For the first time in 17 years, the NHL has returned to ESPN, and that means the red-hot spotlight of attention from the self proclaimed worldwide leader in sports is being turned back on to the world of hockey. Good news for hockey fans. Bad news, (correction: really bad news) for the Chicago Blackhawks.
For those of you who don’t love hockey the way I do, you may not have heard about the PR nightmare swirling through the Windy City. The Blackhawks have become the latest team/company/organization to screw up the handling of sexual assault under their watch. Now, after more than a decade, the truth is coming out (sadly, it only occasionally does), and this once proud Original 6 organization is being skewered for unconscionable behavior.
The incident that has lead to the Blackhawks PR disaster involves Kyle Beach. Beach was supposed to become a star in Chicago. He was a first-round draft pick with visions of Stanley Cup glory in his mind as he began his career. At the still wet behind the ears age of 20, he joined the big club during Chicago’s Stanley Cup Championship run in 2010. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, as this kid was inches away from his dream of playing in the NHL, he met Brad Aldrich, the team's video coach. Aldrich then sexually assaulted him. Aldrich said the incident was consensual. Beach said it wasn’t, and when Beach reported the incident to his coaches, you guessed it, nothing happened. In fact, Aldrich was on the ice hoisting Lord Stanley’s great trophy moments after Chicago won it all, and weeks after Beach told the team what Aldrich did.
According to a report released to the public this past week, Blackhawk management was more concerned with a possible disruption to their quest for the cup than a 20 year old, potential star’s complaint. 11 long years later, heads are beginning to roll. It’s about time.
The Blackhawks are not the first organization to brush bad deeds under the rug. In the sporting world alone, there are countless examples of nearly identical decisions that have been made. Cover up the misdeeds and keep the glory going. Oklahoma football did it in the 1980s, Baylor football and basketball did it in the early 2000s, and all of us remember that Penn State did it during sex predator Jerry Sandusky’s reign of terror on countless young boys. In nearly all of these incidents, someone in power could have stepped up and done the right thing. Someone could have saved the defenseless, but that’s not the easy way to do things. The easy thing to do is to turn the other cheek and pretend it didn’t happen, to pretend it wasn’t that bad, to pretend that time will just make it go away and everything will turn out fine.
Had the Blackhawks done the right thing, several more young men in Chicago, more at Miami University, and some more on the high school level never would have fallen into Brad Aldrich’s crosshairs. None of those young men would now be living their lives as sexual assault survivors. Too many guys in Chicago decided that winning it all takes precedence when the Stanley Cup is within reach.
As this story continues to unfold, it is easy for all of us to play analyst from hundreds of miles away and pretend to be shocked by what we’re hearing. I recently heard former NHL coach John Tortorella comment on ESPN that somebody, just one person in the room could have stepped up and said no. We have to do something. Torts is right, but if it was him, would he have stepped up? Would I have? Would you?
Since the story of Kyle Beach became public a few days ago, his name has become well known to hockey fans around the world but not in the way he once hoped. This week, Kyle stepped up and revealed himself as the “John Doe” who is currently in a legal dispute with the Blackhawks over that incident from 11 years ago. That’s right, he’s still fighting with the team that is still trying to cover this whole thing up. Somebody in charge should have stepped up for Kyle Beach then, and they should step up with him now. A few of those somebodies are Blackhawk front office guys Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac. Both resigned this week for their lack of action all those years ago, but both still have their names on the Stanley Cup from 2010. Former head coach Joel Quenneville also could have done something. He was told about it, but he was too busy winning hockey games. He resigned as head coach of the Florida Panthers this week, but you can still find his name on the Stanley Cup as part of that 2010 team. In fact, there are all kinds of names from the 2010 Blackhawk organization on the greatest trophy in sports, even Brad Aldrich’s name is there. Kyle Beach’s name is not. It never will be. He never played a single game in the NHL, but let’s hope his contributions to the game (and society) are much more important than an engraving on a trophy.
In 1905, George Santayana wrote some of the most prophetic words ever penned in human existence: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill made the quote famous when he paraphrased it in front of the House of Commons back in 1948. The line was true all those years ago, and it is glaringly true today. The coverup is almost always as bad as the crime. US presidents have been publicly taught that lesson. Religious organizations have been publicly taught that lesson, and the list goes on and on. Maybe one of these days all of us as a society will learn this lesson we keep being taught again, again and again. Covering this stuff up has to stop.