Logan Mailloux ready to return to the ice
The disgraced Canadiens' first-round pick has apologized, served his sentence and done the work. 'I don't think anyone has to be punished in perpetuity,' says a London-based women's advocate
As the executive director of Anova, formerly known as the Sexual Assault Centre in London, Ont., Jessie Rodger isn’t terribly preoccupied with whether or not Logan Mailloux of the London Knights should or shouldn’t be on the ice Friday tonight when his team hosts the Flint Firebirds. She’s not about to get into a debate about whether or not a 26-game suspension is a sufficient sentence for what Mailloux did and she’s not inclined to protest his return outside the Budweiser Gardens in London, where he’ll play in front of no fans. (Assuming the game goes ahead as scheduled.)
What Rodger is far more concerned about is what Mailloux learned during his time off and how he plans to share his knowledge with other men. But most of all, Rodger’s thoughts are with a woman who is thousands of miles away, the woman in Sweden who was violated when Mailloux distributed a photo of her in a consensual sex act with him more than a year ago.
“I think of the victim,” Rodger said. “(Mailloux) is going to be fine. This is not about not wanting this guy to have a career. He’s going to have a career. Cancel culture is not a thing. He’s going to be OK. But I don’t know how this young woman is. I also know there are going to be other young men who see what happened to Logan and are they going to take it seriously? There are going to be other young women who see what happened to the victim and are they going to feel safe?”
Hockey Unfiltered reached out to Ontario Hockey League commissioner David Branch to ask whether the league spoke to the victim before reinstating Mailloux effective Jan. 1, but did not receive an answer. Mailloux has been dragged through the court of public opinion and will almost certainly wear his own scarlet letter throughout his career. Is that enough? At what point has a young man who admitted to making a serious error in judgment paid his debt?
That’s not really the point here. By all accounts, Mailloux has been serious about making amends for what he did and has done everything right in the aftermath of doing something so terribly wrong. He asked to not be drafted, but was drafted anyway, by the Montreal Canadiens in the first round in what became an immediate public relations disaster that contributed to costing people their jobs. He has committed to do the work, has been as forthright as he can be in facing the consequences of his actions and, when he had the chance to play elsewhere this season, instead opted to sit out his suspension and commit to therapy and improving himself. In as much as he has been able to, he has indeed apologized to the woman involved. In the OHL’s statement on Mailloux’s reinstatement, it talked about things like, “ongoing completion of certifications and reflections of concepts explored.” Good luck explaining exactly what that means. It talked about how he has worked with Wendy Glover, who is described as a London-based, “experienced holistic athlete practitioner.”
“I don’t know what a holistic athlete practitioner is,” Rodger said. “I did not see anything about sexual assault (in the league’s statement). I did not see anything about healthy masculinity. There are a few key things that I would have thought would have been important to mention that I did not see.”
For Rodger, what it comes down to is words versus deeds. Her organization deals with victims of sexual abuse and violence every day. It also works with the London Knights and has a relationship with the team, delivering programming to its players their past couple of seasons that specifically addresses how to support young men who are navigating masculinity. What Rodger would like to see, more than just catchphrases, is for Mailloux to take the unique opportunity he has received to actually demonstrate what healthy masculinity looks like. “I think there’s a space where he can step into this in a unique and healthy way,” Rodger said. “And I think that hasn’t been done yet. There has to be an honest conversation on how we’re going to support young men in understanding how they want to walk in the world.”
So Logan Mailloux will play hockey tomorrow night. He was supposed to miss at least 29 games, but with postponements, he will have missed 26. If the Canadiens are right in their assessment of his hockey talent - and we have no idea if they are at this point - he’ll do very well in junior hockey, then move on to the NHL someday and have a long and productive career as a big, right-shot defenseman. What we don’t know is how long this young woman will have to carry this incident around with her. Because of provincial restrictions, Mailloux and the Knights will be playing in empty arenas for the next little while. Perhaps that’s for the best. Junior hockey fans can be rather, well, pointed and vocal in their jabs at opposing players. And OHL teams play in rinks where those with leather lungs can be heard very clearly.
“I don’t think anyone has to be punished in perpetuity for a mistake or really bad judgments,” Rodger said. “He doesn’t need forgiveness from me. There just needs to be accountability and that’s going to be subjective and the first place we go to with that is the survivor. All of this happened to her.
“People often think that when someone is sexually assaulted, it’s this dark mark you wear for the rest of her life. That’s not true. She’s absolutely going to have the potential to walk through the rest of her life and be OK. It’s a thing that happened to her in a moment in time and she’ll heal. But you can’t do that if the person who did it to you takes doesn’t take responsibility in a way that feels right and authentic to you. That’s why I think Logan has a really amazing opportunity here.”
You would hope the woman involved does not have to wear this as a dark mark for the rest of her life. And if Mailloux handles this terrible mistake as well as he has so far, he shouldn’t either.