i wasn’t going to personally write my own post about the carter hart situation because i feel like so many other people have expressed what i feel much better than how i could, but there are some more narratives and storylines i’m seeing popping up that ultimately did make me want to say something.
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.
now, there are other reasons why people dislike vegas, of course. (there are also reasons why people might be a fan of the team despite hating certain things that they stand for — the degree to which they helped heal the community in 2017 isn’t nothing). but i really push against the notion that we can’t dislike the idea of a player being “acquitted” of sexual assault charges and then immediately being thrust into conn smythe contention on the grounds that it means we are automatically disregarding what the other team did. one of these franchises is going to win the cup, but i don’t want to watch that specific player win the cup.
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