one time john tavares checked me out at an airport

yeeeeup. like honestly (sorry to be buzzwordy but) radical compassion is part of the solution. it's just not helpful to behave as though the only abuse victims in the nhl are the ones we know concrete facts about. we can't act like the kyle beaches of the world have all come forward and told their story. we still don't know what mike babcock did to patrik laine, there's just a suspiciously patrik laine-shaped hole in all the media bout mike babcock's brief stint in columbus.

that said, we also don't know about all the patrick kanes and carter harts, because there's a machine in place specifically to obscure and obfuscate bad behaviour, and even to celebrate guys like that as having overcome some kind of adversity (where the adversity in question is "credible accusations of sexual assault"). which is frankly part of the same problem, because it contributes to the public image of the monolith.

There’s no easy answer, anon. You just have to understand that no category of person is a monolith, including professional athletes. And frankly you have to be a little careful about the way you emotionally invest.

Fully educating yourself about what these guys go through to even get where they are may be helpful; I find it’s hard to dismiss them all as universally evil when you’re aware of the culture that conditioned them from a shockingly young age. What I keep coming back to in discussions like this is that, yeah, some (or even a lot!) of the guys who make it to the NHL level are shitheads who thrive in the we breed lions environment—but just as many are victims of horrific abuse. And many are likely even both victim and perpetrator, because high control groups are like that. They make everyone participate so everyone is implicated so everyone feels the need to defend the group from outsiders who just can’t understand.

I’m not gonna lie, knowing jocks personally helps. It’s a lot easier to internalize the nuance when they’re right there and they’re people. It’s a lot easier when you’ve had the experience of a jock friend saying some dumb shit and you making a jerkoff motion and telling him off and years later hearing the words that’s a consent issue!! come out of his mouth unbidden. Professional athletes are literally human beings, subject to all the same psychological and cultural pressures as anyone else. The culture of the NHL just sucks shit.

When it comes to “loving sport and maintaining my morals,” you’re also just have to be comfortable with moral impurity, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to be okay with enjoying an imperfect thing, and maybe being part of the culture that pushes back on the worst of the sport’s impulses. That’s what’s special about Montreal, after all—the city, not the team. Montreal is why the Habs have their little consent education program, and their youth workshop partnership with GRIS, and their captain on French language TV with a prepared statement on the team accepting a hypothetical gay teammate. That’s not to say that Montreal is the only reason any of these guys are doing good things (Guhle comes up over and over as a guy who walked the walk with Luke Prokop), but outside pressure is productive, and we can only apply it if we’re engaged in the first place.