Neutral-Zone Crap: What is wrong with people?
Whether it involves Kyle Beach or a 16-year-old girl playing high school hockey, the culture surrounding this game needs a complete overhaul
Something terrible happened to a hockey player and responsible adults who should have known better were fully aware it was happening, yet they did nothing. Sound familiar?
At this point, you’re probably expecting to read more about the Chicago Blackhawks and Kyle Beach and Brad Aldrich. Because as much as has been written and said about it, we need to keep saying more.
But no, this actually has to do with a 16-year-old girl in the 11th Grade who plays goalie for the boys varsity team at the Mars Area High School in suburban Pittsburgh. At a game last Thursday against Armstrong High School, she was subjected to vile verbal abuse of a sexual nature from more than 50 kids from the rival school who were in the stands. To say that these kids were lacking some serious guidance and to have it drilled into their heads just how ignorant and boorish they are goes without saying.
The coach of the Mars team told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the goalie, who also plays for the school’s junior varsity team, was in tears after the second period. What’s that. The second period? So there were adults behind the benches of both teams, more adults in the stands and, presumably, adults on the ice officiating the game who knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it? That is unconscionable.
Why was the game not immediately stopped? Why did the on-ice officials not use their power to clear the rink of spectators? Why did a young woman who was in tears after the second period have to go out onto the ice and endure more abuse in the third?
More to the point, what the hell is wrong with people?
If you need any more proof why people who are not male, white and rich often don’t feel safe and accepted in a hockey rink anywhere in North America, well, you can start by putting yourself in the skates of a 16-year-old girl who is playing the game she loves, all the while being called “a whore” by some of the Neanderthals in attendance.
Neither the girl nor her family wants to go public, which is a bit of a shame, because this young girl has more courage in her pinky than the boors who were abusing her have in their entire bodies. Despite the ugly incident, she was back on the ice with her team Tuesday. She is the only one in this whole situation who gives us a reason to have faith and to continue loving a game that sometimes gives us reason to hate it.
HOCKEY WORLD LEANS ON LEHNER
On a phone call over the weekend that spanned over two continents, it was just one abuse victim talking to another. Vegas Golden Knights goalie Robin Lehner, whose childhood trauma in part led to substance abuse, talking to Kyle Beach, who endured a sexual assault at the hands of a man who exploited a power imbalance.
“It was an emotional call,” Lehner said Tuesday night. “I commended him a lot. He’s changing people’s life by the bravery of speaking out, and I just want to be there for him and support him through this.”
Lehner is the No. 1 goalie for a team that is expected to seriously compete for the Stanley Cup. The Golden Knights need him. In reality, they probably need him to be better than he has been so far this season. But Lehner also has to juggle those expectations with his unofficial status as the NHL’s flag bearer for player advocacy. It’s not a position he lobbied to get and it occasionally takes him out of his comfort zone, but as he said in the moments after a 4-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs Tuesday night, “Some things are bigger than winning.”
It’s ironic that Lehner would say that, because the fact that nothing was more important to the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 than winning was what allowed Brad Aldrich’s poison to fester through the organization for more than a decade. Kyle Beach paid an enormous price for that, while others with the Blackhawks, the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association very nearly escaped having to pay any price if not for the diligent reporting of Rick Westhead of TSN. Prior to the NHLPA conference call with players Monday night, Lehner told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “I’m not going to say anything about the NHL. I’m mostly disappointed in our union.”
Lehner didn’t want to elaborate on the call, saying instead he wants to focus his attention on the person who most needs it. But what Lehner needs now more than anything is some help from his fellow players. From superstars to fourth-liners, players have to be more engaged in being part of the solution. “Everything I’m doing is for Kyle Beach,” Lehner said. “He hasn’t been given the benefit of the doubt for a long time and I think it’s time we give him the benefit of the doubt and support him…At the end of the day, people need to be held accountable that knew…That’s part of healing, getting some justice.”
THE BRONCOS ARE BACK
Three years ago, Scott Barney stepped into a situation that few would envy. He came to the Humboldt Broncos to replace an assistant coach who had been killed just months before, to a team that was trying to compete in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League with heavy hearts and the impossible task of helping a small community recover from the worst tragedy in the history of Canadian sports.
It was Barney’s first job in hockey after a 15-year pro career that had included time in the NHL, along with stints in Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, China and South Korea.
In the middle of his first season, the head coach resigned and Barney was suddenly running a team of teenagers just months after his own playing career had ended. And he was doing it all without his family, who stayed behind in Ontario for that first season.
With two seasons halted by the pandemic, Barney and the Broncos are hitting their groove in 2021-22. They’re competing for the best record in the SJHL with a 13-4-0 mark, have three of the league’s top four scorers and, after a 2-1 shootout win over the Kindersley Klippers Tuesday night, are riding a seven-game winning streak.
It’s a beautiful thing to see, even from afar. Full disclosure: I was working with The Hockey News when the bus crash that took 16 lives occurred on a windswept prairie highway and immediately went to Humboldt to cover the aftermath. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life. When I see what the Broncos are doing this year, I can’t help but think of John and Matthew Kirzinger, father and son who played for the Broncos 30 years apart and were at the vigil that was held at the Elgar Petersen Arena two nights after the tragedy. “The Broncos will be back,” John said with conviction in his voice. “And they will be back strong.”
And they are. With 14 rookies in the lineup, the Broncos are piling up both goals and penalty minutes in a quest to become the best team in the SJHL. The rival Estevan Bruins have been awarded the Centennial Cup for 2022, which means they will gain an automatic berth. The Bruins have loaded up and the Broncos are right there with them at the top of the league.
“We turned over 17 players and used our COVID time to do a lot of scouting,” said Barney, who has added the GM title to his portfolio. “We didn’t know how the season would go in the beginning, but it seems like we have the right guys in the dressing room and everyone pulling the right way.”
The crowds are coming back, and so is a sense of optimism. The only vestige remaining from the 2018 team is 20-year-old defenseman Kade Olsen, who was an affiliated call-up player who was not on the bus on that fateful day. Neither redoing the Broncos dressing room nor having more time separated from the tragedy have reduced the pain, but the Broncos are making people happy again.
“We remember them every day,” Barney said. “Coming to the rink every day, every player and myself are always cognizant of that.”
THE RED WING WAY
There were two things that went through Jeff Blashill’s mind during a 48-second stretch of the Detroit Red Wings game against the Florida Panthers last Friday night that Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice would refer to as “coach’s porn.” There were his Detroit Red Wings, hobbling all over the defensive zone, diving in front of shots and sacrificing their bodies late in the third period to keep a 2-1 deficit from becoming 3-1. And because it didn’t, the Red Wings got a goal from Pius Suter not long after that before losing in overtime to one of the top teams in the league.
It’s the kind of inspired play the hockey world has seen too little of from the Red Wings in recent years. And it typified the resilience of a team that has come out of the gate playing better and getting better results than almost anyone could have predicted. (Although they were godawful on Tuesday night in a 3-0 loss to the Montreal Canadiens.)
“First, and I don’t know if you’d get it by watching it, but the crowd was absolutely amazing as that sequence was going on,” Blashill said. “I just thought to myself, ‘This is what Detroit is about.’ They were going absolutely crazy for a D-zone shift. I thought, ‘Man, does this crowd get it.’ And second, it said to me that type of commitment in Game 8 says that those are special people. It was a chaotic shift, it wasn’t a Picasso of a D-zone shift, but that sacrifice has to be part of our game on a night-to-night basis in order for us to win hockey games.”
Getting shut out by the Canadiens notwithstanding, the Red Wings have had an infusion of young talent this season that has made them more offensively dangerous than they’ve been in years. It was thought the Red Wings would have trouble scoring, but the opposite is true. Unfortunately, they’ve been leaky defensively as well and that has, in many ways, been their undoing in games they’ve lost. Right from the first game of the season, when they led the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-3 with less than seven minutes left only to lose 7-6 in overtime, goals have been going in at both ends of the ice.
“We have definitely found a way to create more offense,” Blashill said. “Long-term, we have to tighten up defensively, but it is nice to know you can find ways, and the Toronto game (where they lost 5-4 Saturday night) is a good example…we gave up too many chances and we gave up too many goals, but we still had a chance to tie it late. If you’re a team that doesn’t score, when you get down, it feels like a mountain. And when you’re a team that can score, you never feel out of it.”
DRIBS AND DRABS
After a disastrous start in which he had just one assist in seven games and looked as though he had completely lost his mojo, Mitch Marner of the Leafs has two goals and three assists in his past three games. His on-ice body language is much better and he’s looking more like the player who was a first-team all-star in 2020-21. “He just looks like himself,” said Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe. “That’s the Mitch that we know and love. He’s playing with confidence, he looks like he’s free out there. And when he’s free and the game is just flowing for him, he makes great things happen on both sides of the puck.” Next up is a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday night in which Marner will have an opportunity to impress Canadian Olympic coach Jon Cooper. It won’t take much. Marner played for Cooper in the 2017 World Championship and Cooper loves him…Not enough is being made of the COVID-ravaged San Jose Sharks, who are 6-3-0 and displaying enormous amounts of resilience…Winnipeg Jets chairman Mark Chipman for the next chairman of the NHL’s board of governors. That’s it. That’s the note.
An update:
Armstrong head hockey coach responds to chants at hockey games
"All students at Armstrong High School are banned from attending school hockey games until further notice."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/armstrong-head-hockey-coach-responds-to-chants-at-hockey-games/ar-AAQd3oJ?ocid=msedgntp