Business as usual in the NHL
The Club Looks out for its own
The NHL ecosystem is insular, self-sustaining and fiercely tribal. If you’re in the club, it’s like Henry Hill said in “Goodfellas,” you’re a made guy, they can’t touch you. Occasionally you have to take a pinch, maybe you do some time in the can, but not real jail. Wise guys don’t go to real jail.
Oh and when you get out, the old boys club will be there to help you get back on your feet. If you didn’t rat anyone out on your way inside, you’re golden. That’s what reinforces the tribalism, if you betray the club everyone you’ve ever known turns their back on you and you’re really on your own.
That brings us to Darren Dreger of TSN’s Friday morning scoop:
As Darren, who works for a league television partner and doesn’t want to upset that old boys club knows, Joel Quenneville wasn’t on academic probation for recording a 1.8 GPA in first semester of freshman year.
Infamously, the league forced Quenneville to resign his post as head coach of the Florida Panthers in the fall of 2021 for his role in the coverup of one of his coach’s sexual assault of a player in the spring of 2010.
In the wake of the allegations in 2021, the Blackhawks commissioned an investigation soliciting the services of law firm Jenner & Block. One of the other individuals involved, Stan Bowman, the GM of the team and someone else involved in the cover up recalled Quenneville saying:
“After learning of the incident, Quenneville shook his head and said that it was hard for the team to get where they were, and they could not deal with this issue now.”
At that point, Quenneville was 51-years-old, played in 801 career games and coached more than 1000. The singular focus of the hockey man who preached accountability with metronome precision? Winning a Stanley Cup because “it was hard to get the team to where they were.”
When it came time for Quenneville and Bowman, two guys in the club to hold a third, Aldrich, accountable, winning the Stanley Cup came first. Lest hockey media forget, Aldrich was also an NHL legacy, his father Mike worked in the league as an equipment manager for years and Brad’s means of getting entry to the club.
It’s also worth mentioning that instead of ever holding Aldrich accountable, the Blackhawks let him leave quietly at the end of the 2010 season after the Stanley Cup winning festivities. He subsequently was accused of sexual misconduct twice at the University of Miami of Ohio and then charged with criminal sexual contact with a minor in his time after leaving the Blackhawks.
Aldrich served nine months in jail.
After the league’s investigation in 2021, Bowman resigned from the Blackhawks. After lying about not recalling anything about Aldrich to the media, Quenneville met with commissioner Gary Bettman who more or less told the three time cup winning coach to resign or be thrown out of the league.
The Blackhawks organization was given a $2 million fine. John McDonough, the most senior member of the meeting where inaction was decided, had been fired from the organization in the spring of 2020, long before Beach came forward.
The final ledger in terms of discipline from the league was a monetary fine and two resignations.
Here we are, less than TWO years later and the league is ready to consider Quenneville’s reinstatement. As for Bowman, he’s been linked to several GM jobs, but does not have a meeting with the league to gain clearance yet.
What sports mean
Fundamentally, sports are a reflection of the society they operate within. What’s valued in sports: winning, overcoming adversity, putting others before one’s self. They’re virtuous traits, it’s why sports are a great vehicle for teaching even to to those who don’t have a path towards the professional ranks.
Unfortunately, like most other institutions in society, sports are pretty hollow under closer inspection. The team, the team the team. The NHL fetishizes putting the team before oneself to the point that it produced a commercial for the playoffs titled “We, Greater than 1.”
This is part of the reinforcement of the boy’s club mindset. When you go outside the family for help, you’re betraying the team. That’s why the Blackhawks’ front office kept everything insular. Quietly waited it out, no one said anything. Technically, it was reported up the chain and a superior, McDonough, said they’d take care of it.
Just enough opaqueness involved that all of those involved could claim plausible deniability. If they’d gone outside the chain of command after McDonough said he’d handle it, they risked upsetting the old boy’s club and facing excommunication for airing family business.
That’s what hockey culture perpetuates, an organized crime culture.
Kids are brought up in it, desensitized to the consequences of that life style and often follow in the footsteps of family members. Those within are nose deaf to the absurdity that surrounds them.
It’s the type of culture that allows a superior in charge of others to hear a credible charge of sexual assault and be thinking about the next game. That’s what mythologizing the sport does after a lifetime within, the game defines one’s existence.
So, in Quenneville’s mind, the accusation was an inconvenience in the pursuit of his life’s work. Something to be dealt with if there was time down the road or better yet, passing the responsibility off to someone else and getting back to work.
After all, the Blackhawks can’t go suspending the video coach before the Stanley Cup final.
Under closer inspection this entire situation looks even worse. Two men who’d had hockey mold their entire lives and develop their value systems, Bowman and Quenneville, won three Stanley Cups together and reached the pinnacle of the game had this happen on their watch and did nothing.
Quenneville even wrote a performance evaluation of Aldrich saying he “did a great job,” and congratulated him on winning a Stanley Cup.
Hockey coaches are supposed to be the arbiters of accountability. They hold the players on the team accountable, doling out ice time as a means of reward or punishment.
That’s what’s so brutally real about this entire situation and why Quenneville can’t gain reinstatement to the league to me. The record shows McDonough said he’d take care of it and Quenneville simply sat on his hands. Didn’t try to find out what happened, didn’t follow up to see if there was a resolution, didn’t press for an investigation.
Nope, when it was time for the bastion of accountability to take some, the team winning took priority.
Funny how accountability becomes selective, almost like it’s not really about accountability and about power dynamics. The coach molds players into a fealty, to moldable clay to serve whatever they’re needed to be. That you have to be a good teammate, so you have to do your job at whatever physical or mental cost.
Then when a player’s no longer useful after the coach’s molding, they’re discarded.
The NHL can say that Quenneville and Bowman have both met the threshold for reinstatement. I’m sure both will claim humbleness and contrition in front of microphones should either be hired. There will be nausea inducing puff pieces about both’s time away from the game and what they learned.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a couple of workshops or seminars is not going to unlearn a lifetime of hockey culture. Bowman, the child of the winningest coach in hockey history Scotty. Quenneville, the 800 game player and coach of 1768 more. Neither is having a come to Jesus moment in middle age.
It’s ultimately why powerful institutions will use the bad apples defense. The NHL didn’t have to change anything, it lopped off two individuals and issued a financial slap on the wrist to one of the 32 families. They got taxed and kicked upstairs.
There are good people in hockey. This isn’t a total condemnation of all within the game. But, as long as individuals like Bowman and Quenneville are still afforded the perks of boy’s club membership, it’s a black stain on the others.
There will always be an air of skepticism surrounding both. Their legacies forever tarnished in the minds of those that don’t have hockey disease riddled brains.
That’s what sticks out the most about this entire situation. In the fall of 2021, there was universal condemnation of the Blackhawks and all of those involved for putting winning over humanity.
The organization that chooses to hire Quenneville or Bowman is saying “yeah that was bad but we think they can help us win,” which is exactly what the hockey world threw its hands up in disgust with when the allegations were brought to light.
The same media personalities that conveyed a sense of regret for not covering sensitive stories well enough in 2021 are treating Quenneville and Bowman like any other candidates for jobs. That their meetings with the league are a barrier for their hiring as opposed to the consequences of their actions.
It’s just all so hollow. So performative. At this point all image re-habilitation has a paint by numbers formula. The family appreciated Quenneville and Bowman doing their bid and not taking anyone else down with them on the way out. They were made a temporary example of.
Now that they’ve bided their time, if the boss of the family deems them ready to work again, they’re unilaterally approved.