In his remarks to the Board of Governors on Monday evening, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman laid out a bare bones framework for dealing with the recent spate of allegations from former players about the toxic culture surrounding hockey.
“The world is changing for the better,” Bettman said. “This is an opportunity, and a moment, for positive change and this evolution should be expedited – for the benefit of everyone associated with the game we love.”
In his statement, Bettman said many of the right things about the events of the past several weeks, but the plan he presented didn’t go nearly far enough in dealing with the deep, structural issues that confront hockey and the NHL.
As for next steps, the league promised severe discipline for “inappropriate conduct engaged in by club personnel,” as well as mandatory new sensitivity training sessions for all team coaches. They have also thrown around the idea of establishing a hotline to report abuse.
And yet, of all the initiatives Bettman announced, the first thing he mentioned was the NHL’s deep aversion to being caught unaware of such incidents, a clear indication at where the league’s real priority lies.
“We don’t like surprises – the Bill Peters situation was a complete surprise,” Bettman said in his remarks. “Going forward, our clubs are on notice that if they become aware of an incident of conduct involving NHL personnel on or off the ice that is clearly inappropriate, unlawful or demonstrably abusive … there will be zero tolerance for any failure to notify us and in the event of such failure, the club and individuals involved can expect severe discipline.”
Bettman made it clear that while he objects to the use of racial slurs in the Peters incident, it was also galling the team had not informed the NHL of the possible PR disaster that awaited. There’s no doubt that one of the many frustrating things over the past few weeks for the NHL has been that players, past and present, have simply taken their stories to social media, denying the league the opportunity to get in front of allegations.
Make no mistake, the NHL is — first and foremost — a corporation whose main goal is to protect its image and preserve its profit margin. Allegations of racial and physical abuse are not only morally wrong, but also damage the bottom line. It makes sense, from a corporate perspective, that the NHL seeks to manage the flow of information over future allegations in the hopes that the narrative can be controlled. It’s imperative that media, fans and players don’t let them.
Dealing with the cultural shift that’s happening requires transparency and trust, and, as our own Chris Korman pointed out on Twitter, how deeply can we trust an organization to be honest about allegations that would tarnish it? Like any other organization, the NHL needs to be held accountable and that can only truly happen from the outside.
Any significant change within hockey’s culture, all the way from the mites to the pros, isn’t going to happen with the establishment of a hotline or a mandatory training session for coaches. While discipline from the NHL is a good deterrent and motivation for teams to internally either clean house or take stock of their own history, it might actually enable cover-ups rather than accelerate real cultural change.
That said, the NHL was never going to carry the weight of fixing hockey’s toxic culture on its own. The problems are too far reaching for any one organization to put a few structural fixes in place, and the NHL has a clear conflict of interest when it comes to being candid about what happens behind closed doors. The burden then, falls on anyone who loves the sports or cares about its players–past, present and future–to do the work. That includes more oversight from media, fans taking the lead in demonstrating acceptable behavior and players being brave enough to speak up when lines are crossed.
The kind of change needed here requires a real commitment from everyone, not just the NHL.
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