Kyle Beach's former teammate confirms entire story, claims “whole team knew what happened”

In case you missed the news yesterday, former Chicago Blackhawks first round pick Kyle Beach revealed on TSN that he is indeed "John Doe", the man who has alleged that he was assaulted by former Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich. Furthermore, Beach contends that “everybody in that locker room knew about it,” and that denials from players like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are lies. Beach specifically singled out former Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville, now of the Florida Panthers, as having intimate knowledge of the abuse and yet he chose to do nothing.

Now, a former teammate of Beach's has come forward to corroborate his story. Shawn Lalonde, a fellow Blackhawks draft pick, who was a member of the Blackhawks' AHL affiliate Rockford IceHogs along with Beach told Finnish language publication Ilta-Sanomat that he believes the "whole team knew what happened."

When asked by Ilta-Sanomat if he believes Beach when he says that everyone on the team knew about the abuse, here's what Lalonde had to say:

"I think that's true. Right now, players don’t really know what to say. They don’t want to get into trouble if they knew and did nothing about it. I saw an interview in which Chicago captain Jonathan Toews said he heard about it the following year. No one wants to take a stand so they don’t get in trouble. They see that many in the organization have been fired. Players are concerned about their own backs."

- Shawn Lalonde

Last night both Toews and Kane doubled down on their insistence that neither of them knew about the allegations until they came to light this past offseason.

"We wish we could have done something differently, myself included. My heart goes out to Kyle for what he dealt with. Wish I could have done something. It's not an excuse looking back, but the truth is a lot of us were focused on just playing hockey."

- Jonathan Toews

"I didn't know anything at the time. Even today as Kyle came out as John Doe, that was the first time I knew it was him."

"I knew Kyle pretty well from a couple different training camps. He seemed like a happy-go-lucky guy... I wish back then we could've done some different things or known some different things to helped him."

- Patrick Kane

Suffice it to say that both Toews and Kane, absolute icons in Chicago, aren't looking too good right about now. Here's hoping that the truth comes out and that all parties are held accountable, including any players that knew about the abuse and chose to look the other way.