The thing about Xs is, when you put them over a bunch of other letters, they start to resemble asterisks. And that’s a fitting fate for the 2010 Blackhawks now that it’s been proven that they covered up a sexual assault against one of their own players, Kyle Beach, in pursuit of the Stanley Cup. For the next 48 years, until the silver band containing the names of the 2010 Blackhawks is removed and placed permanently in the Hockey Hall of Fame to make room for future champions, there’ll be an ugly scar across that team’s crowning achievement, a reminder of just what that those Blackhawks so callously threw away — their dignity, their decency, and worst of all, their teammate — in the name of victory.
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Brad Aldrich, convicted sex offender and former Blackhawks video coach, had his name covered up with a series of Xs over the weekend, the league and the Hall of Fame quickly granting Rocky Wirtz’s formal request. The trauma caused by Aldrich to Kyle Beach and the other people he was allowed to prey on might never heal. The scar he left on the Stanley Cup shouldn’t, either.
Further to @TSNRyanRishaug report earlier today, here's how the 2009-10 #blackhawks panel on the Stanley Cup now looks after Brad Aldrich's name was XXXX XXXXXX'd out over the weekend. (photo courtesy @keeperofthecup) pic.twitter.com/G8c19moVeQ
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) November 3, 2021
The inevitable question that’s been raised throughout the hockey world is what about all those other names on there? What about John McDonough, the iron-fisted ruler of the Blackhawks who had the ultimate authority to decide Aldrich’s fate? What about Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac, the executives who went along with the plan? What about Joel Quenneville, the coach who, according to the Jenner & Block report, bristled at the idea of taking action against Aldrich for fear of disrupting team chemistry?
Do they get Xed-out, too? Do you also X-out their names for 2013 and 2015? Do you scratch out Quenneville under the 1996 Avalanche, for whom he was an assistant? Or is that one OK because it was long before 2010?
And then what about the players on that 2010 team? Some players say they knew about Aldrich’s alleged sexual assault of Beach. Some players say they didn’t know at all. Some players say they found out the next fall. Some players, such as Brent Sopel, say “everyone” knew. We all wish someone — anyone — had stood up and done the right thing in May 2010. But are players held to the same standards as executives when it comes to the fate of a video coach? And while Beach says he was tormented by homophobic bullying from teammates in future training camps — one of the many deeply infuriating parts of this deeply infuriating story — we don’t have any names attached to those allegations.
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I understand the inclination to wipe it all out, to blot out the 2010 Blackhawks from history, to not allow any of them the pride of having their names etched in silver forever on the game’s holy grail. There’s a visceral satisfaction to the thought.
But I don’t think that’s the right course of action. Aldrich, yeah, get his name off the Cup. But the 2010 Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and the 2010 Blackhawks committed an unforgivable sin. Both of these things are true. The key is to keep that victory in context, to forever tie their greatest achievement to their greatest failure, to never let the title stand on its own, to keep it in its proper context. And a series of asterisk-looking Xs over Aldrich’s name does that. No new fan will ever be able to see those Xs without wondering why they’re there. Then they’ll learn about McDonough, and Bowman and MacIsaac, and Quenneville, and about the doubt cast on all of Beach’s teammates.
We don’t learn — we don’t improve as a person, as a sport, as a society — by pretending the bad things never happened. We remember them. We teach them. And what is the Hockey Hall of Fame if not a museum? What is the Stanley Cup if not the ultimate documentation of hockey history?
The failure of the 2010 Blackhawks should be an inextricable part of their story forever. No matter what you do, for the next five decades, Aldrich’s name is still there under all those Xs, now the most conspicuous engraving under that team’s banner.
Because as the Blackhawks learned far too late, you can cover up what happened, but you can’t erase it.
Five observations from Wednesday’s happenings
1. Two things the Blackhawks could count on as of late — Marc-André Fleury and the power play — let them down in Wednesday night’s 4-3 loss to the 9-0-0 Carolina Hurricanes. A solid effort and two Alex DeBrincat goals gave the Blackhawks a 3-1 lead in the second period, the first time all season Carolina trailed by two goals. But an ill-advised Erik Gustafsson pinch (stop me if you’ve heard that one before) led to a Seth Jarvis breakaway goal to cut the lead to 3-2. Jesper Fast then scored 17 seconds into the third, and Fleury was beaten through the legs by an unscreened Martin Necas shot three minutes later, a goal Fleury simply has to have.
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“We keep shooting ourselves in the foot,” defenseman Seth Jones said. “Starting the third, we give up a goal the first shift. Then we give up another one. Going into the third period with a one-goal lead against Carolina, we have to be able to lock it down and make simple plays and not beat ourselves. That’s what you’re seeing happening these first 10 games, we’re beating ourselves.”
Alex DeBrincat put it more succinctly: “Gotta find a way to win that game.”
The Blackhawks had their opportunities to tie it back up, with three straight Carolina penalties (including a double-minor in the final five minutes), but the sixth-ranked power play came up empty against the fourth-ranked Hurricanes penalty kill, and looked disheveled in doing so. Jones felt they still got their chances with some goalmouth scrums, but credited Carolina’s aggressive PK unit for stymying the Blackhawks.
The loss denied the Blackhawks a desperately needed second straight to win to cement the progress of Monday’s rout of Ottawa.
“We have to keep momentum,” Ryan Carpenter said before the game. “You’ve got to earn that good feeling of what it feels like to win, and what that feels like the next day when you’re at practice, and you’re not sulking as much, there’s a little more energy in the locker room, a little more positivity. We know we have to earn that.”
2. It continues to be a foolish idea to sell low and trade Dylan Strome — who was playing at a team-leading 66.22-percent xGF and was generating nearly twice as many scoring chances per 60 minutes as Patrick Kane through his first three games before being stuck on a fourth line with two grinders who don’t fit his game at all — for a mid-round pick that likely will never pan out.
But it continues to be the stated policy of the Chicago Blackhawks that Strome is not one of the 12 most useful forwards on the roster. Which continues to baffle me. I get wanting some physical grinders in the lineup. But do you need Jujhar Khaira AND Mike Hardman AND MacKenzie Entwistle AND Ryan Carpenter AND Reese Johnson (who entered the game with a catastrophic 19.94 xGF percentage in five games) all ahead of Strome? (And Adam Gaudette, also scratched, for that matter.) For a team that’s fourth-worst in the league in scoring goals?
I feel like a broken record here, but it continues to be baffling.
A play in five acts:
Dylan Strome: *sits out a bunch of games*
Dylan Strome: *finally gets in, plays well, creates chances*
Dylan Strome: *gets demoted to fourth line with grinder types*
Dylan Strome: *doesn't play well in ill-fitting role*
Dylan Strome: *gets scratched*
— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) November 4, 2021
Reese Johnson, by the way, played 14 seconds in the second period, and 4:04 overall. And when the Blackhawks got three power plays in the third period of a one-goal game, Carpenter was manning the bumper spot for PP1. You simply can’t say there’s no spot for Strome in this lineup.
3. For the second straight game, the Blackhawks, who had sellouts of more than 20,000 for 535 consecutive games until Oct. 24, drew fewer than 17,000 fans, with an announced crowd of 16,449.
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“I don’t think we’re worried too much about that, we’re trying to win games,” DeBrincat said. “We obviously want them to show up, but we haven’t done ourselves any favors in that aspect. We’ve got to gain their trust back, win some games here and make it exciting for them.”
“It’s up to us to play well,” Jeremy Colliton said. “That’s what we can control. We appreciate if people do come and support (us). … We’re just trying to play as well as we can and string some good performances together and hopefully people appreciate that and want to come see us.”
4. Riley Stillman and Jujhar Khaira rejoined the lineup after being in COVID-19 protocol. Henrik Borgström was finally taken out of protocol Wednesday morning — he still hasn’t been activated; players often need a few practices to ramp their bodies back up after missing time — but that wasn’t the end of the Blackhawks’ COVID woes, as Tyler Johnson and Isaak Phillips were put into protocol.
“Everyone seems to deal with it differently, whether you have a strong reaction or none at all,” Jonathan Toews said. “It’s hard to say. It’s not black and white. It’s a huge gray area on the approach to this. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about the protocols and all the different regulations, everyone’s got an opinion on that. It’s frustrating, but I don’t really have any advice. I think (Patrick Kane) did pretty well with it. I don’t know how much he could do locked up in his house for 10 days, and then he comes back and scores three goals and an assist. We were joking that we all need a 10-day vacation (and) we’ll do the same thing, but it’s highly unlikely.”
On the bright side, Wyatt Kalynuk was with the team for morning skate on Wednesday as he works his way back from an ankle injury suffered in the preseason. And after another adventurous evening for Gustafsson, the Blackhawks could use him.
5. Like so many others affiliated with the 2010 Blackhawks, Toews’ once-sterling reputation has taken quite a hit, one that was exacerbated by his presumably well-meaning but tone-deaf praise of Bowman and MacIsaac in the wake of the Jenner & Block report.
Toews spoke to reporters Wednesday morning for the first time since those comments, and when I asked about Quenneville — who resigned from the Florida Panthers later that day — Toews took the opportunity to reframe his comments. It was a small step in the right direction, but a step nonetheless.
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“I haven’t talked to Joel yet, but you know how I feel about the relationships I’ve had with some of these people the last little while,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I realize my comments about the whole situation kind of took attention away from Kyle and his situation and what he actually went through and toward those relationships that I mentioned, whether it’s Stan, Al or Joel. Obviously, I have a long history with Joel, but that’s not really the point here.”
Toews hadn’t had a chance to see Beach’s TSN interview when he spoke last week in Carolina right after the game. After seeing the interview, Toews’ focus was more on Beach than on his relationships with the ousted Bowman and MacIsaac.
“It’s undeniable, a lot of emotions,” he said. “As I mentioned the first time I spoke on the subject, definitely my heart goes out to Kyle and what he went through, and how tough it must’ve been to be silent for so long where no one’s hearing you or understanding what you went through. I can’t change the past, I can’t undo what happened. I’d just like to know more and more what Kyle feels and what he wants and what he envisions for the future. For maybe someone like me in my position, what we can do to make a difference.”
And while we’re on the subject, you might have missed Wayne Simmonds’ comments Wednesday. I wanted to make sure as many people saw them as possible.
Wayne Simmonds on Kyle Beach and the coverup: pic.twitter.com/HQlVGhoHhK
— luke fox (@lukefoxjukebox) November 3, 2021
(Top photo of Seth Jarvis’ goal: Bill Smith / NHLI via Getty Images)
