STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1. DON’T READ IF TIRED OF KYLE BEACH COMMENTARY – I wrote about the Blackhawks/Kyle Beach situation on my own personal blog last week and was hoping to just leave it at that, but there are so many things going on inside my own brain that I can’t just let it rest with what I wrote last week.  These thoughts are random and I’m sure some of you will take issue with some of what I have to say but such is life.

2. ALDRICH ISN’T WORTH IT – I can’t figure out why these Executives with the Blackhawks covered for Brad Aldrich.  He’s a video lackey.  It’s not like he’s the difference between winning a Stanley Cup or not.  It’s incredible that nobody thought the best course of action would be to remove Aldrich and call the police.  Just blows my mind.  And I really don’t think it’s all that distracting from winning a Stanley Cup.  Is the media really going to pick up on the fact the Hawks have gassed their video editor in the middle of the playoffs?  They may notice some police presence but you can make arrangements for those investigations to take place away from the rink.  And, sorry if it impacts your Cup run but if you have a sexual predator in your midst, you owe it to everyone to deal with it quickly and appropriately.  

3. COACH Q STAINED – Joel Quenneville never ever should have coached last Thursday night.  That was extremely odd and it shows there is still a complete lack of self-awareness in the NHL.  What’s clear to me from the meeting that took place in Quenneville’s office is that while Quenneville wasn’t the boss, his opinion carried a tremendous amount of weight and he wanted to win a Stanley Cup, regardless of the allegation.  But then he writes Aldrich a nice letter to get him hired somewhere else.  I’m not a lawyer but if you had an inkling Aldrich is a sexual predator and you help said sexual predator get set up in an environment where he is enabled to continue destroying lives, aren’t you also culpable and isn’t that dancing dangerously close to a criminal act?

4. SELECTIVE STANCES – I’m, frankly, disappointed that professional athletes can, enthusiastically, get behind a cause they really aren’t educated on such as police shootings of citizens.  Yet, not a single player on the Florida Panthers refused to take the ice last Thursday to play for Quenneville in order to show support for a fellow player that got none of it eleven years ago.

5. CHEVELDAYOFF PRESSER – Maybe I’m a tough crowd but hear me out on this.  Cheveldayoff was the General Manager of the AHL team in Rockford.  Kyle Beach is a first round draft pick and his career is fizzling out.  You mean to tell me Cheveldayoff isn’t investigating as to why that may be, especially knowing about the ‘harassment’?  He’s a smart man.  To say he had no clue and that he figured there may have been a few inappropriate text messages isn’t passing my sniff test.  To be clear.  I’m not a cancel culture guy.  I don’t think Chevy should be fired.  But let’s either have a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment on cancel culture or let’s just cancel everyone (from everyone in that meeting to everyone on the roster who is still in the league) that had any inkling of knowledge that refused to help Kyle Beach.  

6. VIRTUE SIGNALING – Listening to Commissioner Bettman and Jets GM Cheveldayoff the last couple of days hasn’t made me overly optimistic things are going to change.  Bettman will try and protect the league image at all costs (I’d argue his method of protecting actually does more damage) and the NHL is littered with people like Cheveldayoff who cover for those who are accepted as part of the ‘in’ crowd regardless of behaviour.  Cheveldayoff says he was unaware of the extent of the situation between Aldrich and Beach, yet he definitely was once it became public a year or so ago and when the Blackhawks announced they were going to investigate themselves (which is also a joke).  Why didn’t he do the right thing at that point in time and come forward rather than wait until this week when he was pinned into a corner?  

7. THE PLAYERS – Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews says he wasn’t aware of the Beach situation until training camp the following year.  Yet, he failed to offer a helping hand at that point in time and offers no explanation for it.  Beach also says he went to the union and got no help, presumably because he wasn’t an actual NHLer.  For the players themselves to now act holy and demand better action from the union is extremely hypocritical.  Beach talked about being taunted and teased by teammates who knew what happened to him.  Let’s hear who it was.  Get it out there and if some of these players are still playing, they need to be done.  To see all of these people commenting about being ‘sorry for what happened to Kyle’, I haven’t seen a single one speak from the heart.  There are way too many vague recollections, misremembering, and ass-covering for friends.  Yuck.

8. HOW TO CHANGE – If hockey (and in particular the NHL) is truly committed to change, they will hire a neutral third party to do very thorough background checks on everyone currently employed with every single team in the league.  My concern is that predators like Aldrich become involved in the positions they do because they can easily target victims.  This is a skill that makes me sick to my stomach to even think about how predators select their prey.  There is a certain make-up that people like Aldrich and Graham James look for in those they assault.  Perhaps reformed sexual predators can help enlighten the rest of us on how they target so we can better help those who may be more susceptible to being victimized.  I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud and really want to see actual change and not standard lip service.

9. TOO HOT FOR SPORTSNET – Again, call me a skeptic, but to think all these NHL Insiders that Sportsnet employs had no clue about this story Rick Westhead of TSN was working on is just not the least bit believable.  They all kept it quiet until it was impossible to do so and now they are all demanding a pound of flesh.  It’s disingenuous.  My guess is that the order to stay quiet came right from NHL headquarters.  The NHL Head Office seems to pull the strings with Rogers as far as content is concerned as evidenced by Ron MacLean’s banishment a few years ago as well as the ignoring of the concussion lawsuit.  What reason do we have to believe that if a similar incident crops up that makes the NHL look bad that they won’t try and keep it a secret and sweep it under the rug?  On a somewhat related note, a former Winnipeg crime reporter who now covers the Jets waited until last week to go after Cheveldayoff.  Where was this reporter a year ago?  Cozy.

10. ALLAN WALSH – I listened to Fan 590 out of Toronto the other day and they had NHL Agent Walsh on as a guest.  He absolutely crucified Gary Bettman and, basically, demanded he be removed as NHL Commissioner.  When asked about the NHLPA and what should be done with Donald Fehr, Walsh took the high road and said agents shouldn’t involve themselves in that side of the business.  What an incredibly rich thing to say.  He also condemned the NHL’s poor treatment of retired players while ignoring his own personal responsibility as an agent to help players prepare for their post hockey life.  I was out on this interview after about 90 seconds.  Walsh is also the agent of Jonathan Drouin and Marc-Andre Fleury.  Two people he almost ruined careers of.  I suggest he look after his own backyard.

BONUS RANDOMS – Probably unrelated, but Jimmy Hayes and Kyle Beach were teammates in Rockford.  Hayes died at the age of 31 earlier this year from a lethal dose of cocaine laced with fentanyl.  It just really makes you wonder about support systems for young hockey players…Hockey is a small tight knit community.  Lots is kept in-house but hockey people are well aware of what’s going on industry wide.  I can recall back in the 90s I was in the Brandon Wheat Kings pressbox when a scout told me about a weird figure who had brainwashed a handful of players and was using bizarre mind control techniques on them.  I had no idea who or what he was referring to but a couple of years later the names David Frost, Mike Danton, Sheldon Keefe, Ryan Barnes, and Shawn Cation would be very prominent in a very public way that was exactly as laid out to me years prior.