Hockey Sense Roundup: Reflection on a dark week for hockey; men's hockey power rankings; Lambert's falling draft stock

Plus: Prospect news and notes; College hockey news and notes

The past week has been the darkest period I can remember of being a hockey player, coach, writer and fan. The level of disappointment in leaders who failed Kyle Beach and those that continue to shy from accountability has been overwhelming at times.

Some of that disappointment has been replaced in part by inspiration. Beach’s courage in coming forward, putting a face, a name and words to these allegations that came to light through his lawsuit and were later confirmed in the Jenner & Block independent review of the Chicago Blackhawks, has been remarkable.

This scandal has shaken the NHL to its core, with the reverberations still being felt and the consequences not fully understood yet. There is more that will be coming. The possibility that Donald Fehr loses his job as leader of the NHLPA is real, pending the PA’s independent review of the matter. Rumblings of NHL owners being upset with commissioner Gary Bettman could yet create some movement at the top of the league. The U.S. Men’s Olympic Team is without a GM as Stan Bowman resigned, and its assistant GM, Bill Guerin, is currently under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport regarding his handling of sexual assault allegations by Erin Skalde, wife of former Wilkes-Barre/Scranton assistant coach Jarrod Skalde, against the team’s former head coach Clark Donatelli. Skalde’s lawyers recently announced pending litigation against the Pittsburgh Penguins, while the club released a statement expressing their feeling that the matter was addressed properly.

The Beach and Skalde allegations will not be the last we hear of incidents regarding sexual violence in hockey. The courage of those that speak out often inspire others to come forward. This may only be the beginning of a reckoning in the sport, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

We know that hockey is not the only sport this happens in. We know that society has a horrific problem with sexual assault and misconduct. But calling attention to that is irrelevant at this point. This is our sport, it’s happening here and it’s on all of us to find a way fix it. The onus falls largely on the shoulders of decision-makers and leadership, but I think we’ve learned a lot more about being an active bystander as opposed to a passive one and what we owe our fellow human beings when they’ve come forward. We can also demand better of the leading organizations in the sport to set policies and provide action plans, to empower individuals to do the right thing at the right time. We in the media can also be better at asking the tough questions and turning a more skeptical eye to those in power, taking the lead from Rick Westhead, whose dogged reporting on the Kyle Beach story moved it forward more aggressively even when the Blackhawks were pushing back especially hard.

There’s a lot more that has to be done in the sport as a whole and one place we can start is by shedding the insular culture that permeates the larger hockey culture. There is a silence that is inherent to hockey. Keep your pain to yourself, physical or otherwise. Don’t be a disruption. Don’t call attention to yourself. Keep it in the room. It starts there and bleeds into other elements that aim to stripping individuality and autonomy.

While team before self is noble on the ice, it cannot consume a person off the ice. Who they are away from the rink, what happens to them away from the rink may have an impact on their on-ice performance, but it’s also what makes them human. Keeping certain things quiet or behind closed doors does no one any good. It also indirectly closes doors to people that would otherwise like to be part of the game, feeling that there is no place for them. This latest incident also might make others feel that hockey is unsafe when it comes to matters such as what happened to Kyle Beach. There is work we can do to fix that.

We so often forget about athletes as human beings. They are complicated and they are often more fragile than their tough exterior suggests. They should be afforded the same protections any of us feel we are entitled to. Every club or organization has to fully understand and respect person before player. We’ve never had a greater wakeup call and cannot waste it. Hockey is a great sport, but we need to be better for the human beings who play it.

Men’s College Hockey Power Rankings