Toews and Kane create absolute PR nightmare for Blackhawks
The franchise icons make fools of themselves in responding to Kyle Beach's allegations.
HockeyFeed
In case you missed it last night, Chicago Blackhawks superstars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane both met with the media following the team's OT loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. And while the players were asked the obvious post-game questions, the majority of their media availability consisted of filibustering when asked about the allegations of former Blackhawks draft pick Kyle Beach that the entire 2010 Blackhawks roster knew about the abused he suffered from then team video coach Brad Aldrich.
To date both Toews and Kane have maintained that they knew nothing about the abuse, despite Beach stating that “everybody in that locker room knew about it.” Fellow 2010 Blackhawks players Brent Sopel, Nick Boynton and Beach's AHL Rockford IceHogs teammate Shawn Lalonde have also come forward to corroborate Beach's story.
Earlier today Lalonde joined Sopel and Boynton in saying that "whole team knew what happened."
If indeed that's the case then Toews' and Kane's comments from last night do not look good and both men pose a giant PR nightmare for the team. A team that can't really afford much more bad press...
Here's what Toews and Kane had to say last night:
"Stan (Bowman) and Al (MacIsaac) ... they’re not directly complicit in the activities that happened. It’s not up to me to comment on whether they would like to deal with it differently or not. ... I have a lot of respect for them as people. They're good people."
"Do we wish they had been dealt with differently in some ways? Probably."
- Jonathan Toews
"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. I feel bad for him, if that stuff happened."
- Patrick Kane
Kane would go on to call Bowman "a great man who did a lot of things for me personally."
Probably not a good time to be throwing your support behind a man who aided and abetted a sexual predators, there Patty...
Frankly, Blackhawks beat reporter Mark Lazerus put things perfectly in his latest column for The Athletic, check it out:
