in my mind i’m gone to carolina ᥫ᭡.

a specific refrain i’ve seen in the last few days is that people rooting against vegas because of carter hart can’t in good faith root for carolina, because their organization chose to sign cal foote (even if he is on their AHL affiliate and not the NHL team, the organization did that). and i do think it’s worth pointing out that hockey culture sucks and these teams are not pure of heart — we shouldn’t allow one franchise to sign one of the hockey canada 5 and then never acknowledge it again. carolina isn’t an inherently better team just because the guy they got happens to be worse than the guy vegas got.

employing people of poor character isn’t something unique to one or two teams. nichushkin, quennville, bowman? mailloux, kane, desmith? it runs deep. morality olympics are a slippery slope and to allow oneself to argue that X player/signing isn’t as bad as Y player/signing is a dangerous precedent towards excusing other heinous actions, and is insulting to the victim of the perceived “lesser” injustice. look at every team in the NHL and you’re going to find some bad shit, so it’s bad faith to prop up some franchises as chaste.

that being said, the carter hart story is, IMO, one that very specifically embodies both the vile underbelly of hockey, and the willingness — and eagerness — to brush it aside.

i don’t think that carolina as a franchise deserves to be seen as moral and just, just like i don’t think any NHL team deserves that.

but i also don’t want to watch a player (who, despite the court decision is clearly guilty to me) rise to hero status as he leads his team to a stanley cup, therefore justifying the negative PR that came with his signing and potentially setting a precedent for the league to become that much more apathetic towards situations like this with talent that might belong on a team in a vacuum, but doesn’t deserve to be on a team in the real world. it has repercussions beyond what it says about vegas, and i don’t want to watch those play out any more than they already have.