One of the biggest stories to come out of the NHL this weekend was Vegas goaltender Robin Lehner going a a twitter rant about how some of the NHL teams treat players. This rant comes on the heels of the ongoing situation with the Buffalo Sabres and Jack Eichel.
Jack Eichel failed his physical and has been trying to get a surgery to repair an injured neck. The Sabres however will not approve of Eichel getting this surgery and things are getting ugly between the two sides. Robin Lehner has been a big advocate for players and for mental health as well. He has never been one to shy away from topics that most won’t typically speak out on.
While on his rant about things going on around the league he stated he would be putting stories out daily about things he has witnessed or heard about. One of the first stories he happened to call out the Philadelphia Flyers and their head coach Alain Vigneault.
The tweets above caused quite a stir throughout the hockey twitter community as it seemed as if he was accusing the Flyers and Vigneault of medical malpractice. This got a lot of people talking as these are some pretty heavy accusations and rumors started flying around who could have given Lehner this information as he never has played for Vigneault.
This prompted the league to step in and reach out to Lehner in regards to his accusations. It also prompted a response from the Flyers and their head coach and this morning Vigneault did address the claims against him from Lehner..
AV response was what I expected to be and yes, he has been known to be a hard coach but he treats his players fairly. I think it is clear that AV is a well liked coach as well because if he wasn’t some of his former players wouldn’t have chose to come sign in Philadelphia and play for him again. AV also completely denied pushing pills to players and that he would never do something like that and that he was disappointed in regards to the comments made about him.
It also appears now that Lehner had a call with the NHLPA and he clarified that he was not accusing AV of pushing pills only that he was talking about the way he treats his players.
Personally, I do love that Lehner is not afraid to speak up as there has always been rumors about a toxic culture throughout the NHL. It’s great to see a current NHL player stick up for himself and the rest of the guys in the league. Obviously this isn’t something you want to ever hear about and hopefully there isn’t stuff like this going on throughout the league.
Hopefully the NHL does some investigating and does put steps in place to avoid anything like this happening or stopping anything like this that is going on. While, Lehner’s rant was a little confusing as it obviously came from a place of frustration which is why some of his comments may have been unclear in what/who he was referring to.
While it is good that he is speaking out, at the same time throwing out these accusations without providing the proof is unfair to the people he is accusing. If situations like what Lehner described are going on we need more players to speak up about the issues so steps can be put in place to stop it.
We will see if this is the end of this situation or if it turns into being something bigger as the weeks go on.
-Walsh