On Patrick Kane (or Being a Moral Sports Fan)
Let’s be honest: being a sports fan isn’t the most moral thing you could do with your life. Between sportswashing, like, anything to do with Saudi Arabia (LIV Golf, World Cup, etc.), funding terrible human beings with your ticket money (oftentimes the team owner themselves), buying merchandise of terrible human being athletes, etc. It seems hard these days to keep from rooting for the worst of humanity, if you’re a sports fan. For a current example, look at the NBA and Josh Giddey. Despite all this, we’re fans anyway. But, should we? Or, at least, should there be red lines? Are we being too tolerant of criminality and even less serious, but still problematic behaviors, among players, leagues, etc.?
This is a question that’s been on my mind for a long time, but there’s a very specific event that really pushed it into “time to seriously consider all this and write about it” territory: the signing of Patrick Kane by the Detroit Red Wings. For those who may not follow this newsletter or me on social media, the Detroit Red Wings are my favorite team in all sports. I was born into Red Wings fandom. At the time, this signing was deeply displeasing to me. Between him having assaulted a taxi cab driver, helping create a toxic locker room for Kyle Beach, and his initial defense of Stan Bowman, all that left a bad taste in my mouth. I was deeply unhappy, especially considering that I was still upset with the signing of James Reimer in the off-season.
Now, as touched on earlier, this was just the tipping point. I have witnessed too many situations like Adrian Peterson, Ray Rice, Evander Kane, or the alleged rapists on the 2018 Canadian World Juniors team, to not have been thinking about this for a long time. While I was never a fan of those players, they’re ones that left an impact on me when hearing what happened. Ones that touched me more closely were Tiger Woods, I grew up watching him and remember the disillusionment I felt as an eleven-year-old after learning he cheated on his at-the-time wife. As an adult, I had to wrestle with neo-Nazi Thomas Greiss joining the Red Wings. This past off-season it was my second-favorite NHL team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, trading for Ivan Provorov and naming Mike Babcock as Head Coach, and the Red Wings, as stated earlier, signing James Reimer.
I’ve written many articles about how broken the sport of ice hockey is, especially in North America. I’ve also written in the past about how hard it is for me to enjoy the sport, at times, because of all the problems. But, how do I keep coming back to hockey, no matter how many times it hurts me, or others I know? A lack of self-respect. Ok, in all seriousness, it’s the same way I come back around to anything that’s problematic I enjoy, like Dune, or Lecrae, or Tolkein, etc. It brings me too much personal entertainment, so I’m willing to hold my nose, even if it hurts. So, maybe the lack of self-respect is closer to the truth than I thought. But, that really is it: hockey brings me too much personal enjoyment for me to completely dump it. Over the years, I’ve slowly grown out of love with basketball, and stories like Josh Giddey just cement me further into “don’t care” territory, so, I don’t see myself caring about the NBA anytime soon. Unless the Detroit Pistons are finally worth caring about again in my lifetime, of course. But, for hockey, when I see them give the metaphorical middle finger to the queer community, or a team try to give Mike Babcock a redemption arc, it doesn’t push me to not care. No more than a few hours, I should clarify. Instead, I eventually hold my nose and get over it. Am I wrong for doing that? Should I have higher standards? Maybe. But, I also get paid to write about this sport, so it’s not much of an option for me to stop caring, anyway.
Now, let’s bring it all back around. What about the Red Wings and Patrick Kane? How do I go forward with this, especially considering my already existing discontent? Honestly, I stopped hating Patrick Kane. I have spent about a month on this article, and had a previous version that was ready to go, but was way too long, and too meandering. It was also written out over the span of a few weeks. The article reflected that as my views changed on Patrick Kane, the more research and soul-searching I did. Personally, I find myself not being able to hold his previous actions against him, especially when many of the things held against him were over a decade ago. Even the one thing that could be held against him more recently, his initial defense of Stan Bowman, he would walk back and could be argued to be reflexive defense of someone close to you. When you hear someone you deeply care about may have done something wrong, your immediate thought and response is “no way, definitely not true”. It’s not hard to believe that’s what he was going through at the time, as well. Maybe I’m wrong, though. To be honest, there’s a strong chance he would never have even come around to this view if he wasn’t on my team. This is probably just me wanting to root for my team in peace without cognitive dissonance, outside Reimer. For James Reimer, I’m still unhappy with him because it’s far more personal, and I never had a reason to care about him beforehand. So, I’m able to be against him, but be pro-Red Wings. I guess at this point I’ve accepted that hockey teams have no red lines on immoral conduct (besides whatever Jakub Vrána did, which could not be as bad as assaulting a taxi driver, whatever it was). Therefore, I have to just suck it up or abandon the sport, and I have chosen to suck it up and hope the sport changes eventually, knowing it won’t because people like me continually promote it and give it money. It all comes down to entertainment at the end of the day. Maybe it’s wrong of me, but hockey is my main form of entertainment. I don’t listen to much music, I rarely watch TV shows or movies, don’t play many video games, and read about four books a year. I’m a hockey, especially NHL, sicko. I’m not ready to move on from hockey, yet, so I find ways to accept everything I find odious. Just like I do with things outside hockey, like Dune or Lecrae.
I think the true final nail in the coffin, for me, was thinking “would I want what I did as a teenager and in my early 20s held against me when I’m 35?” No, I have never assaulted a taxi driver, and that is inexcusable. You learn as a toddler to not beat up other people. So, I’m not saying “hey everyone, absolve him of this crime”. What I am saying is, he’s 35 now, it's been now 15 years since the assault, and over a decade since anything that happened in the Blackhawks locker room regarding Kyle Beach. The reality is: we have no evidence he’s the same person he was. Maybe I’m being too generous towards him, but I’d like to think that after more than a decade, he’s grown and changed as a person. I fully recognize that I’m probably being too kind to a celebrity getting paid millions in a sport that doesn’t reward change, but I’d like to hope, anyway. I’m 25, and a decade ago I was 15. I was a very different person back then. I was violently homophobic, a Ted Cruz conservative, considering going to Seminary, and a bully online. I bullied people online, including queer people, viciously. To the point that some became suicidal. It’s something that haunts me to this day. Literally, I will have intrusive flashbacks that do not go away of it and nightmares of it. The guilt is something I will likely live with for the rest of my life. I don’t expect my victims to ever forgive me, and if I ever were to meet them, I would never even think of asking for forgiveness. For everyone else, I would hope everyone has seen how I’ve changed and grown in that time, and not hold what I did as a teenager against me when I’m 35. But, maybe those actions should be held against me. Maybe cyber-bullying is an unforgivable crime and I should be shunned. I guess that’s for you to decide. Then, in my early 20s, I was still a pretty cancerous person due to how immature of a person I was. I tried making friends, and I won’t go into details, but I was immature enough person that everyone I tried making friends with felt the need to cut me off completely. I’d like to think, at age 25, I’ve grown in maturity since 22. But, at age 35, I would definitely hope that, and hope people (not the people who cut me off) wouldn’t hold my highly immature behavior against me if I’ve illustrated I’ve grown and changed.
I know that the response people will give me is "he hasn't illustrated that he's grown and changed". Maybe he hasn't. Maybe I'm just reading too much into his statements about Kyle Beach and his conduct as a teenager. It's very likely all just statements handed to him by a PR team. I guess I just want to assume the best of people (even if I'm always prepared for the worst). Assume that they've grown in a decade or more. Mainly, because I would want people to assume about me. The best. Even if maybe I didn't fully deserve it (and I certainly don't, I have a long recent history of being a bad person).
But, also, admittedly, even before I thought this deeply, he was winning me over with his consistent sucking up to the city of Detroit and Ken Daniels & Mickey Redmond. I'm sorry, but I'm a sucker for someone sucking up to Detroit. It's too refreshing of a change from the constant bashing the city takes online and in the media, to this day, as if it's still bankrupt (also, let's be honest: most anti-Detroit narratives are rooted in racism, but you're not ready for that conversation, yet). So, admittedly, I may have been wanting to like him anyway. I'm probably not someone to look to for morality.
Before I end this article, I want to clarify something: I am not looking to persuade you that you should be a fan of Patrick Kane if you think what he did was too odious to overlook. That's not what I'm here to do. If you feel that way: godspeed. The only thing I wanted to do here was explain myself and my struggles as a sports fan in deciding where I draw the line and where I don't when something bad is revealed about a player, organization, owner, or whatever. Your journey is going to be different, and that's fine. You might even think I am an odious person after reading this, and well, I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise because I consider myself an odious person. Morality is a complicated thing, mainly because people are complicated. There are many different ways to view anyone or any situation, and I just wanted to share my complicated, and admittedly, probably poorly thought out, views on the complicated character that is Patrick Kane.
To finally put a bow on all this: yeah, we're probably being too tolerant of the criminality and toxicity in sports. Heck, I probably am. Me using this blog to call out such things isn't going to mean much as long I continue to promote said sports and give these leagues and organizations money. They see me talking, but my actions say something different. If I really was truly that repulsed by what was going on, I probably would stop following hockey all together, but we all know that's not going to happen. Then, as we saw in this article, I'm probably going to try to find a reason to excuse everything anyway. So, do I really care that much about morals in sports? I feel like I know the answer, but I don't want to answer the question. Do I have any red lines when it comes to sports if my favorite team signed a neo-Nazi and I continued supporting the team? Once again, I know the answer, but I don't want to say it. Furthermore, I would argue that I am not a moral sport fan, and there is no way to be one. Sure, maybe me reporting and getting the word out about a coach who forces her players to do naked Superman slides on ice helps get her fired. That hopefully helps bring some closure to victims and makes the current players safer. But, the system that enabled said coach to do that for more than a decade is still in place. The system that didn't bring any repercussions upon Patrick Kane professionally for assaulting a taxi driver. I can rail against all that as much as I want. I can help get abusers fired, and all that, but, the systems won't change. Those won't change because I and many others write articles detailing their abuses. They'll only change when they have an incentive to change, and let's be honest, that means their pocket books start hurting. I'm not going to go that far.
So, what does this all mean? I know this probably isn't a satisfactory answer, but: you have to find red lines for yourselves. You have to decide yourself what criminal acts, what problematic beliefs and behaviors are too much for you to accept before you stop supporting a sport, organization, or player. I can't make this decision for you. For me, I don't know there is one if my favorite team deciding neo-Nazis are fine, isn't a red line. Probably a massive flaw on my part to decide my personal entertainment is more important than taking a stand and not promoting a team that gave a neo-Nazi millions and allowed him to be a celebrity for their team. But, then again, I'm still on Twitter and Substack. What are my red lines? I don't know. Maybe it's time I created some.
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