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Patrick Johnston: After failing Kyle Beach and an unnamed teammate and then a teenager, does Stan Bowman truly understand duty of care?
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Published Jul 24, 2024 • 3 minute read
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The Edmonton Oilers have named Stan Bowman General Manager & Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations on July 24, 2024. He was introduced by CEO of Hockey Operations Jeff Jackson. Photo by Shaughn Butts /Postmedia
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If you’re a player on the Edmonton Oilers, you surely have one tough question for your new boss.
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How can you guarantee you’ll keep me safe? You didn’t keep that teenager safe, let alone Kyle Beach or his John Doe teammate, they would be wise to ask of Stan Bowman, the former Chicago Blackhawks general manager who was hired by the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday to be their new general manager.
Bowman resigned from the Blackhawks in October 2021, after an investigation by law firm Jenner and Block concluded Bowman and his management colleagues mishandled allegations that an assistant coach sexually assaulted Beach during the team’s Stanley Cup run in 2010.
Their inaction would lead to devastating future consequences.
Even though Brad Aldrich resigned shortly after the team won the cup in June 2010, he was allowed to participate in subsequent team celebrations, including having a day with the Stanley Cup. During the June celebrations, the Jenner and Block investigation reported Aldrich made unwanted sexual advances toward a Blackhawks intern.
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After leaving the Blackhawks — the team provided him a positive performance review, even after he was forced to resign — Aldrich continued to work in hockey jobs but eventually was convicted of sexual contact with a minor while volunteering as a high-school coach in Michigan in 2013.
After resigning, Bowman was suspended by the NHL indefinitely but his suspension was lifted earlier this month, with commissioner Gary Bettman indicating that Bowman, along with former Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville and former team executive Al MacIsaac, had all done a great deal of work to improve and inform themselves about their past failures and deserved to have a second chance.
“I should have done more,” Bowman told reporters in Edmonton on Wednesday of what happened in 2010.
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Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson reiterated that he believes Bowman has put in the work to understand his past failures.
“Stan has acknowledged and taken full responsibility for the inadequate response,” Jackson said. “But I also know that he’s spent a great deal of time in the 2½ years since then to educate himself, to try to learn. He’s done a lot of work with Sheldon Kennedy, who’s one of the foremost experts in the field of abuse, sexual and otherwise.”
That work is, obviously, important. Sheldon Kennedy’s Respect Group has a long track record for working with people to better recognize and prevent bullying, abuse, harassment and discrimination and Kennedy said this week that he believed that Bowman’s efforts have been deep enough to warrant his return to the NHL. Kennedy called Bowman’s efforts to acknowledge his mistakes, to learn about what he could have done differently, to do what he could to right his wronging of Beach, “sincere.”
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Beach settled with the Blackhawks in 2021 after filing a lawsuit against the team. Bowman reached out once to speak with Beach, but didn’t hear back. Kennedy encouraged him to try again, and the former player and Bowman spoke, beginning a process that ended up with Bowman meeting with Beach last year. Beach is now coaching the men’s hockey team at Trinity Western University, and Bowman met with the players.
And yet, there’s still the reality of the other young players who are in this story. There’s Beach’s teammate, still known only as John Doe, who filed his own lawsuit last fall.
Doe accuses the Blackhawks of “utter indifference and/or conscious disregard for the safety of its employees, including John Doe.”
That still sticks.
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And there’s the Michigan player, who has also sued the Blackhawks. Their story is intimately tied to Bowman’s historic choices.
And that fuels the base question above, which remains in all this. Asked Wednesday if he’d spoken to either of the other players in this story, including the young person in Michigan, Bowman dodged.
“Anyone negatively impacted, I feel for them and I certainly wish they don’t go through it,” he said, carefully.
You hope he’d answer his players more fully in private. Otherwise how can they trust him?
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/nhl/the-one-question-oilers-players-new-gm-stan-bowman