By now, I am sure everyone is aware of the situation regarding the Chicago Blackhawks and Kyle Beach. If you don’t just take the time to watch this emotional interview.
There are no excuses for what happened and the NHL and the Blackhawks should be ashamed of themselves. Beach reported the incident to people who he thought he could trust to make sure it was handled correctly and he was let down. The organization considered winning a Stanley Cup more important than sexual assault and that is inexcusable.
The investigation has been ongoing and the report was made public on Tuesday and yesterday Kyle Beach came forward and revealed himself as the victim. Props to Beach coming forward as I can only imagine the kind of courage that takes. The only problem I have with that is he really didn’t have a choice after the report was made public as the details made it easy to narrow down who the victim was.
After the report came out Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman stepped down. One of the other names in the report was current Florida Panthers head coach Joel Quenneville. Lets take a look at some of the things that came out from the report that involved Quenneville..
That’s nice, one of your players was sexually assaulted but because we’re in the middle of a playoff run we can deal with it later. Unfuckingbelieveable. There is no excuse for the way this was handled by everyone in the Blackhawks organization. What makes things even worse is that Joel Quenneville was allowed to stand behind the bench and coach his current team last night.
The right thing for Quenneville to do would be to take a leave of absence until the entire investigation is complete. The NHL should have also stepped in and not allowed him to coach after seeing the report come out. But, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Quenneville and the NHL didn’t do the right thing once again.
Just to frustrate you all even more, after deciding to still coach last night, Quenneville refused to address the media. Coward type shit right there. Quenneville is scheduled to meet with Gary Bettman later on this afternoon so we will see how that goes. Hockey culture needs a massive change and while it has gotten better in recent years it is still not where it needs to be. Hopefully, this incident is something that continues to change the culture in a positive way and we can eventually get to a point where stuff like this doesn’t happen or when it unfortunately does we can trust that it will be handled the correct way.
It’s such sad situation and it’s heartbreaking what Kyle Beach has had to go through. Nobody should ever have to go through something like this and hopefully now the healing process can really start for him and that he knows he is not alone and the hockey community stands with him.
-Walsh