How can Quenneville and Cheveldayoff continue?
The Blackhawks' front office in 2009-10 was rotten to the core. It was full of people who either abused their power or turned a blind eye to those who did
Think about this for a minute. It is now indisputable that during the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs, Chicago Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich sexually assaulted one of the young prospects in the organization who was with the team through its run to the Stanley Cup. It is also indisputable that earlier that season, Rockford IceHogs coach Bill Peters hurled a racial slur at one of his players, Akim Aliu, then had Aliu sent from the American Hockey League to the ECHL.
What does that tell us? Well, it tells us that during the 2009-10 season, the upper reaches of the Chicago Blackhawks organization was rotten to the core, from the team president down to the guy who coached their prospects in the AHL.
Most of them have been dismissed. It’s time now to tell the others they are no longer welcome in the game. Peters has been banished to the KHL and will probably never coach in the NHL again. Of the six men who gathered for a meeting in the United Center on May 23, 2010 – president John McDonough, executive vice-president Jay Blunk, GM Stan Bowman and senior vice-president of hockey operations Al MacIsaac – four have either stepped down or been fired by the Blackhawks.
Now that the ugly, sordid and shocking details of the 107-page independent investigation by the legal firm Jenner & Block into the Brad Aldrich scandal, it’s time to close the loop on this. It’s time for those who hold positions of power in the NHL to tell Florida Panthers coach Joel Quenneville and Winnipeg Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff that they no longer have the privilege of working in the best league in the world. If their employers aren’t prepared to do it, the NHL should do it for them. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has already alluded that he will get involved, saying, “With respect to Messrs. Cheveldayoff and Quenneville…I plan to arrange personal meetings in the near future with both individuals to discuss their roles in the relevant events as detailed in the Report. I will reserve judgment on next steps, if any, with respect to them.”
At the very least, Quenneville and Cheveldayoff should both be placed on leave while Bettman futher investigates. But it looks as though they’ll be able to continue in their jobs, the same way Bowman was after the investigation was announced. (Montreal Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin, then the Blackhawks director of player personnel, has maintained his innocence and is not mentioned in the report.)
The report clearly states that both Quenneville and Cheveldayoff were at that fateful meeting, just as Bowman and MacIsaac were. At that meeting, McDonough told them he would handle the matter and he did not. Neither did anyone else. Any one of the people who knew about this could have gone to the police and filed a complaint. And while Quenneville and Cheveldayoff may not have known the extent of Aldrich’s acts, they knew there was something very wrong. In fact, the report cited Bowman recalling that, “after learning of the incident, Quenneville shook his head and said that it was hard for the team to get to where they were, and they could not deal with this issue now.” Bowman also recalled that McDonough referenced his days with the Chicago Cubs, “saying the Blackhawks might never make it this far in the playoffs again, and that they needed to think about when to handle the issue.”
As the report now tells us, McDonough waited three weeks to tell the company’s human resources department about Aldrich, which gave Aldrich three weeks to continue working for the team, celebrate the Cup win and make unwanted sexual advances on an intern. Then the Blackhawks gave Aldrich the choice – the choice! – to either be subject to a full investigation or to resign. So he quit, then got a glowing recommendation from his former employer, which allowed him back into the game to sexually assault more vulnerable people.
Rotten, rotten, rotten.
So now we have our day of reckoning, if you can call it that. Everything is public and Bowman and MacIsaac are out of jobs. The Blackhawks, a billion-dollar entity, have been fined $2 million. As former NHLer Aaron Ward pointed out in a radio spot, that means the Blackhawks have been fined $1 million less for covering up a sexual assault in 2010 than the New Jersey Devils were for circumventing the salary cap on the Ilya Kovalchuk deal, also in 2010.
But, hey, that’s hockey. And it’s clear that hockey culture, as much as the people who did the deeds and covered them up, are responsible for this mess. The culture that allows coaches and people in power to abuse others is on full display. The culture of silence is on full display. And the culture that insists all matters should be handled in-house and out of the public eye is on full display, right down to Bettman reiterating, “that the League has implemented a confidential and anonymous Hot Line, which is available at any time to all NHL personnel.”
What? That’s the remedy to all of this? Report it to an in-house confidential snitch line? Bettman might have wanted to reiterate that when someone hears of a sex crime, perhaps it might be a good idea to go directly to a police station before they do anything else.
You want abuse of power? The report details how Aldrich threatened not only physical violence to the player known as John Doe, but also pointed out he had the power to dictate John Doe’s career. You want silence? Well, read the report. Even former players Brent Sopel and Nick Boynton, who claimed that “everyone” knew and were talking about how Aldrich wanted to “touch penises,” managed to put it in the vault when asked for particulars. “We pressed Sopel and Boynton for details regarding which conversations, and with whom, led them to believe that ‘everyone’ knew about Aldrich engaging in inappropriate conduct with players. Neither Boynton nor Sopel could provide many details.”
So much abuse of power, so many things covered up, so much negligence. We keep hearing there is no place for this in the game. But it continues to happen, from Graham James in the 1980s to Brad Aldrich three decades later. It is never going to stop unless those who learn of these things speak. Loudly. From the tops of mountains if necessary.
There’s one more thing about the culture of hockey that is at work here. It’s the notion that winning hockey games and championships is so important that it must be preserved at any cost. A lot of people in this game have gotten away with a lot of bad things because they were really good at what they did. It still boggles the mind how the Blackhawks, on any level, could have thought that immediately firing and turning in the guy who cut video clips for them would upset team chemistry so badly that the Stanley Cup would be in jeopardy. But that’s how people think when they’re blinded. A lot of them were, including Quenneville and Cheveldayoff.
And that’s why it’s time for them to go.
Yes!