The Steve Dangle Podcast - Rick Westhead Returns | October 29, 2021

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Rick Westhead joins the show to speak about his interview with Kyle Beach, where Kyle revealed himself to be John Doe in the Blackhawks sexual assault scandal. He also shares his thoughts on the Jenner & Block report, Donald Fehr, and the NHLPA, Stan Bowman, and so much more. This podcast recounts stories of sexual assault, and may be upsetting for some listeners. If you or someone you know is in need of support, resources can be found: https://endingviolencecanada.org/sexual-assault-centres-crisis-lines-and-support-services/ For our American listeners, a list of resources can be found here: https://www.rainn.org/national-resources-sexual-assault-survivors-and-their-loved-ones Originally aired: October 29, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/aqOfRFxtLdM Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: https://manscaped.com/ https://helixsleep.com/sdp https://betmgm.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode comes with a trigger warning for sexual assault survivors. If you share this, social media, text messages, WhatsApp, whatever it is, please include the trigger warning. You do not know what the next person who is going to see it has gone through. As we've seen, there is a culture of silence around these types of things. You just don't know, so why not put it out there? Trigger warning, sexual assault. Let's get into the interview with Rick Westhead. Why come forward now? You know, putting your name on out there, being on television, this is a big decision.

And I wonder what your thought process was leading up to this point and why you want to do this. It's been a, it's a big step for me in my process of recovery, as I process the events that happened, and as I truly deal with the underlying issues that I have from them. For me, I wanted to come forward and put my name on this. Partially, I'll be honest, it's already out there. The details were pretty accurate in the report, and it's been figured out. But more than that, I've been a survivor. i am a survivor and i know i'm not alone i know i'm not the only one male or female

and i buried this for 10 years 11 years and it's destroyed me from the inside out and i want everybody to know in the sports world and in the world that you're not alone that if these things happen to you you need to speak up because there is support systems like Sheldon Kennedy like the U.S. gymnastics team like the U.S.A. soccer there is support systems there is people that are with you and I hope that This entire process Can make a systematic change To make sure this never happens again

Because it not only Affected me as a young adult And now as a 31 year old man But it also affected kids Because it was not handled In the correct and proper way the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake we're honored today to bring on rick westhead again uh we had rick uh i think it's got to be

two three months ago now in the summer and rick welcome back to the show thank you so much for for coming on and um obviously the biggest story in hockey is the story that you have been working so hard on and uh other reporters like yourself um everything that's happened with you know we can now name kyle beach um and the chicago blackhawks and the nhlpa there's so much to get through but first off uh how are you doing it's uh it's one of those weeks where you're just living on adrenaline you know and uh you're working till 1 1 30 in the morning and your body's like, it's time to get up at two 30 or three. Wow. And yeah, so it's, it's been tough because, uh, you, you, the stakes are so high, you can't afford to get any of this wrong. Yeah.

You know, uh, Kyle has deserved it. Uh, John Doe to the former high school player and his family deserve the best of us. And, uh, you know, it's just, it's just one of those stories. You just know everyone is watching and some people are waiting for you to make a mistake and we'll seize on that and so you know i've been paranoid since about sunday afternoon on this but uh anyway i'm glad it's friday yeah yeah as the weekends matter in your world right can we uh as if there's anywhere to start well i guess number one uh you texted us this morning you're like don't worry i'll come on your podcast and i won't be in a barn this time so i thought that was very good um but do we go back to which day should we go back to should we go back to sunday of this week

or tuesday because tuesday i think it was the jenner and block report yeah that's right the jenner and block report came out on tuesday and uh yeah it was a you know tough day we my my boy was at SickKids and we were getting some scans and just a little bit on edge. And then all of a sudden we find out that, you know, this report's coming out and I was managing my expectations. It's not as if the NHL and the Blackhawks to this point had been a fount of transparency. And so, you know, when I got the Zoom link and started listening to this investigator, Reed Scharr, a former assistant U.S. attorney, talk a little bit about, you know, what his findings were. And his team had found the more he talked, the more I just couldn't believe what I was hearing, that they were putting it all out there.

This the context for this is important, guys. It wasn't that long ago that the Blackhawks were responding to the lawsuit by saying nothing here, nothing to see. We did our own investigation. There's no merit to this. They were calling Kyle Beach and John Doe, too, liars. And now here we were on Tuesday with this full laid out report. I was blown away. I'm still speechless about how transparent they were because it doesn't always happen this way, right? When teams fall under critical glare, I tried to point out a lot in the early days, the Dallas Mavericks, when they were accused of having a toxic culture, the team posted the same thing. They posted the complete report. But like I said, that hasn't always happened. It didn't happen with the Washington NFL team when they were investigated for, you know, what happened there with cheerleaders and sexual harassment.

So, you know, who knew what was going to happen? And I'm grateful to Char. maybe that was one of the terms when he took it on was i'll only do this if you make it public let's hope so well and it you know i think at that point too uh even as a as a you know from the law perspective uh it would it would be a blight on their firm if if they didn't come out with all of those that all that information right they'd look like they were in cahoots with with the blackhawks it's not good for them which is what some people suspected from the beginning right and and and obviously rick you know from what we've seen uh the truth seems to be a pretty

hard thing to tackle when it comes to the nhl and its institutions uh and and so you know we got to remind everybody that there was an investigation done blackhawks did it 10 years 10 years ago plus and said kyle beach was a liar and now you know obviously uh the the the report comes out and rick your reaction to that is like as a reporter who has been on this story for this long do you feel any sense of accomplishment like what what goes through your mind at that point it was all overwhelming um i didn't actually feel a sense of accomplishment at all i felt like um don't screw this up you know 109 pages of very dense legal information to work its way to work your way through uh so it it was it was sobering um you know the the responsibility of getting all

that right and it's you know at the same time i'll confess i felt a little bit anxious because i thought well i've been the only one on this story for so long and now i'm seeing all the competitors going my competitors going through the report and tweeting out parts of it and rushing to be first with the news of it um you know it was really welcome to the party and uh and there was a moment where i thought oh well maybe i should start being more aggressive in posting and then i tried to force myself i don't know if i did this well enough but just to pull back you know and remind myself it doesn't matter if you're first it matters if you're right and uh i think that's sort of a lesson that gets lost a little bit and i fail to live up to that

sometimes but on this the stakes were too high to get any to get any of it wrong can you walk us through the 24 hours after that uh because the surprise for all of us um and you know we've become friends since the since we talked to you for the first time uh and that sort of thing but you know at that point obviously you must have been inundated i sent you a message didn't expect to hear back or anything but um but obviously in that 24-hour period there must have been for kyle a i don't know if it happened in that 24-hour period or if he thought about being being public about this i wanted to know behind the scenes if that decision was made after the report and then at that point you're going into tsn and you're recording this interview

after that that press conference which at the time i thought this is the most unbelievable piece of i've never seen anything like this and then the next day at six o'clock my girlfriend and i are sitting in the kitchen watching on my iphone uh you interview kyle beach and and not a word was said we didn't change we didn't do anything um so can you walk us through the 24 hours after the report happened to you know the interview and and the interview itself okay um so i'm you know filing for sports center for the, the, the findings of the report. And, and I hadn't at that point on Tuesday, I've never talked to Kyle before in the summer. If you remember, I did a story for TSN interviewing him,

but the interview was via email and through his attorney. So I've always known who he is. I've known that John Doe one was Kyle beach, but obviously, as I've said before, we have a policy at TSN. And we did not name survivors of abuse without their permission. And I didn't have it till just recently. So, you know, I'd done a story in the summer. And after the report finding, after the sports center taping, I've talked with his attorney,

Susan Loggins, quite a bit about whether it'd be cathartic for him to come public and tell to tell people his story because you know one of the things i remember luke prokop comes out and there's an outpouring a wave of of support thank goodness for him from all corners of the hockey world players teams you know agents networks everyone media everyone is in his corner how many people up until wednesday have been in kyle's corner have you guys seen one active nhl players say i support john doe no no you know and i went through that roster and i tried to get all all of those guys to talk including the players in rockford so you know a lot of players no one talked they circled the wagons culture of silence so how alone must he have felt not just

over the last 11 years but even this summer when his court case was working its way through the system. And I said to Susan, his lawyer on Tuesday, I think this is the moment. I think you should go to Kyle and say, do you want to do the interview? And so she talked to him and Kyle talked to his mom, who's in British Columbia, about this. And then they went back and talked to him again, because there's no take backs on this. Once your name is out there, it's out there forever and the last thing that he messaged his attorney on tuesday night was a very brief text message when she said to him are you sure it's okay if you want to pull out you have second thoughts and his message back to his attorney on tuesday night was i'm kyle beach i'm a survivor

i'm going to make a change and and so then you know he and i talked wednesday tuesday night very briefly and uh arranged to do this wednesday morning and uh i didn't sleep then and so wednesday i get to work and you know normally in our business you do a pre-interview with somebody to go over the scope of what you're going to talk about and just just to make things smoother and in this case I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to do this raw so that I could let him go where he wanted to go. And I would be respectful of him taking pauses. If he needed time to get through an answer, I didn't want to be charging on to the next question. Oh, what happened next? I wanted to

give him his moment, which he's deserved for 11 years. And so, you know, we do the interview and i'm shaky and i i'm trying just to focus on on making sure i don't screw it up and i mean we made it through he was amazing he is amazing kyle where do you go from here you know you've now talked publicly about this do you have any sense for how and you talked about how this will affect you for the rest of your life how do you take something so horrible and try to find something positive in that whether it's serving you know the public or reaching out to other abuse survivors have you thought about where you go from here to be honest i haven't had the chance this is all so fresh but the one thing that i want to make sure that comes from this

is change i want to make sure in any way possible that this does not happen to somebody else because it will happen again I will not be the only one whether it's in hockey soccer any sport any business any company there needs to be a system in place that it gets dealt with and that it's somebody making the decision to deal with it that has no skin in the game because if this would have been reported to somebody other than John McDonough or Joel Quenville or Stan Bowman that didn't have skin in the game of winning a Stanley Cup, it would have been dealt with and it would have protected all of the survivors that came after me.

So I would love to be able to help. I would love to be able to advocate. it. I would love to be able to support survivors in coming out and coming forward. I'd love to be there in any way possible. And I would love to be a part of a group that really comes up and designs a system to make sure that there is a safe place in the sports world and that there is a safe place that every child or adult male or female can go if they're in trouble or if they feel uncomfortable where they won't be judged and they won't have to go through what i did was one of the most unbelievably emotional watches i think any of us have ever seen

and you know the outpouring of support afterwards i think rick i think you nailed it it was the moment it was the time um and you know kyle beach blew everybody away it was unbelievable the strength that it took the openness um and you know it's what's been interesting since is you know he sent out a message on his social media um and one of the things that stuck out to me and obviously he thanked everybody for their support thanked his family for the support and everything but rick he he talked about how the blackhawks are still trying to to destroy his case in court And there was a piece of the Wurtz-Schar press conference that stuck out to me in about minute 16, which was the Wurtz family, you know, Danny and Rocky both say, I think it's Danny Wurtz that says, you know, we still believe that we have a strong legal case here, but we've instructed our lawyers to go and settle this for John Doe 1, John Doe 2, and I believe somebody else. And so I think a lot of people want to know where what what that meant because for Kyle Beach, because he said that the the Blackhawks are still trying to destroy him in court.

What we've heard from the Blackhawks is they're trying to settle this. Do you have any idea about where this stands? And, you know, because this is about restitution. This is about the only way to make this good, that it's never going to make him whole again. but the only way to do that is through money. Are the Blackhawks really going to pursue this in court? Have they misled us? Where does that stand? So for people who haven't been following the case very closely, I reported recently that the lawyers for Kyle Beach went to court and asked for the right to immediately take the deposition of Jim Gary. Gary, for people who've been watching,

is the Blackhawks at the time, mental skills coach and counselor. And the plaintiffs said in their court motion that they needed to take his deposition. He had critical information to share and circumstances had changed so that they needed that deposition right now, immediately. What we came to understand in the report that was issued on Tuesday is that Jim Gary, in his role as the official Chicago Blackhawks mental skills coach, was routinely sending pornography to players in an attempt to build up a closer bond with them in the context of kyle beach's sexual assault he may have some very interesting information to offer the information that he gave in the report can't be introduced in court necessarily because those documents that document the report itself

is not uh you know includes sworn testimony so the blackhawks hours after danny wirtz and rocky where it's go on this broadcast and say, we're very sorry, and we're going to commit to having our legal team try to reach a settlement with Kyle. The very day, the team files a motion trying to block that immediate deposition. Why? Why don't they want Jim Geary deposed right now? We don't know exactly. But I guess for me, it raises a question. If you're committed to doing the right thing for Kyle and you're committed to a search for the truth, why would you do this in the first place? The Blackhawks said we had to file it on that day because we were meeting a briefing schedule deadline. You miss it and you don't file, who cares? Give the plaintiffs that

one. Why not take the deposition of Jim Gary right now and get it on the record if the circumstances have changed so it just it leaves me wondering like why would the blackhawks be saying they're committed to settlement and then blocking something like that which is just trying to get someone on the record so to confirm a timeline the blackhawks uh delaying jim gary's deposition that decision came down after their press conference with jenner and block that's right they they filed the motion in court hours after that report was released asking the court to deny that request to get that deposition done immediately what is the motivation for the words family to fight this and to prove like i don't know what they're trying to prove like what

what is their end goal here to diminish cow beach what do they gain from that i can we get danny works to join the podcast right now not likely rick i don't think so you think their mentality at at the end of all this they they saw the exact same things that we saw would be to do right by kyle like they said in their words but their actions clearly don't reflect that so i i just don't know what their end goal is you know this is not the first time as you point this out like there's sheldon kennedy likes to say this is a systemic problem in hockey uh akim alu who says his career was railroaded by racism within the blackhawks organization the same year promised an

investigation two years ago he's still sitting and waiting for the results of that why tell me based on that why should anyone have any faith in the process and i know that sounds aggressive i get it but honest question if you're a key value or anyone who knows him why would you take this seriously when when there's a pledge of transparency follow through on what you say man wow i'm trying to think of this has been the longest week ever um and i'm sure for you even more so so i'm trying to think of where to go here um i know kyle beach has an interview with gary betman coming one with donald fear coming betman had an interview with joel quinville that

has resulted in joel quinville's resignation as head coach of the florida panthers and he had an interview with kevin shovel day off who it looks like will face no further punishment um did he face punishment by the way can he no did chevy face any punishment no no it looks like so it's funny because he said no further punishment you weren't you weren't punished well okay so no punishment yeah flatly yeah um do you or do you have any reaction to any of that and do you know if kyle has reaction to any of that not yet um you what do you think gary batman and don fear want to say to kyle what's the point of this meeting right now i'd love to know i would love to know that and both it's important to know that both of them initiated with kyle they requested

uh these meetings that's a great question rick what do you think i would love to know i don't have an opinion i i just think that uh yeah but what if you did you know the nhl if for people who want to see it the nhl time and again has shown its true colors about how it feels about employees uh and active and retired players you know this is not a new song they're singing um the as a here's another example the when you retire from the nhl you have a limited period of time to buy in and into their retirement benefits package you know how much that costs between you have to have played 160 games in the league so let's say you played 180 games career i don't know how much money that's uh you know you made in your career but those health care premiums

are between a thousand dollars and three thousand dollars every month so you're 30 years old you finish your career how many guys living in the states can afford to pay two to three thousand bucks a month for the rest of their life for health insurance and on one hand you could say well, that's fair. This guy, these guys didn't play a lot of games that should they be entitled to lifetime coverage? Maybe not. But if that's your position, then why are you selling this as a family? Why every time, you know, the NHL has a chance to post on social about a milestone for a player or a member of a player who's died, the NHL family would like to honor this person or that person just call it what it is it's a business nhl dot you know limited or corporation or

whatever it's a for-profit business and that's fine right i work for bell bell's not family it's a business so i think you know one of the i don't know if i'm getting off on a tangent here sorry but go for one of the issues i one of the issues i think that people maybe might want to think about a little bit more is the language that the league uses to sell itself to the public and whether its actions are backed up by that language so one of the things too here uh that i that you know there's so much that came out of the kyle beach interview rick but one of the things is you know what did you you asked the question kyle what would you say um to the uh uh young man now but teenager at the time who was raped by uh brad aldrich

i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't do more when i could to make sure it didn't happen to him to protect him but i also want to say thank you to him because when i decided after a teammate asked me about it when i was playing overseas and i decided to google brad aldrich's name that's when i found out about the michigan individual the michigan team and because of what happened to him it gave me the power and the sense of urgency to take action to make sure it wouldn't happen to anybody else. So I'm sorry, and I thank you.

And I hope at some point down the road, if he's open to it, I would love to meet him. Because unfortunately, we share something in common that's going to be a part of us for the rest of our lives. i'll just take a sec here sorry kyle um um you know what would you say to him now it's the most gut-wrenching part of the entire thing it was so hard to watch and you know he said kyle said i'd like to speak to him i'd like to sit down with him i'd like to you know have dinner with him and you know one of the things that i think has gotten lost in all this is we've

all talked about kyle beach but there is a there was a a boy who is now a man and a family changed forever by what brad aldridge did after his time with the blackhawks when he was a coach in michigan what is the update on that story i wish i could have a more pointed question but where do we stand there i'm glad we're talking about him because you know we need to remember when we talk about believe survivors, we need to believe him. It's easy to forget about him because he's John Doe too. In the same way that many people didn't pay attention to this story about Kyle Beach when he was John Doe one, but his life has forever been affected by this. And we need to collectively, even if we don't know who he is, send him this message that, you know,

if, and when you do want to share your story, or even if you don't, we believe you, it was wrong. you deserve accountability you deserve justice you know i know brad aldrich went to jail for all of nine months and did 60 months of probation this this this young man deserves real justice he deserves healing he deserves you know the nhl we know wants to sit down with kyle beach tomorrow and talk or on saturday and talk a little bit about what's happened i don't know exactly what they're going to say um but why isn't the nhl trying to get a message to john doe too surely the nhl could say what you know we need to make sure that that young guy is looked after that he has the care the medical care that he needs for as long as it takes because he may

not have played in the nhl he was a 16 year old hockey player when he was abused by brad aldrich doesn't he deserve that after what's happened after an nhl team did what they did isn't the right thing for the league to say we take responsibility we have every bill you could ever need need paid to get yourself in a better space better space who disagrees with that nobody nobody my question is you know i don't know if this is inappropriate to ask but is it you know has there been contact between the camps is there healing here um kyle seemed so earnest in his answer you know if there's so much of this is so dark though the one bright spot would be those two being able to at least have a communication i don't know if you're able

to talk about it rick uh do you know what i'm saying i can tell you i've been in communication with the young man's mother and by text message and he's having a really hard time and he needs to feel the love from people and not be forgotten and uh you know i think there'll be a time for him to meet kyle i don't think it's that time yet i think this is all still raw for both of them i'm no expert i'm a reporter right i have no training on any of this but maybe in the same way that i just had a feeling that this was the right moment to do the interview with kyle maybe the people who are kyle's support network and this boy's support network maybe they'll come to that conclusion down the road you know this is the right moment you know let's have some some

hope that that happens there's so much to go through here obviously we saw what happened with joel quinville who said you know i didn't know what i know about this until the allegations were you know were filed of course we know now that that wasn't the case uh stan bowman's uh piece where he doesn't mention kyle beach at all doesn't apologize to kyle beach at all passes the buck to john mcdonough we've heard nothing from john mcdonough i could ask you for your reaction all that stuff but i i fairly sure i know what that would be the one thing for this and if it's not outright disgust i don't know like i don't think anybody i don't think there's any other way to feel in the way those people have responded but the the thing that has blown me away in all of

this that just mind-boggling is the connection with donald fear and the inaction by the nhlpa now you've just released some more information on this but i was hoping you could talk about for people that may have missed this because there's been such an explosion of information it's hard for the average person to possibly go through every detail so kyle beach never played an actual nhl game in the regular season therefore was not technically a member of the nhlpa although when the event when this incident occurred he was on a roster he was on the chicago blackhawks roster um what what happened then when it was reported to the nhlpa and donald fear is under enormous fire and pressure right now rightly so can you explain to somebody that that doesn't understand

what's going on here the basis of this and and then of course the new things that have come to light today well the the nhlpa uh takes as its responsibility uh the care of players this is what the nhlpa their mission is and so what kyle told me is that in late 2010 early 2011 right around christmas he came to understand that brad aldrich who had been cut loose by the blackhawks six months earlier, was working with the U.S. national team. It turns out the women's under-19 team. They played the first week of January 2011 in a tournament in Stockholm. And Kyle was very upset by this.

He wanted to try to make sure that this sexual predator was not getting access to other teenagers. So he asked his agent at the time to contact the NHLPA and to ask them to get a message to USA Hockey. You've got a sexual predator on your staff. So the agent talked to Don Feer. And Don says he doesn't remember this conversation, by the way. And he says Don told him, I've got contacts at USA Hockey. i'll get them the message kyle was then referred by the nhlpa to a psychologist in toronto named dr brian shaw who's one of the program administrators with the player assistance

program and kyle told him everything he told him about what brad aldridge had done to him and he asked dr shaw to commit to getting that same warning to usa hockey dr shaw agreed kyle says that never happened uh you know don fear and uh dr shaw did not send that message to usa hockey and we know that three years later and in 2013 brad aldridge sexually assaulted a 16 year old boy in michigan and as kyle said to me if the pa people had done the right thing that boy would not have been raped so one

thing that has been brought up on this show several times is Brad Aldridge was with the 2010 Olympic team and the one thing I always clarify is yes but that was before this incident with Kyle Beach the following year

though you're saying he was still with USA Hockey which I don't think has i don't think i've heard it mentioned throughout the months that this story has been going on not once i haven't heard it do you know if stan bowman was involved with usa hockey at the time i don't know if stan bowman was or not in late 2010 because that would be unforgivable if he was good question i'll look it up i guess we'll look it up um i think wow i think too you know

does it seem to you rick and again we're not i'm you're you're a facts-based person we're not asking for rick's hot take on this but but you know from what you have seen from the nhlpa in the past and previous organizations i'm sorry not organizations incidents uh and this incident what is your what's your um best guess or fact fact-based guess on what happened here was it that the nhlpa didn't want anything to do with this did it get lost in the shuffle did they say well he's not a member so you know it's not our problem like i think everybody rightly wants to know what happened here and how could this have happened and is that even clear yet don fear was hired in mid-december 2010 after a lot of upheaval at the union and he says he you

know he's not denying that the conversation took place but he says he doesn't remember it without passing judgment on don fear i personally could not imagine being in a situation where a hockey player told me that he was sexually abused by his coach and that i would ever forget that i don't know what happened um and then sorry just real quick it doesn't look like stan bowman was involved okay with the program at the time good to know um then then rick i mean again there's a lot to talk about here but with stan bowman stepping down uh at both you know the blackhawks and usa hockey the question sort of becomes uh in at least as usa hockey is concerned who takes over in the

interim and one of the other stories that you're working on right now has to do with bill garren who is the agm assistant gm at usa hockey and uh although there had been some disputed reports uh bill garren if i'm not mistaken is under investigation for another sexual assault cover-up is that true uh the u.s center for safe sports has opened an investigation into him yes okay and sorry go ahead go ahead so that case is involving a coach named jared scaldi who was working on the american hockey league team uh affiliate of the pittsburgh penguins and the head coach there it was clark denatelli and what jared says happened uh during one road trip he went out for dinner with his wife aaron and clark donatelli and that on the way back to

the hotel uh first jared left to get a car a car or something and so clark was alone briefly with his with scaldi's wife aaron and according to jared and aaron donatelli sexually assaulted her touched her inappropriately and then in the car jared sat in the front seat and donatelli and aaron sat in the back seat and the scaldies say that he assaulted her again and then finally later when jared took this to bill garren and talked to him about it jared says that the response from um bill garren was to keep the reason for donatelli's firing quiet and uh and jared also says that the team punished him for reporting the assault and later fired him from his position under the guise of pandemic related cutbacks and uh and yet you know the hockey news is now

reporting that bill garen's about to be named the general manager of the u.s olympic team so i i was very confused because we we talked about bill garen at length on wednesday and then that story broke um that supposedly he's been cleared what does being cleared involve and how clear is clear i again we'd have to talk to the hockey news reporter i think they're relying on a statement from bill daly saying we expect him to be cleared i don't know where bill finds that confidence um the safe sport center hasn't interviewed aaron scaldi yet so how can an investigation be done if they haven't interviewed the complainant yet right there's also been no announcement from usa hockey that garen is going to be the new gm so nothing's been done yet right

yeah it would be assumption to just make the report that he's the new gm when all of this It's still pending. Well, it's not as though USA or the U.S. Olympic Committee has a great history with that, as we've seen with the gymnastics program. So and, you know, frankly, I think is it John Van Biesbroek that's making that that that call? I don't know. So, you know, there's there's some issues there. Two in five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

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rick you know uh i think when we look at these these stories the the problem you know first off it's explosive but then the second part is as i said before there is so much information for the average person person to sift through we're grateful for the like you have an article coming out every 30 minutes it's like it's it you know this is our job and and we're trying to keep up with you on this so this is prodigious what you're putting out but you know for us uh consuming this and and these are the things that i think a lot of people want to walk away from this going what do i need to do and what do i need to know so i'll start with what do people need to know about this situation obviously we've covered garen and i'm trying to i'm trying to get through all

these the major hit points here you know we could sit and and and get angry about all the statements that quinville and bowman and all those guys made but i i don't think that would do our time with you rick which is is valuable justice what do you want the average nhl fan to walk away from this with if there's anything at all is there a message here not a message but a a lesson to be learned about this organization uh and these in this group of 32 teams and its governing body that you think people need to know as it pertains to assault as it pertains to the treatment of human beings um uh and and and and you know the the particulars i guess about and i'm rambling here the particulars i guess about these stories what is it that are the key points that you think people

really need to know and what their key takeaways need to be at this point i don't know how to answer that long rambling question sorry right i'm sorry i got lost i got lost but uh but i'll tell rick i'm very happy that you can still laugh oh my god listen i i wondered i wondered through the summer if anybody was even paying attention some days um you know i reached out to all the corporate sponsors of the blackhawks crickets you know companies like cibc and anheuser-busch companies that i'm sure have commercials and websites that declare how they you know foster a culture of inclusiveness and support for everyone again deeds versus words the florida panthers have joel quenville

who lied about what he knew behind the bench you know um who asked any questions there of their sponsors or of the team i i don't know i've there are days that i find it hard to uh to kind of understand why people so so many people don't seem to want to engage on something like this that's so important but then i try to remind myself well life's busy and it moves fast and the news cycles click click click and we're on to the next thing so maybe it's just people aren't noticing it or uh they're missing it because you know we're all busy we're navigating through the pandemic and and truthfully like i get that sports is an escape for so many people and and maybe part of the truth is it's just too hard to wrap your head around how you go to work you know and you

know worried about your livelihood and feeding your family is what you really want to do when you get home from work to navigate through stories about the black hawks sex abuse scandal so you know i i'm sympathetic to all to to all of it i know it's important and i know that i have to do it because i've got a duty to the people that i've told i'll report their stories to do the best job i can but as far as the public i hope they listen and watch but i sort of have a commitment to do it either way um one of the things that has come out is 30 i believe it was 149 or 139 interviews were conducted 37 people refused to participate in the jenner and block investigation um i believe ryan rashog uh reported that duncan keith now the edmonton

oilers is one of them do you know any other of the other 36 names and what their motives were for not participating no i don't i don't um wouldn't you love to see when people you know when joel quenville's in a media conference and he says right off the top you know i don't want to talk about this no comment wouldn't it be great to see some more media members say that's unacceptable why are you coaching tonight yeah a little bit a little bit of pushback yeah in the room is it is it a i wonder if it's a fear of loss of access i don't know you know it's they can't strip every in florida they can't strip everyone's media credentials can they no they can't but are they well yeah they're lucky to have them there on some i mean

the way the panthers had been run up until a couple years ago laws in florida are weird i don't know but rick you know i think i think to that point too you know duncan keith got on television and said he wasn't spoken to about the about the uh he said i was not interviewed he didn't say i denied the request to be interviewed which is the actual truth and then you have jonathan tase coming out and talking about what great guys john mcdonough and stan bowman were and you have paul maurice uh saying whatever the hell he said and that was word salad word salad but bad word salad it it seems that even in this moment and the and the the fans of these teams want want the nhl to do the right thing it seems like they just cannot bring themselves to do it

do you understand or do you do you have a sense of why players are so afraid you you mentioned it at the beginning of the interview nobody came out and said i support them uh why is that no active player that is excuse me hockey culture how many times have we talked about this you know it's a culture of conformity it's a monoculture it's a it's a sport where you get in line and you dress the same and look the same and talk the same not just in the nhl but from the time you're a teenager from the time you're 14 so how can we really expect anything more i mean it's interesting i was reading a story i think was in the players tribune the other day about a player on Norway's national soccer team

who they had a training camp in Qatar. And he came to understand that there were real human rights issues in Qatar. And so he educated himself. And then he wrote a Players' Tribune story about what he'd learned about what was happening in there and about how many migrant laborers had died building the stadiums that are going to be used

for the World Cup soccer tournament next year. And then I looked at, you know, I think I'm reminded of Enes Kanter, the NBA player who's wearing shoes that say free Tibet, and he's going on social media every day challenging the Chinese government. Could you ever in a million years imagine an NHL player doing either of these things? Not from what we've seen. Not yet. it like i don't know if this is urban myth or not but hasn't a player in the nhl been traded because he liked going to a library dougie hamilton that's yeah the rumor with him is he uh it was a museum yeah and john john shannon was the one that tweeted it right it was sort of like

it came from him maybe so guy that knows people i'm not blaming john shannon for it but he was obviously told that by somebody all right so i mean yeah we take the point though right these are not people who are told to stand up for their principles they're told to be accountable to the team not to be a distraction i don't know that you can have it both ways wow and do you have another question do you want to run in with that i don't i don't know about a question but an observation because when i when i found out it was kyle beach um you know to to the point of not wanting to stand out or anything uh in hockey culture when i found out it was kyle beach um it made me extremely upset and i was going to be upset no matter who it was but i

covered kyle beach when i was doing my first paid job in the industry uh for junior hockey magazine he was still in junior this would have been before uh what happened uh in chicago but But with Kyle Beach, there were perceived personality issues, right? There were perceived, oh, you know, he's got all the talent, but he gets out there and he gets into fights and he takes penalties and stuff like that. And I remember he got traded to a team and, you know, sort of chuckling with the GM through the questions like, oh, is Kyle going to behave himself this time? And knowing that, that is the sort of thing, and this is where power dynamics come in, that is the sort of thing that Brad Aldrich held over his head. When he said, I can ruin your career, he was going to take that vague reputation and hold it over his head, even though he was trying to do everything in his power to get better. he was talking to the video coach all he wanted to do was get better and try to play in the national hockey league brad aldrich figured out what his what what his point of uh weakness was

or whatever you want to call it the way to get in and he exploited it the vulnerability yeah the vulnerability thank you yeah over and i remember talking to one of the guys on that Blackhawks team about this about how like some people might say it was just the video coach like what power does a video coach have over him and I think it was Jake Dowell and Jake Dowell told me uh listen the video coach has the year of the head coach of Quenville and if you are one of those guys near the bottom of the roster you are so desperate you'll do anything to get on that team and stay on that team. And if the video coach is somebody who can be your ally and help pump your tires with the head coach and tell the head coach what a good influence you are

on the team and in the room and how hard you're working, then you're going to have a trust with that person. And again, this is the vulnerability that a predator, a sexual deviant like Brad aldrich exploits yeah this is uh i'm assuming rick that this is not over from what we've from what we've gleaned i mean there are people out there saying right now that don fear is is done at the nhlp i don't know if i believe that but there are people that are saying already he's got to go this this can't happen it's been the rumor for a couple days yeah um do you anticipate you know how the news cycle works and it's it's good in one way and it's ugly in the other is that you know the world moves on very quickly it seems um do you expect there to be

more bombshell information um number one i guess and number two how do we keep this top of mind going forward because you you've worked in the news your whole life you were a correspondent in Afghanistan, you've done everything that a journalist that does hard news has to do and does. What do we need to do to create change and continue to hold these people accountable? Because I know Gary Bettman is hoping that we all move on from this quickly. Keep talking about it. Make a commitment to keep covering it. Keep having the discussion.

Why haven't we been talking for two years about where a key values report is? and asking the nhl where's the report what are you working on what's the delay right and maybe that kind of a commitment to to following stories as they uh fade away in our memories because like we said life moves fast maybe that's one way um uh have you reached out to gary batman and bill daly to talk about about this particular situation or akimali you i i contact the nhl all the time i just don't hear back from the nhl okay i figured that might be close to the answer well rick listen we know that you have turned down

far bigger outlets than ours to be on this show um out of the kindness of your heart we know you're exhausted we know that we've taken up 45 minutes of your time so um before uh before we part here uh i just want to say uh on a personal level it's been a real pleasure since this summer getting to know you as a person uh it's been an unbelievable um learning experience watching what your reports have come out with i know everybody feels the same way um and i just want to say on behalf of the people that can't thank you because i'm sure you've got a ton thank you for continuing to go with this story and others like it uh thank you for what you do uh your work is very much appreciate it although i'm sure most of the time it doesn't feel that way um and uh we really just

genuinely want to thank you for being on this show thank you you know back at you guys i remember in the summer uh you know when we we did our first we did our first uh interview and i was in brace bridge at the fall fair in the barn yes uh and uh and it was a great it was a great way to talk to a new audience um about this because like i said there hadn't been a lot of mainstream attention so credit to you guys you know like adam steven and jess like credit to you guys for pushing yourselves i know this isn't an area that everybody's comfortable with or feel like they have the right training to tackle as a subject but how do we get better unless we challenge ourselves right to get into the uncomfortable gritty areas well done well hey thank you and

and it means a lot coming from you so rick listen we're going to be in touch uh we'll follow up with you you know we would like to continue to see what this is and or where this goes and and so if you don't mind i'm going to ask you publicly we would love to have you back yeah if our job is to continue the hockey conversation about this then that's what we'll do we will do that we'll fulfill that obligation i'll be back keep being a problem buddy yeah yeah you're a man you and katie are just on an island and the entire hockey community is in debt to you yes absolutely so rick thanks again appreciate it until next time two and five canadians will hear the words you have cancer that's why every step and dollar raised matters on september 19th join thousands in toronto for

the princess margaret cancer foundation walk challenge yourself friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research together we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer register today at pmcfwalk.ca you gotta try breakfast And what better way than with a delicious Pratt Organic Coffee, starting with just $1 all day, every day, now until December 31st. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. rick thank you so much and thank you again for everything you've done because i do believe from the bottom of my heart that we wouldn't be here today without your amazing investigation

with your out your amazing research and your reporting because when nobody else would touch this not the big million follower insiders not the nhl you kept grinding and without you we wouldn't be here today so thank you from the bottom of my heart and from and from my family thank you very very much thanks thanks kyle so you know as we wrap up here we know what you come to this show for most most days we know that you come for for what what we had on monday you know we're yelling about the leafs right and yelling about the nhl um and we know that morgan more Riley signed his big extension today. We all have opinions on that,

but it seemed disingenuous and just like not a fit to include that today. So we can talk about it Monday. There'll be some games to talk about, but everything this week, especially since Tuesday has seemed to take a backseat. Yeah. And I mean, geez,

guys, I have a video up on my channel. If you're that desperate for the Morgan Riley stuff, but yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll be back Monday. Right.

And like the beauty of this thing is there's another show. Like we'll be back in a couple of days. Yeah. Like every couple of days you get a show from us. So if we don't hit everything this show, there's the next show. Another show on the network that we suggest that you check out is the one that Chris Johnson and Julian McKenzie did yesterday. Insightful, soulful. I think Chris and Julian at their absolute best.

And I think after you've listened to this, if you haven't listened to CJ's show yet, definitely one we want you to check out as well. Thank you so much for listening to this. I know Rick appreciates it. And I know that everybody surrounding who has worked on the story appreciates it and the survivors themselves. So thank you for watching. Thank you for keeping it in the public domain. And we will be back on Monday.