Racism, sexism, abuse, and violence are rampant far beyond the scope of sports. The NHL is a business, the Arizona Coyotes are a corporation. The only reason these kinds of entities would change anything about their product, including the personnel they hire, the background checks they employ, or the general standard of conduct they enforce is if not doing so would hurt their profit margins. The NHL this summer played on the night the NBA and MLB began their boycott. The next day, spurned by bad press, they followed suit.
I don't think the Coyotes did the right thing by drafting Miller. I don't think the Senators did the right thing signing Austin Watson. On the other hand, how many players that were just drafted have done something similar to Miller? What are the Coyotes willing to do to demand change and atonement from the player moving forward? And how can we know one way or another?
People put to much faith in corporate entities to be the harbinger of ethics across society. One alternative way of looking at all of this is that, had he not been drafted, would the story have reached so many people? Would it have been covered at all by media outlets like Sportsnet or The Athletic? Would we be demanding as much from the NHL as we now are, or would we happily presume that such problems aren't pervasive?
Miller, old enough to be drafted, needs to hold himself to account, as the victim's mother said, not to the NHL or even to we as fans, but to the boy he abused. The Coyotes drafting him may actually end up being the best means of getting that to happen. I'm not optimistic, but this league, and the culture it partakes in, is cut-throat. Wins = Dollars. And the bottom line is that any and every team in the league, in every league, aims for Dollars above anything else. So they'll keep drafting people like Miller. Next time, I'm sure, they'll be more proactive about either repressing the story or submitting their own redemptive narrative before it breaks.
