Staff Writers

Sharks rookie Tommy Wingels will never forget the reaction when the student-manager of his college hockey team stood up at a team meeting and announced that he was gay.

“There wasn’t a reaction,” Wingels said. “Nobody cared. He was just Brendan and the guy who was a friend to all of us. It didn’t change the way he reacted around us and it didn’t change the way we acted around him.”

Wingels wishes the rest of the sports world could take that approach. To advance that cause, he provided the financial backing and joined the advisory board of the You Can Play Project, an organization that was created in the memory of Brendan Burke, the student-manager on Wingels’ college hockey team at Miami University. Burke, the son of Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke, died in a 2009 car accident. His death came less than a year after he’d shared his story with his teammates.

“After the accident we stayed in touch with Tommy and he always said he wanted to do anything he could to help carry on Brendan’s legacy,” said Patrick Burke, Brendan’s brother and a scout for the Philadelphia Flyers. “When I told him about the idea for You Can Play, he jumped at it.”

The project takes its name from a phrase often used by Brendan: “If you can play, you can play.”

Wingels and another college teammate, Andy Miele, now with the Phoenix Coyotes organization, were the first players to answer the call. Now there are 39 players supporting the project through personal endorsements and videos. Among them are some of the biggest names in hockey, including Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara and New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist.

“Our first two checks that were ever written to get us off the ground were done by Tommy Wingels and Andy Miele,” Patrick Burke said. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that without those two, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today.”

The project is gaining visibility through a series of public service announcements on TV and on arena video boards. The “You Can Play” video with Wingels is shown at Sharks games between the first and second periods.

“I’m fully behind it,” Sharks coach Todd McLellan said of Wingels work. “I think it’s a great cause. Everybody chooses to live their lives their own way and we have to appreciate that.”

Wingels isn’t the only Bay Area connection to the project. Rick Welts, the president of the Golden State Warriors, also sits on the advisory board. Sean Maddison, a San Francisco-based freelancer working with CSN-Bay Area on Sharks telecasts, has produced several of the videos, including those featuring Wingels, Dallas Stars captain Brendan Morrow and Edmonton Oilers forward Ryan Jones.

Brendan Burke was a high school goalie who stopped playing hockey because he feared his sexual orientation might present problems in the future. Getting to know Burke, and his story, is what convinced Wingels that the sports culture needed to change .

“He was just an easy-going guy with a great sense of humor.” said Wingels, who spoke at Brendan’s memorial service. “He got along with everybody. He just had this knack of building relationships with people. That’s why he didn’t want to hide it. He just wanted to say, ‘This is who I am. I want to be open about it.’ He didn’t want to promote anything. But he felt like, ‘These are my friends, and I want to be open.”’

Wingels acknowledged he was unsure how the “You Can Play” project would be received.

“Obviously when you start something like that you don’t know how it’s going to be taken, you don’t know who’s willing to help out. The reception it’s had around the league is a great starting point,” he said.

Rather than publicize the entire list of NHL players backing their cause, the organizers of the project are releasing the information in small bits, one or two players at a time to heighten and extend interest. Wingels said other Sharks have shown interest, but no names have yet been released.

And while the group was prepared for negative reaction, Patrick Burke said opposition has not materialized. He theorizes that the limited scope of the project works in its favor.

“All we do is sports,” he said, noting the group steers clear of more controversial issues such as marriage equality or the military. “The fact that our entire policy is built around ‘treat your teammates with respect,’ and that’s where it ends — I think it’s tough to take a position that’s opposed to that.”

The bigger issue in sports is what happens when an active professional athlete in one of the major team sports — baseball, football, basketball or hockey — comes out as a gay man.

Persuading someone to do that is not the mission of the “You Can Play” project. Fostering a more accepting environment in which that can happen is.

“We just want to create an atmosphere where if someone’s ready, they’re able to do that,” Wingels said. “We’re trying to eliminate the casual homophobia in the game and in the locker room… It’s not just hockey we’re talking about. It’s sports in general. We want people to be judged on their talent. Nothing else should really matter.”

Contact David Pollak at dpollak@mercurynews.com. Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@mercurynews.com