The NHL Needs To Get It Right For Once

At the beginning of the week, I wanted to write about the Florida Panthers and how they looked like they were finally ready to take that leap we've been expecting them to take these last couple of years and not only consistently make the playoffs but start contending. Unfortunately, their coach has either been lying about what he knew about Brad Aldrich (which is the most likely scenario) or he was actually only told there was an incident and didn't care enough about the safety of his players to ask what happened, both are deplorable. But neither of these actions is bad enough for the NHL to do something about it and Joel Quenneville was behind the bench for Florida's game against Boston Wednesday night.

So I decided to pivot and wanted to talk about the Carolina Hurricanes and how surprised I am at how well they're doing even though they let Dougie Hamilton walk this summer and downgraded their goaltending. Then again, this is also an organization that once employed Bill Peters as their head coach and thought it would be a good idea to sign known "jerk" Tony DeAngelo this offseason.

Then I realized it wasn't just these teams that are the problem but the NHL as a whole. This is a league that keeps recycling the same coaches and management teams yet wonders why they have the same old problems that come up every year. The Chicago Blackhawks were fined $2 million dollars for covering up the fact that they knew they had a sexual predator on staff. The New Jersey Devils in 2010 were fined $3 million and 2 draft picks for finding a loophole in the salary cap. You tell me which was the more egregious violation?

I love the sport of hockey but there is a toxic culture within it that needs to be reckoned with. The "win at all costs" mentality whether that is "only good vibes in the locker room" even though there is a sexual predator in your organization, or the "take this and get back out there" where players are being pumped full of drugs and later in life have to deal with an Opioid addiction or intestinal issues due to the harm the long term use of those drugs can do to your body.

The best thing we can do as a hockey community right now is to try and get rid of these toxic environments and people. If you see something, say something. Let's move away from shrugging our shoulders and saying "that's just how it is in hockey" because if we keep doing that, there will be more weeks like this where we say to ourselves "how did we get here" when we know exactly how we got here.