Why Stan Bowman must temporarily step down as GM of Blackhawks and Team USA
It's the busiest time of the year in the hockey calendar, but sometimes things are more important than goals and assists and wins and losses. This is one of those times
When Nashville Predators prospect Luke Prokop came out as a gay man earlier this week, the support he received from the hockey world was overwhelming. And that is a great and amazing thing. It was also heartening. What Prokop did was courageous and groundbreaking, and he deserves all the support people in hockey can give.
The NHL, through commissioner Gary Bettman, could not have been more welcoming, saying it is proud of him and thanking him for his bravery. “We pledge to do everything possible to ensure that Luke’s experience is a welcoming and affirmative one,” Bettman said in a release, “and continue to work to ensure that any current or future NHL Player contemplating following in his trailblazing footsteps knows our League is ready to provide full support.”
Terrific. Love to see it.
But you have to wonder, don’t you, where that support has been over the past couple of weeks for the alleged victims of former Chicago Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich, because their claims continue to get more serious by the day. Two lawsuits have now been filed against the Blackhawks. One is a former Blackhawks ‘Black Ace,’ who claims he and a teammate were abused by Aldrich in 2010. The other is a high school hockey player who was sexually assaulted by Aldrich in 2013, who was a volunteer coach with the team, leading to a conviction and nine months in jail. (The high school player alleges the Blackhawks gave Aldrich a positive job reference.) The Blackhawks player alleges senior officials with the organization were aware of what took place and refused to report anything to the police. Just yesterday, an amended statement of a claim from one of the plaintiffs alleges that he was subject to homophobic trash talking by Blackhawk teammates after the incident.
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And what has Bettman’s and the NHL’s position been on this since the story broke? “Tell me the facts,” Bettman said at his news conference on the first day of the Stanley Cup final. No expression of concern for the alleged victims, no talk of pledging full support to the alleged victims of a sex crime. It almost seems as though the Blackhawks, who have hired a law firm of their choosing to investigate the allegations and have yet to pledge whether the results will be made public, and the NHL are hoping all of this will eventually blow over.
Well, it won’t. It can’t. There is far too much at stake here. I certainly won’t sit back and tell other people how to do their jobs, but I can assure readers that I will not be talking or asking about the Blackhawks power play or what they’re going to do about their goaltending or their first-round pick in tonight’s NHL draft until we get a clear picture of what happened, when it happened and who knew about it. We’ve seen that both the NHL and the Blackhawks are running for cover here, making general statements before they talk, then advising inquisitors that they will not be taking any further questions on the matter.
What the Blackhawks needed to do, and still can do, is order GM Stan Bowman and senior vice president of hockey operations Al MacIsaac, who are alleged to have been in the room with former team president John McDonough when they learned of the allegations and refused to report them to police, to step temporarily step down from their posts. Immediately. Like, today, before one of the most important hockey dates on the calendar. By doing so, the Blackhawks would be telling the hockey world, “This is the most important thing to us, more important than the draft or what we’ll be doing in free agency. We have people in our hockey operations department who will handle these things while this matter is being investigated.” If it is indeed found that Bowman did nothing wrong, then he should be given his job back as quickly as it was taken away. Bowman was also named GM of USA’s 2022 men’s Olympic hockey team. He should be forced to temporarily step down from that post as well. How can the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Hockey allow someone to run their team who is under such a cloud of suspicion?
Had the Blackhawks done this, they would have been without two of the most key decision makers at a time of year when the on-ice future of the organization is being charted. But some things are more important than wins and losses and this is one of them. Just think of the poor kid who is about to get taken 11th overall by the Blackhawks in tonight’s draft. He’s entering an organization that is rife with chaos, where the biggest day of his hockey life is going to be overshadowed by a controversy that is not of his making. As long as Bowman and MacIsaac are part of the Blackhawks front office, and as long as there are so many questions still to be answered, it should and never will be about goals and assists, wins and losses, free agents and trades. It should be about this matter. We must continue to hold the feet of both the NHL and the Blackhawks to the fire.
And the NHL, in the absence of pledging support, should have done this for the Blackhawks if they were unwilling to do it themselves. It’s also incumbent for the league, not the Blackhawks, to hire an outside firm to do the investigation, with the full cooperation of everyone from the players on that 2009-10 team to the Blackhawks front office, and to pledge that the all of the results of the investigation will be made public.
As of right now, we don’t know what McDonough, Bowman and MacIsaac knew and when they knew it. As it stands now, we’re expected to believe that former coach Joel Quenneville, now coaching the Florida Panthers, knew nothing of this situation. Which means we’re also expected to believe that he lost a member of his coaching staff when Aldrich left the organization after the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 2010 and he neither ever bothered to ask management why nor was not told the truth. We’re also expected to believe that key members of the Blackhawks hockey operations department at the time – Montreal Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin and Winnipeg Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff – also knew nothing about what was going on until the story broke recently.
All of which might be, as difficult as it is to fathom, true. But we’re expected to take people at their words. That’s not good enough. Everyone at every level of this organization needs to be investigated by a body with the latitude to conduct an unfettered probe. Until then, everyone who was involved in the organization at that time, including all the players on that team, will carry a cloud of suspicion over them. That’s not fair to the ones who were truly innocent. And it certainly doesn’t do anything about bringing justice to the alleged victims.
It’s time for that to end. It’s also time for the Blackhawks and the NHL to do the right thing. Because nothing in this organization, on the ice or off, will mean anything until someone drills deep into this matter and shares the truth with everyone.
I respectfully disagree Mr. Campbell. This matter needs to be adjudicated and appropriate action taken based on the outcome. That's the way the system works, and should work.