The Vegas Golden Knights are looking to sign Carter Hart. Take my hand, let's bully the front office <3
Per Chris Johnston via the Athletic (archived)
In the same article, he says the Canes have reconsidered their own hiring of Michael McLeod due to backlash:
You can and should bully the shit out of any NHL team for this. There aren't a lot of active Knights fans on here but a few are taking action over on Twitter, and it would be sweet if hockey fans across the league spoke up and added their voices to our efforts.
If you are having trouble with what to say, below the cut is a helpful email scaffold that @stereax kindly drafted! Please add/take away details at your discretion.
[Email subject line: something along the lines of "Please do not sign Carter Hart".]
Hi! My name is [YOUR NAME], I am a [Golden Knights/hockey] fan [since XXX] and an advocate for sexual assault survivors. I am writing to you today to implore of the Vegas Golden Knights to not sign Carter Hart.
I find it deeply distressing that [my favorite/any] NHL team would consider signing any players that were involved in the recent Hockey Canada scandal. This is not just about the game of hockey, but a deeper and more pervasive issue of the culture of sexual assault within hockey. While none of the players were convicted of sexual assault (due to insufficient evidence), the evidence is clear that these men deeply traumatized EM, trauma that has taken her years to recover from. By signing Hart, or any other player involved in the scandal, Vegas sends a message to sexual assault survivors, and indeed many female fans of hockey, that their voices are not important, and that what they have gone through does not matter if the person that abused them is marginally better at a sport than someone else. This goes against Vegas's core value of community.
[If Vegas goes forward and signs Hart, I will: cancel my season tickets/not renew my season tickets/no longer buy tickets/cancel my KnightTime+ subscription/no longer be a fan of the team/whatever other consequence you can think of.]
Please reconsider signing Carter Hart. By not signing Hart, the Golden Knights can take a stand for sexual assault survivors, underline that there is no room for such heinous actions in the NHL, and reaffirm that hockey truly is for everyone.
My heart aches so much for E.M. I can’t imagine the amount of pain she’s in from the verdict and also from the horrible harassment she’s getting from garbage people. She didn’t deserve what she experienced nor the harassment she’s currently facing. Believe survivors and victims.
So incredibly disappointed with this organization. I don’t quite have the words yet to express all that I’m feeling, this is just the initial thoughts. The absolute disrespect to their female fans, the ignoring of the fans who reached out telling them we didn’t want this. Hockey should be a safe place for people, for everyone, but they’ve just isolated so many of their fans. I’m devastated and so so so disappointed.
the nhl releasing a statement about a utah expansion while news breaks about the 2018 wjc sexual assault case is so fucked up. literally who fucking cares about an expansion right now. also to the people sad about their team, how is that the first thing in you mind? you have to be incredibly fucking stupid to care about that when the victim has suffered with this for YEARS. i'm just glad that they're finally holding these players accountable and hopefully she receives the justice and peace she so much deserves. and i hope the careers of these players are forever destroyed and they rot in hell.
to me this implicates all of them. even if that's culture. like not because, if your friend is a criminal that means you're a criminal too, but that's fairly different from whatever's been going on with njd's PR and the 'superbuddies'. if you're standing behind your guy that's culture whatever but how can sexual assault victims not feel some type of way about this? even if that's irrational. truly just the furthermost type of parasociality you can imagine. it's just ridiculous typing this out. but their due process could've been better and every step of the way they chose not to. it's just not rocket science. it doesn't mean they should've pulled the trigger on Mikey sent him to the gallows have at him but at the very least, something?! anything.
This is a couple days old. But McLeods gf posted this days after he was charged with two counts of sexual assault. She did go private shortly after getting called out for this.
