Hiring Oilers reminds us that hockey is about privilege, not accountability

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As humans, I believe most of us want there to be rewards and consequences for our actions.

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Rewards for making our world better: athletes win a championship, they are praised; Scientists make discoveries, they are praised; Teachers inspire children, they are praised.

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On the flip side, a player commits a foul, there is a penalty; a person harms another, they face punishment.

There can be second chances, but that doesn’t always mean just getting back what you had before. Some behavior should lead to a loss of privilege.

We want there to be a moral standard that underpins our lives.

Consider the negative culture the Edmonton Oilers have built with recent decisions: signing winger Alex Formenton who has a shameful history from Hockey Canada’s lawsuit and hiring a coach in Mike Babcock who couldn’t get a job for years because of his shameful history of bullying players under his charge.

Both work for a general manager in Stan Bowman, who had to beg and plead to return to the league after his own sordid history of turning a blind eye to the abuse of one of his young players, Kyle Beach, in Chicago.

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When I think about it, in a week when the Cornell 7 story renewed questions about what women fear and what we don’t teach our sons, I went to the University of Calgary’s Teresa Fowler. She is an adjunct professor in the school of education and has spoken and written about the Oilers’ draft decisions and what she believes they really mean.

“Alex Formenton is not the problem. Stan Bowman is the problem. Mike Babcock is the problem,” she wrote in a letter published by the Edmonton Journal last month. “A management group with terrible priorities, hiring people who have been suspended from the NHL and some from Hockey Canada is the problem. The NHL said that Alex’s behavior, ‘Did not meet the standard of moral integrity,’ and does not represent NHL values, and again, this institution is letting us down. That is also the problem.

It’s the culture where coaches still turn a blind eye to hazing, so by neglecting to tell teenage hockey players that bullying each other is OK. It’s about how we fail to inculcate healthy attitudes towards sex in our young men. That is what is wrong with her and what I think needs to be further discussed and understood.

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When I spoke with her, she admitted to a degree of exhaustion – that even after all the talk about consent and toxic culture in sports, we still see stories like the one from Cornell, where a civil case reopened a previously closed case in an incident of sexual assault.

In the Cornell case, a message went out in a group chat among fraternity members to join a room where a female student was complaining badly. There were 57 men in the chat. Seven are said to have participated in sexual aggression against the vulnerable woman.

The other 50 did nothing. Group chats where no one says “Hey, that’s wrong” or “we shouldn’t do that:” That’s terrible.

In both the Cornell and Hockey Canada cases, in which five Hockey Canada junior players including Formenton were found not guilty by a court but suspended by the NHL, questions remain about consent.

More simply, according to Fowler, is the question of vulnerability. In both cases, it is a young woman in what would otherwise be a fun, exciting environment for a young person, but suddenly in a vulnerable place. And no one seems to care.

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“As a young person who was surrounded by this scene, you’re really loved … and you’re very vulnerable,” she said.

“I think it’s about consent because consent has been weaponized, as we’ve seen. When you think about consent, you know the main argument with consent, especially towards females, is if they drink, they can’t consent. Well, it’s really the same thing with men. They drink too. So it throws that argument out.

“So again, it comes down to vulnerability and knowing that sexual violence isn’t about sex, it’s about power. And I think it’s also thinking about it through the lens of vulnerability. You just set yourself up.

In her view, the time has come for male athletes, in particular, to speak up when they hear conversations that do not acknowledge vulnerability. That it is up to men to have these conversations with each other. That the values ​​we should recognize as important in sports are the ones we can lean on to combat the threats that women feel deeply every day.

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“What does the spirit of teamwork mean in all these things?” she asked. “Does it mean that you keep everyone in a bubble and you don’t talk about what it means when you get a team text to ‘go for pizza,’ or does it mean that no, as a team, we’re not OK with this.

“They say sports is about teamwork and loyalty, but we weaponize loyalty, right? We weaponize these things, and so I think it’s just more clarifying when you ask the question, what does it mean to be loyal? What does it mean to be in a team?”

I already dread the day when I have to tell my daughters to watch out for hockey boys and frat boys. Why is it not up to their parents, coaches and leaders to teach them how to treat others properly? To give them a moral support that understands more than just what consent is, but what vulnerability is? To teach them to be brave and to explain to their peers when they come across immoral behavior, whether it is actively happening or just being discussed.

How is it that we’re in a world that doesn’t recognize that maybe the consequences for guys like Babcock, like Bowman, like Formenton, is that they don’t stay in their chosen jobs?

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People lose their jobs for all kinds of injustice and it is rare that they not only stay, but continue to thrive, in their chosen industry.

The answer to all three of these hockey guys should surely have been: “Sorry, you’re out, time to get a real job.”

And of course by avoiding this, they miss the real shame of peers whispering, “Oh, he used to be in the NHL but…”

All these guys failed the vulnerability test. As a society we are also falling. We can do better; we can teach boys better.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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