To be fair, I'm not sure i'd call it hockey culture, so much as the culture of tribalism surrounding professional sports in general
No lets be honest here, if Panarin was a woman and the person assaulted was a man, the tables would be turned and it'd be jokes like calling the staffer a wimp or something else idiotic. The issue here is a lot of men still can't help themselves with being dipshits. It turns into shit like - She was asking for it, why did she put herself in that position, well of course it's going to happen if she went alone.
Those type of men are simply just too ignorant and smooth brained to understand that the issue isn't her, it's Panarin. It's always Panarin in this scenario. They're colleagues, she was on flights with the team, enough so where this came to light because she was caught giving some of her anxiety meds to another player, so she was in close proximity to those players, so it stands to reason that she was fine around them most of the time. Up until a absolute knob like Panarin gets a few Bud Light's in him and he figures let me just try some Harvey Weinstein shit because why not, to her it's probably like "Oh ok this whiny athlete got a few drinks, thinks this is funny, I don't find it funny, let me get my phone so I can get out of here" and she goes up. She should never feel like she is going to be assaulted. No one should.
What if it was a maid coming in because he called one to get some help in his room and then he pins her down?
What would be the rationale by them then? "Well that maid shouldn't have gone in there by herself obviously..."
Lol, that's the kind of rationale they have. The legal part of it is - The Rangers and the Player settled with her. Because both sides could see oh ok this is bad and we need to make sure she can't talk about it, but shit like this always comes to light some way or another. The human side of it is - One bloke decided he can act insanely inappropriate and cross the line with someone without consent. Absolutely none of that is her fault and it is 100% wrong by Panarin. The NHL loves to draw a hard line with certain players, Voynov had his incident and he was kicked out, Leivo or whatever his name was called someone's wife fat and out he went, but Panarin, it's always all about how good you are and how much of it can be written off as "well it was dealt with."
Let's never forget that the NHL literally claimed it did a thorough investigation of the Washington Steroid Scandal, then it was found out that the NHL did absolutely no investigation and still kept claiming it did and the law enforcement that would have handled it said no such investigation by the NHL happened and their own people confirmed it. Then the comical way the Hawks let a sexual predator just go and go and assault others and the NHL slapped a billionaire on the wrist with pocket change for a fine.
Accountability is almost non existent under that loser Gary Bettman.
Edit: By "those guys" I am not specifically calling anyone out, just calling out the types that still don't get that saying a woman should have gone with someone is literally the problem, the fact that she can't go and handle something on her own because of a bloke that might do something.
