To be fair (which is hard to do, considering the topic); it’s not 4 separate scandals though, right? It’s one really big scandal, off of one terrible incident.
I honestly don’t know what it says about the state of youth hockey. There are obviously some serious problems. And at the highest levels.
However I am not sure I see it as flaws everywhere. And that it’s “everyone”. It’s a small percentage of these kids. Broad brush and all.
But man, it’s a brutal subsection/underbelly for youth hockey. And it need to be addressed (I’m sure football, basketball, baseball, and soccer youth groups have similar stories to hockey. But just not as sensational.
Lots of victims. And a lot of good kids too.
What's our time frame here, because I've seen a lot of references to the '03 team. When Hockey Canada basically has a slush fund for hush money it's not an encouraging sign that this is isolated and unexpected.
I was going to address the "everyone knew" about Kuzy thing but frankly the attitude around sexual misconduct can be similar: there's having a hunch that is later validated, there's knowing a little, there's knowing a lot you can't act on, and then there's having actionable information and doing nothing. Different members of the Blackhawks, for example, fall into these different categories, where most of the players might be more group 1 and 2 (with an occasional 3, maybe) while some of their front office was definitely somewhere between 3 and 4.
So some players might "know", some might know but not really be able to accomplish much with that information, a few probably knew enough to try to help but can only lead a horse to water... and virtually none of the players can take actionable decisions without basically voting him off the team survivor style as a distraction (and I wonder if the NHLPA wouldn't take issue with that). Sometimes what we "know" or "knew all along" is still just unconfirmed speculation that gets rewritten in the brain as "knowing" for longer than you knew.
So for Kuznetsov and the Caps, if it's really some kind of hushed/half-open secret there may not be too many players who knew enough in time to actually do anything about it, but it
suuuuuure does make me question his usage. At a certain point it kind of stops feeling like asking a guy with a lot of talent to play back into form and seems a lot more like asking a guy who was performing at his best
while on drugs to somehow find that level while hopefully not doing the drugs, but maybe doing the drugs? There's nothing in the CBA that guarantees you ice time, especially when you perform like shit, so if we're calling it an open secret why has coaching been willing (both now and in the past) to keep riding a lame horse? Doesn't that feel like telling your sober, alcoholic friend that you don't want them to drink but you miss all the fun you used to have together and how awesome they were to be around?
Athletes are
far from the only type of performer to develop a "need" for a drug to get stage ready, develop a nasty habit, and eventually become a shitshow nobody can watch anymore in the process anyway... sometimes you cancel the tour for the health of everyone involved and I kind of wonder why they kept pushing him out there, and if it helped or hurt.
