For the record, I am not defending Quenneville's actions nor am I supporting him b/c his hire might make the Ducks a better team. All I am saying is the following: The NHL has reinstated him. Beach has forgiven him. Verbeek and the Samuelis have vetted him and I'm sure this topic came up so they must be comfortable with him. That seems enough to me to allow him back into the world of the NHL. Our entire legal system is built on dealing out justice and then rehabilitation and forgiveness. The Scarlet Letter is not how we deal out justice anymore. Quenneville deserves no more or less than that as well.
I have no problem with any of you who disagree. But I would ask how you can remain fans of the National Hockey League after you have drawn this line in the sand. The NHL has reinstated him. That action by itself should be enough to drive you to a different league or sport. And I would totally support your decision to leave. In fact, it seems totally hypocritical to me that you could make any other decision. Frankly, I'm surprised you still even want to be fans of the NHL. Why would you be after they took the steps of reinstating both Bowman and Quenneville? I don't get it.
There's a lot to unpack here. First of all and easiest, I'm not sure where you saw that Kyle Beach has forgiven Quenneville. It might well have been publicly stated but I haven't been able to find it anywhere. If you're referring to the fact that Beach settled with the Blackhawks, I can assure you that's no guarantee that he forgave anyone involved. Plaintiffs and defendants alike will settle all the time when morally they don't really want to. Most of the time it's to stop the accruing attorneys fees and costs that may not be recoverable even if they win. But in a situation like Beach's he could just as easily want to walk away from the media frenzy and the drawn out litigation process.
Second. Verbeek and the Samuelis vetting him and potentially being comfortable with the problem goes to the exact problem at issue here. Their vested interest is their belief that Coach Q can unlock success (financial and on ice product) better than other candidates under consideration and are considering him over the moral implications at work, which bleeds into number 3.
I don't know to what degree Quenneville atoned for what he did and to what degree he mindfully learned from his mistakes. Your allusions to the Scarlet Letter and how justice is meted out of all a matter of perspective. It's true that people deserve second chances and we have, on paper, a justice system that encourages rehabilitation. For me, I'd give Quenneville the benefit of the doubt and say he's learned from his wrongs and if so, he can and should exist in our society free of being ostracized. He can work other jobs, he doesn't have to be on any kind of registry. But as others have mentioned, this doesn't entitle him to the privilege of coaching an NHL team and taking on all that position represents. The coach is the man who, beyond just writing up x's and o's on a whiteboard, is more or less the steward of a group of young men. He dictates the locker room culture, the messaging of the identity of a team. There are clashes with those intangible aspects and incompatibilities all the time. But we're talking about potentially putting a man behind the bench who notoriously knew of wrong doing and did nothing to prevent future harms and actively facilitated the cover up of those crimes because taking any other action might disrupt a cup run. Even after the cup was secured he was active part of keeping it hushed up when, instead, he should have been referred to the authorities immediately which would have at least gotten Aldridge on a sexual predator registry sooner, which would have prevented him from being hired by a high school and sexually victimizing a high school kid. While not directly responsible, Quenneville is complicit in that unfortunate outcome coming to pass because of his inaction specifically targeted at preserving his team's reputation and the integrity of their cup win. They can atone all they want the group involved in the failure to to take action against Aldridge don't deserve the privilege of working in this league. The NHL board of Governors, Verbeek, and the Samuelis cannot be the arbiter of whether that's true or not when they maintain a bias in the form of "a high caliber coach returning to the NHL means more wins for a team which is good for that team's business"
And again as to the scarlet letter thing. The realities of the world of sexual assault, rape, molestation is that these crimes happen in the shadows through coercion on the exercise of power over others to prevent victims from coming forward. We don't hear about it as much because of efforts taken to keep these crimes in the dark. We've seen more of it revealed lately with victims more emboldened to come forward in spite of the risks that they might not be believed, or they might face public backlash, or they might face retribution from the offender, or they are being intimidated to not find forward, etc. Enough has come out to indicate there's a serious problem within the culture of the sport. The NHL clearing the members of that Blackhawks front office and coaching staff is bad enough on its own. If any team, not just ours, hires Quenneville it's doing f***ing nothing to deter other offenders and those who would cover up such crimes. It tells the world "yes covering up sexual assault is bad but as long as you take a forced leave of absence for x number of years, your privilege to work at the highest level of the sport can be restored whether you actually repented and atoned or not, just say you did". That, to me, does very little to bring the hammer down on a the cultural problem. People can be entitled to second chances in life and still have to contend with lasting consequences of their actions and failures to act. In this country, having a felony record of any kind can result in the surrender of a person's right to vote, to own a firearm, to serve on a jury, to receive social security, or be entitled to visitation in a child custody arrangement. In the case of sexual predators they can face long term consequences like being forced to stay away from school property. Yes Quenneville is not a convicted felon but the principles that severe consequences should remain intact to serve as a deterrent to future wrongs is no less relevant. Letting Quenneville having his coaching privileges restored just says "you can get away with covering up sex crime and failing to protect young men in your care which can scar them for life as long as you're prepared to serve time away from the sport. How long? Oh less than half a decade." I am not comfortable with my team perpetuating conditions that will allow victimization to continue.
And just as an aside, imagine you're a parent of a child playing high school football. It's discovered well after the fact that your child was molested by an assistant coach who in the years before your child finally came forward, it's discovered that the head coach, now the coach of a major college program, knew about the assistant's wrong doing. Say it's the same situation. Head coach is removed from coaching for two years but after two years of atoning and learning from his mistakes, he's now being interviewed for a head coaching job in the NFL. How would you feel as a parent of the victim? Or let's simplify it. How would you feel if we fired Aly Lozoff and replaced her with Jared Fogel? How you'd react is not the point. It's the fact that we can even ask these questions in consideration of this potential hiring that makes this whole thing so odious and reprehensible.
Finally as to you taking moral revulsion as a zero sum game the way you are, first this is a really bad faith way to frame your argument. "I'm not okay with what the man did but hockey executives are so I'm willing to accept it too and if you're not, your moral dissent should be comphrensive to all wrongdoing and immoral behavior in sports and entertainment or you should just shut the f*** up". That's what your post really translates to. And no. I'm not going to turn my back on this sport wholesale just because it's populated by people who aren't the class acts they present as. It's a very different thing when you're talking about our favorite team knowing Quenneville's history, knowing what he was complicit in, knowing the potential messaging hiring him sends, knowing the potential backlash that might invite and interviewing/possibly offering him the job anyway. It's the prioritization over financial and on ice success in hiring a decorated coach with-let's be frank-no guarantees he has what it takes to actually be so much better than the field that it warrants all the negatives associated with the hiring over the moral implications of having this man represent this team's values and identity. The intentional disregard that represents is reprehensible to me. Hockey is my biggest passion in life. For better or worse. And my fandom of this team, more than anything else, is the catalyst that fuels that passion.
I can only speak for myself but I was vocally critical when the Blackhawks got a slap on the wrist in the form of a 2 million dollar fine for the Aldridge situation, which-in effect-is little more than a decent fourth liner's salary for one season. I was vocally dismayed when I heard Kyle Beach settled his lawsuit as I wished he took it all the way to a jury to really take the Blackhawks to task for how they failed him and others. I was vocally repulsed by the possibility that Chicago might win the the Bedard lottery. And I was vocally opposed to the NHL clearing Bowman, Macissac, and Quenneville to return. Because these particular incidents of wrongdoing are especially reprehensible to me because the men in that Aldridge meeting knew wrongdoing had occurred, knew it could happen again, and did very little to address it because of the adverse impact it could have on their cup run. They collectively put winning at a game over the safety and wellbeing of young men. I do not want to see any of them return to the NHL. The Oilers have already f***ed that up and that has only added to how much I f***ing hate that organization and their fans. I don't want the team that fuels my passion for this sport to f***ing join them and I'm not going to let you pontificate to me that I need to take a moral stance against the entirety of the sport for all wrongs, known of unknown. That's my f***ing choice and you don't get to dictate those parameters with an immature demand for a zero sum game.
