said. Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins' captain and NHL superstar, said he was "obviously excited to kind of start the process".

This spring, the NHL and its players' union were both excited about something else. In April, both formally partnered with You Can Play, an advocacy group that promotes acceptance of LGBT athletes in sport. Bettman said he was "delighted" that the venture would reaffirm the NHL and NHLPA's policy of "inclusion on the ice, in our locker rooms and in the stands".

It's the last bit of that that is worth thinking on now. The news out of Russia for LGBT people who might fill the ice and certainly the stands in Sochi is pretty bleak these days. And the NHL should have taken a stand on the issue.

To recap recent events: in June, Russia's parliament passed a law that bans gay "propaganda". Included in that bill is a fine of up to 5,000 rubles (around $155) for anyone who disseminates information "directed at forming nontraditional sexual setup" among minors or, reportedly, anything that would lead anyone to understand that gay and heterosexual relationships are socially equivalent. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, claimed at the time that the law was about protecting children.

Human Rights Watch had a different take on it. Graeme Reid, HRW's LGBT rights program director, said:

Russia is trying very hard to make discrimination look respectable by calling it 'tradition', but whatever term is used in the bill, it remains discrimination and a violation of the basic human rights of LGBT people.

Things got worse this month, when Russia adopted a law that makes the adoption of Russian children illegal for same-sex couples, domestically or abroad. And that was only days after a number of LGBT activists were arrested at a pro-gay rights rally.

All of which ought to put the pro-LGBT NHL in a tough spot, if it were holding fast to its principles. Would it not stand to reason the NHL might consider a boycott?

On Tuesday, I sent an email requesting comment on that to the NHL's communications office in Toronto. It went unanswered.

Gary Bettman said the decision to allow players to compete at next year's Winter Olympics was 'in many ways, a difficult one'. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

There are, perhaps, two arguments against a boycott. One, as OutSports highlighted, is that "no athlete good enough to compete in the Olympics should ever be told by her country that she cannot fulfill her lifelong dream". The Olympics, OutSports argues, "aren't about politics, they're about putting politics aside and competing in friendship."

But the NHL is a different case. Its players are professionals, playing in the best league on Earth. They have plenty of opportunity to fulfill their dreams in other ways. As for the politics of it all? Everything is political, including a professional sports league taking a stand on LGBT rights. If the NHL has breached that political barrier once, there's no reason it can't breach it again. Would that leave amateur athletes who might temporarily replace absent NHL stars in the lurch? Perhaps. But the NHL has taken a stand – it's not its job to worry about anyone else's.

The other argument against an NHL boycott is mostly financial. After all, the NHL is in the business of promoting its game and its players. It's also in the business of bringing in new fans wherever it can – it's a big sports league, but it can always get bigger. That means it will, naturally, gravitate to the biggest occasion, in order to fulfill those goals. The Olympics is that, and from both a business standpoint and that of the fans, it makes sense that NHL players would participate.

Then again, since when is a business case sound justification to ignore equality rights?

What the NHL did in April was to elevate the conversation about gay rights and sport, and set a bar for all other major North American sports leagues to follow. A line was drawn, and to extend it to the Winter Games would have been a strong, principled move on behalf of the league. The fact that the Olympics are clearly so important to the NHL's wellbeing would have said all that any gay fan (or even non-fan) would have needed to hear, to know that the hockey world would not sacrifice values for dollars. Yet by agreeing to send its best players and carve out time from its regular-season schedule to make room for the Olympics in Russia, the league has undermined itself. The NHL having fully endorsed an Olympic Games hosted by a nation that disrespects LGBT citizens and those who defend them, its spring message of inclusion has become muddled and tainted, and is thus now less helpful.

On Monday, Buzzfeed asked the head of a pro-Russian thinktank whether the West ought to boycott the Sochi Games over the country's anti-gay laws. Andranik Migranyan, director of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, told the website:

I think people who propose these kinds of ideas, they need to go to examine their heads at a psychiatrists.

Well, fine. The NHL has been called crazy for less. It ought to have been pleased to have this opportunity.

Though You Can Play did not provide a comment to me for this piece, the organization's founder, Patrick Burke, wrote in a piece for Buzzfeed on Wednesday that You Can Play is "staunchly against the idea of a boycott". (He's talking about a general boycott, not simply a hockey one).

His reasons against a general boycott is that such actions are ineffective, particularly against Russia; that Russia will likely not risk having an international incident occur (such as taking the step "of jailing an Olympic athlete from a foreign nation"); that the Olympics are not meant to be political; and that by allowing sport to be sport, "lasting memories will arise naturally and purely, leaving an indelible and unforgettable impact on the world in a way no politically driven stunt could".

More broadly, though, Burke hopes that by having LGBT athletes compete in the Games, it will "show the world that there are elite LGBT athletes who are not afraid to be themselves, on and off the playing field. That the majority of the world's finest athletes support their LGBT team-mates, coaches, and opponents by treating them as equals in competition".

This piece was updated at 4pm ET on Wednesday 24 July, to include comments from You Can Play founder Patrick Burke.