Marc Bergevin made a hockey decision Friday night. The Montreal Canadiens general manager got up in a room full of his employees during the NHL‘s virtual draft and announced the club’s first-round pick at No. 31: defenseman Logan Mailloux.
I’m not sure what the mood was like in Montreal, but those of us watching the broadcast watched in horror as Bergevin chose a player who was fined for a crime of a sexual nature and asked teams not to pick him as a result.
Mailloux, at 17 years old, took a photo of a woman he was engaged in a consensual sexual act with in Sweden without her consent and showed his teammates on Snapchat without her knowledge. He was not arrested but fined for offensive photography constituting an invasion of privacy and defamation.
There was quite a bit of consternation about it in the NHL, and Mailloux was asked about it in his predraft interviews. He received backlash in the Swedish press and eventually decided to renounce his draft rights.
“The NHL draft should be one of the most exciting landmark moments in a player’s career, and given the circumstances, I don’t feel I have demonstrated strong enough maturity or character to earn that privilege in the 2021 draft,” he wrote in a statement on Twitter. “I know it will take time for society to build back the trust I have lost, and that is why I think it is best that I renounce myself from the 2021 NHL draft and ask that no one select me this upcoming weekend.”
There is no formal mechanism in place to withdraw from consideration in the NHL draft. Once the paperwork is submitted to the NHL’s central registry, he is free to be drafted, so the Habs were always free to make this pick.
“You cannot remove yourself from the draft,” Bergevin said after selecting Mailloux. “Even if he said so, you’re eligible to be drafted, so that was clear with the league.”
But there is an easy way to get around that: Take him off your draft board, as 11 teams did, according to The Athletic.
Instead, Bergevin and his director of amateur scouting, Martin Lapointe, chose to do the opposite. It was more than just tone-deaf, it was an insult to every woman in the organization, every woman in Montreal and every female NHL fan who has ever experienced sexual assault or harassment. The Habs made a calculated decision that Mailloux was worth the backlash, indicating they don’t really care about his behavior off the ice and what kind of message that sends to their fans and their community.
The club quickly released a statement after the selection. The statement said the club will not minimize Mailloux’s actions and that he had admitted to a serious mistake. Bergevin doubled down on this “mistake” narrative in his press conference following the draft.
Canadiens Montréal @CanadiensMTL
Canadiens statement on selecting Logan Mailloux.
https://t.co/g04PZd2sF8
“We understand, and we’re fully aware and we as an organization think it’s very unacceptable,” Bergevin said. “But also, it’s a young man that made a terrible mistake. He’s 17 years old and he’s willing and he understands and he’s remorseful and he has a lot of work to do, but he already started to put it behind him and have a hockey career.”
Really, if you have to release a statement like this, then you should probably realize it’s the wrong pick. The Canadiens seem to think this is just a mistake that can be undone if Mailloux just gets a chance to get on with his life and play some hockey. But it can never be undone for the woman in Sweden, who told The Athletic she doesn’t “think that Logan has understood the seriousness of his behavior” and that all she has “wanted is to get justice for the actions he has taken against me.”
“I know I caused a lot of harm to this person and their family, and I regret doing this stupid and egotistical act,” Mailloux told reporters Saturday morning. “I deeply regret it. What I did now is unfortunately a part of both her life and mine. I’ve apologized to her but, nonetheless, this will follow her for the rest of her life. And for that, I deeply and sincerely regret it.”
Mailloux said he is attending counseling, and he expressed remorse. But this entire incident further exposes how broken this culture is.
It’s not just hockey culture that is broken, it’s sports culture in general. For too long the men in charge of sports have been willing to overlook these things as long as elite athletes remain elite.
In one example among many, Trevor Bauer is under criminal investigation after a woman filed a restraining order against him. The Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander, who won the National League Cy Young Award with the Cincinnati Reds last season, has been accused of choking the woman until she lost consciousness on multiple occasions, punching her in several areas and injuring her to the point of hospitalization over the course of two sexual encounters earlier this year.
Bauer’s co-agents, Jon Fetterolf and Rachel Luba, have refuted the allegations and deny the woman’s account of what happened.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred acted slowly in placing Bauer on administrative leave. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the league recommended the team let Bauer make his regularly scheduled start on July 4 against the Washington Nationals. The Dodgers, not wanting to get slapped with a grievance from the MLBPA, complied and said they would not skip his start.
After Roberts told reporters the issue was “out of [the Dodgers’] hands,” the wife of an MLB player messaged me. Being a victim of sexual assault herself, she asked how she was supposed to feel going to her husband’s games. The issue itself was triggering, and she felt as if MLB were giving a big middle finger to all of the women who had experienced similar atrocities and was essentially saying “it’s not our problem.”
What can they do about serious allegations against their players? It’s out of their hands!
Bergevin is sending a similar message. But if you look at his track record, he always has.
This is the general manager of a team that was reportedly interested in Slava Voynov after he was suspended indefinitely after pleading no-contest to misdemeanor corporal injury to a spouse in 2015. His wife told police that Voynov choked her, pushed her to the ground and kicked her multiple times, and shoved her into a television screen on Halloween in 2014.
This is the general manager of a team that reportedly had an interest in signing problematic defenseman Tony DeAngelo a few months ago. Among other issues, in 2014, DeAngelo was suspended in the OHL for directing slurs at a teammate.
This is the same general manager who recently hired Sean Burke, who pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife in 1997, as the Habs’ director of goaltending.
It wouldn’t have been hard to pass on Mailloux. A lot of other teams did it.
There were rumors that Mailloux might be taken in a later round, and Bergevin was likely worried he would lose his guy. By selecting him in the first round and being “proud” to do so, Bergevin might as well have gotten on Zoom and told all of the women on the call that they don’t matter and that he doesn’t care if he’s alienating an important part of the fanbase.
Hockey is not safer with Bergevin in it, and the sad thing is, he isn’t alone. It’s the culture. Look at the lawsuits against the Chicago Blackhawks, the team he previously worked for.
Their former skills coach, Paul Vincent, told TSN that in a 2010 meeting, he shared with then-president John McDonough, vice president of hockey operations Al MacIsaac, general manager Stan Bowman and team sports psychologist James Gary that two players had told him then-video coach Bradley Aldrich had sexually assaulted them. Vincent said the executives chose not to go to the police.
Bergevin, the Blackhawks’ director of player personnel at the time, has said he was unaware of the allegations and will participate in the independent investigation.
Mailloux said publicly the right things, but Montreal did the wrong thing. The hockey rationale that he was the best player available doesn’t hold up in this instance. There were other defensemen they could have taken at No. 31. Lots of them. Bergevin and the Habs gave Mailloux a free pass, excused his actions and showed others that they too can behave badly and still be chosen in the first round of the NHL draft.
This was never just a simple hockey decision because it’s not simple for the victim on the other end of this. It’s incredibly complex. It’s a mess, but it’s a mess of hockey’s own creation.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
