Major hockey scandals were some of Canada’s biggest stories a few years ago, but today, we are seeing the same issues being pushed aside.
This is according to Kristi Allain, a sociology professor at St. Thomas University, whose study specializes in men’s hockey culture.
“Hockey is pivotal to Canadian national identity, what happens in hockey is news … it stretches beyond sport and needs to be covered in a serious way by serious reporters,” she said.
“We need a critical approach about what’s going on in the game.”
Rick Westhead is an award-winning investigative journalist for TSN who has been taking on controversial issues in hockey over the course of his 20-year career.
He has been the leading force in reporting culture-related stories over the past few years.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Hockey Hall of Famer Kevin Lowe criticized Westhead’s reporting on hockey culture, calling it an “unfair portrayal of hockey” and a “mischaracterization” of hockey culture. Referring to his reporting as a “one-sided narrative” while essentially calling his work ‘bad news.’
Allain said she was “not surprised” by these comments.
“Reporters routinely tell me that they’re afraid to break these stories, that they know that the hockey establishment doesn’t like [these stories], putting their own jobs at risk,” she said. “This is not about producing bad news stories. This is about reporting what’s been going on in hockey.”
“Coaches, managers, people, hockey insiders and stakeholders need to be mindful that if we’re going to get any change within hockey culture at all, this disregard should be really concerning to us.”
In May 2021, former professional hockey player Kyle Beach filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Blackhawks for ignoring allegations that he and another player were sexually assaulted by the team’s video coach Brad Aldrich on the team’s way to a Stanley Cup in 2010.
This opened the door to a much larger story that included the Blackhawks’ refusal to file a police report on the situation and sending a positive reference letter for Aldrich to an unnamed high school in Michigan after becoming aware of Beach’s allegations, where Aldrich allegedly sexually assaulted a 16-year-old player.
Allain believes that issues such as these would be addressed “much earlier” if sports reporting was done differently.
“Good critical reporting that’s not embedded in the team, but reporting on the team and on the culture is so important to thinking about how hockey could be different and actually deepen our understanding of what hockey culture looks like,” said Allain.
While the Kyle Beach case was settled, John Doe v. the Chicago Blackhawks was opened for the other player involved in their 2010 playoff run.
Stan Bowman, who was the general manager of the Chicago Blackhawks from 2009 until his resignation in 2021, due to his lack of action in the Kyle Beach case.
He was hired by the Edmonton Oilers on July 24, 2024.
“My response was inadequate back in 2010, I didn’t handle things properly, I should have done more and that’s something I regret and it’s something that I’ve had a chance to reflect on and try to learn from,” said Bowman at his initial press conference with the Oilers.
On March 13, a story from The Athletic revealed that Bowman filed a motion to quash a subpoena for him to be deposed in the John Doe case.
According to Allain, this decision by Bowman was “aligned very nicely with the culture itself.”
“So much of it is good press, about getting back into the culture itself … denying, hiding and putting the team in front of the health of any individual player,” she said. “What he did didn’t break with hockey culture and we know that.”
In June 2022, the details of the alleged assault by five members of Canada’s 2018 U20 World Junior were released.
The report was of alleged sexual assault of a woman after a fundraiser in June 2018.
The case was initially closed without charges in 2019 before being reopened in 2022. It was later released that these five players were on NHL rosters, which they were all removed from shortly after.
This Hockey Canada scandal resulted in international scrutiny towards the organization, resulting in many sponsors withdrawing funding.
These players’ eight-week trials are set to begin on April 22, 2025. Allain expects that the trial will “generate more scrutiny and discussion” of hockey culture.
“These discussions are really important to changing the culture of hockey, we need to have them,” said Allain. “A lot of peoples views about hockey in Canada will be legitimized depending on the outcome of the trial.”
¨That’s really scary, we don’t know what will happen.¨
These are just two of the more popular stories, but reporters such as Westhead have been reporting on these kinds of issues for a “long time” according to Allain.
“We have a closed hockey system. We don’t talk about what’s happened or why it’s happened, this has been part of hockey as long as I’ve known the game,” she said.
Despite thinking that hockey culture has “a long way to go,” Allain said that there are some things that have happened outside of men’s elite level hockey in the past few years to give her “some hope.”
“I’ve seen that great outcry that said ‘This is not the hockey we want to be associated with,’” said Allain. “There are positive things that give me hope that we are capable of pushing hockey to make the real changes that it needs.”
“That can’t happen from the inside, that’s going to happen from the outside, because those insiders are not willing to make that real change.”
