Hazing story by Jets TV analyst can’t be ignored
Cavalier description of incident sparks social media storm
Hockey culture is changing, we’re told. Instances of abuse or bullying by coaches are to be reported and addressed, not swept under the rug.
Hazing incidents, once commonplace, are no longer tolerated. We now consider them serious abuses of authority.
So what are we to make, then, of TSN Jets television analyst Kevin Sawyer’s tone deaf comments during a recent broadcast, and the silence that’s ensued?
Sawyer, a former player and coach, described with some glee what sounded like a junior hockey hazing incident during the Jan. 4 broadcast of the Jets’ game in Minnesota.
Sawyer coached Wild defenceman Jared Spurgeon with the Western League’s Spokane Chiefs.
“Favourite story of Jared Spurgeon,” Sawyer began. “He was a 15-year-old. Two months into the season, we Saran-wrapped him to a pillar in the arena, about six feet up in the air ... he was tiny. He looked like he was 12.”
Sawyer was an assistant coach with Spokane during the 2005-06 season when the incident occurred.
Spurgeon was a WHL rookie, small in stature but going places. Three summers later he would be a fifth-round draft pick on his way to a 10-year NHL career — and counting.
“As someone who’s been through hazing, what was talked about on the broadcast isn’t a laughing matter,” Akim Aliu said
Tuesday. “It was sickening to hear and it has no place in the game.”
Aliu is the man who spurred what some are calling hockey’s #Metoo movement with his tweets back in November, about then-calgary bench boss Bill Peters, his old coach in the AHL.
Peters was the first domino to fall when the NHL’S reckoning with abusive coaches began. He resigned from the Flames for behaviour that included using racial slurs and kicking and punching players on the bench prior to his time in Calgary.
As disturbing as Aliu found Sawyer’s comments, he reacted like he’d been punched in the gut when he learned that Peters was Spokane’s head coach was at the time.
“No way,” Aliu said. “Holy geez. Wow. You just hit me with a big surprise there. It just seems like it’s a chain of events that have followed him and his rise in hockey.”
Sawyer’s cavalier description of the Spurgeon incident immediately drew harsh response on social media.
“Who was the announcer who thought it would be a good idea to brag about abuse of a minor during an NHL hockey game?” former NHLER Daniel Carcillo, an outspoken advocate for players’ mental health, said via Twitter on Monday, while posting a video of Sawyer’s comments.
Scott Campbell, a former Winnipeg Jets player, couldn’t believe what he heard 4, calling it “jaw-dropping.”
Sawyer and TSN, though, are pretending it never happened. They declined repeated requests for comment, both last week and again on Monday. No apology or explanation of any kind.
Spurgeon, through a Minnesota media relations staff member, also indicated his unwillingness to talk about the incident, as did a former Spokane teammate.
A request for comment from the Jets came up empty, too.
Why the deafening silence? People are rightfully wondering what Spurgeon was feeling that day and if, under a coach like Peters, it was a one-off or a sign of a troubling culture on that team.
More immediately, what was Sawyer thinking, relating the story to tens of thousands of Jets fans, no doubt many of them kids, and making it sound like that kind of treatment of teenagers by adults is not only OK, but amusing?
And what are the tall foreheads at TSN thinking with the decision to hope this just goes away, instead of getting out in front of it with an explanation?
Perhaps the whole thing was innocent and didn’t offend, threaten or humiliate anyone. Nobody watching and listening on Jan. 4 knows that, though.
Tuesday marked 10 days since Sawyer’s story poisoned the airwaves.
That nobody seems interested in cleaning it up only makes both him and TSN look small and out of touch with the new culture of hockey.