Look, this is not untrue, but when we're fans of hockey and we're talking on a hockey forum about alleged misbehavior by hockey players that was subsequently covered up by Hockey Canada, we're talking about a hockey problem.
I have zero issues with talking about problems in hockey however I DO have issues with people slamming hockey and only hockey and saying these problems are predominately if not exclusively hockey issues. This is unfair to hockey and to the NHL when the number of incidents DO NOT support those accusations.
It would be like you arguing that Tokyo is a very dangerous city and then when someone asks you for proof all you can do is give a handful of incidents that happened in that city as your evidence rather than bringing solid statistics and other facts to backup your argument and you know you can't because the numbers don't support your claim.
The same is happening here. WE KNOW that hockey has its share of issues, but that doesn't mean that the entire sport is messed up and is full of toxic and horrible people or that the problems are 'systemic' as some are implying here.
The "yeah well it happens in other sports" is no different than being confronted over alcoholism and going "well, I'm not the only alcoholic." Just because it's a societal problem doesn't mean it isn't also a you problem in that scenario.
The point is you need a basis of comparison before you can say whether or not your doing better or worse than others. Sure with something like alcohol its an exception because if you're drinking alot then it really doesn't matter how much others are drinking, but when it comes to you declaring your hockey team is the best in the league, how do you know that unless you're comparing your team's record in relation to all the other teams in the league?
The same goes for saying how good or bad your league or your sport is with dealing with various issues. If all you ever read about are issues related to hockey then you're going to believe that hockey has a ton of problems. If you read about the issues that various other sports have then you have more data to compare with to see if the issues that hockey faces are really as bad and/or as numerous as you believe they are. I don't know why people want to ignore all that data and simply say 'hockey is bad'.
And even though there is awful behavior in most monied, male-dominated lanes, hockey's manifestation of this problem has its own specific odor based on the culture and class the athletes are almost universally rooted in. Hockey's problem is the same toxic bullshit with even more expected impunity and even less perspective. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole and probably shouldn't, but "hockey culture" is a distinct thing unto itself, and this problem has its own context within it.
Every sport has its own distinct culture and I don't know why hockey culture is somehow magnitudes worse than football culture or basketball culture or baseball culture etc. especially when the numbers don't support such a claim.
