'It's the dumbest thing I've ever done'

Logan Mailloux is contrite and realizes the impact of his actions. He's going to therapy. That's all good. But that doesn't mean the Canadiens had the right to draft him, not this year, anyway

Logan Mailloux said he’s changed in the past eight months. “I just think I’m more thoughtful now, and I’m more careful with everything.”

This is not the time to pile on Logan Mailloux. He never asked to be drafted by the Montreal Canadiens, or any other team for that matter. In fact, the kid asked not to be drafted at all this year. Like the rest of the hockey world, he found out the Canadiens took him in the first round of the entry draft when GM Marc Bergevin announced the pick, so he was just as surprised as everybody else, especially since he had not spoken to the Canadiens once in the days leading up to the draft.

It’s been eight months since Mailloux took a picture of a woman in a consensual sex act and distributed it among his teammates in Sweden without her consent. He said he’s been working on being a better person over that time, that he’s apologized numerous times to the woman in question and he’s undergoing therapy, with a female therapist. “Over the past eight months, just going through this, I think I’ve changed as a person, a lot,” Mailloux said Saturday morning. “I think I’ve changed a lot of character traits about myself. I look at situations differently. I look at things differently. I think differently about different situations. I just think I’m more thoughtful now, and I’m more careful with everything and I think that I care a lot more. Like I said, I’m more thoughtful. I just hope I can continue to better myself in different aspects moving forward.”

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Mailloux talked about earning the trust of the fans. He spoke about remorse. He said he has reached out several times to the woman in the incident, but there’s still some dispute over whether his actions have been enough. And it doesn’t look as though any further communication will occur. “At this point, I just hope that she does know that I am sincere about this,” Mailloux said. “And I am really sorry. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done and I know that it impacted her life. And I just hope that she knows how remorseful I feel and that I do feel sorry about it.”

It sounds as though Mailloux and his therapist are doing some really good work. That’s all positive. It’s too bad that in the midst of doing this work, when he expressly asked to be left alone by the NHL so he could do that work, he was thrown into the maelstrom once again by being drafted by one of the most storied franchises in the NHL, one that plays in arguably the most rabid and judgmental hockey market in the world.

Yup, the Canadiens did Logan Mailloux a real solid by taking him. It’s safe to say at this point they didn’t take his needs into account, that they didn’t care that he felt he hadn’t earned the right to be drafted and that he needed to focus on other things. It’s safe to say the Canadiens didn’t care about anything or anyone but themselves when they made the 31st overall pick. They certainly didn’t care about the victim in all of this, sloughing off her trauma. They didn’t care about the 30 other young men whose hockey dreams were realized by being taken in the draft, young men who watched one of the biggest moments of their lives get hijacked.

At this point, you almost have to wonder whether the Canadiens, and their GM Marc Bergevin, were not using this moment to throw up their middle finger to the hockey world. Even before news of the incident came to light, Mailloux was universally regarded as, at best, a second-round pick, a player whose defensive shortcomings overshadowed his offensive prowess. The venerable Bob McKenzie had him rated 35th. The Hockey News had him at No. 45. TSN director of scouting Craig Button had him at No. 50 and fellow Substack writer and prospect guru Chris Peters had him all the way down at No. 95.

Who knows whether the Canadiens would have been able to take him at No. 63 with their next pick, or with any one of the subsequent nine picks they have on Day 2? Perhaps they had intel that another team planned to take Mailloux before their next pick, which makes all this even more unseemly. Taking Mailloux later in the draft would not have been any less palatable, but at least there would have been one consequence for the action.

Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin picked Mailloux higher than most observers had him rated.

And that was what all of this was about in the first place. Mailloux asking not to be drafted and NHL teams respecting that wish would have had nothing to do with cancel culture, whatever the hell that actually is. It would not have been about ruining a young man’s hockey career. It would have been about making him wait a year to earn the right to be drafted, just the way he said it himself. It would have been an opportunity to attach consequences to bad behavior and having that person actually learn from his mistake, as it looks as though Mailloux is trying to do.

Instead, the Montreal Canadiens rewarded it by drafting him even higher than where many people had him rated. Barely two weeks after their magical run to the Stanley Cup final ended, the Canadiens undid a lot of goodwill. A season we’ll never forget, indeed. At one point in his availability, Mailloux was asked what has changed for him, why a few days ago he thought he shouldn’t be drafted and why he now presumably feels he earned the right. “I haven’t said that I think I deserve to be drafted,” Mailloux said. “Like I said in my statement, I do not think I did earn the right to be drafted.”

And that’s the key thing to remember here. Mailloux asked not to be drafted. And the Canadiens took him anyway, proving once again that goals and assists and wins and losses matter more to a lot of people in this game than doing the right thing.