When Kyle Beach spoke on TSN last Wednesday and courageously put a face at the forefront of one of the ugliest chapters in the NHL’s history, most of the hockey world stood still and watched.
Beach’s pained words cut like a knife through the heavy shroud of secrecy, unaccountability and plain ignorance within hockey culture that forced him to toil in despair for more than a decade — forcing plenty of those within the NHL ranks to take a stark look in the mirror and assess what has to change to prevent a similar sad saga from playing out once again.
And while the illusion of change might seem to permeate across the league by way of culpable front-office execs and coaches deservedly getting kicked to the curb, true progress cannot start to take place until the players and personnel in the room take an active role in initiating that change.
And in the Bruins’ locker room — Patrice Bergeron and Bruce Cassidy took a proactive role in making sure that Beach’s words didn’t fall upon deaf ears.
Speaking on Tuesday, Brandon Carlo noted that the entire Bruins team watched Beach’s TSN interview together in what was a point of emphasis from the B’s leadership group.
“Butchy felt it was important, Bergy — I think they had a little discussion and I think it was a great thing for all of us to do,” Carlo said. “Like I said, it was very courageous for him to come out and do all this. He's not doing it for no reason.
“He's doing it to put a stop to things like this and once you see it, you see the emotion involved with it and also just gain an understanding for the fact that things like these do happen. His message is obviously very clear that you don't have to be alone in that. So that was huge to see. Very powerful and I think it was great that we all watched it, but also very hard to watch.”
For Carlo, who serves as the Bruins rep on the NHL Players Association, there’s much more work to be done when it comes to holding more authority figures responsible within the game — especially those who failed Beach back in 2010.
“It affected all of us in a way that you could tell. I just want to commend him on his courage first and foremost," Carlo said of Beach. "From there on it kind of transitions to you feel a responsibility within the Players Association and different things to really further investigate the knowledge and information that was given to certain people that didn't act accordingly in regards to making more of an effort to stand up for Kyle.”
Carlo was part of an NHLPA conference call on Monday that was seeking answers from the union on the role it played in Beach’s tragic story — with the investigative report pertaining to Beach and the Blackhawks revealing last week that NHLPA head Donald Fehr was made aware of the allegations back in December 2010.
Based on Beach’s comments on TSN, both Fehr and the NHLPA did little to support him, even after he received next to no support from his Blackhawks coaches, players and staff.
"I know I reported every single detail to an individual at the NHLPA, who I was put in contact with after," Beach said in his interview with TSN. "I believe two different people talked to Don Fehr. And for him to turn his back on the players when his one job is to protect the players at all costs, I don't know how that can be your leader. I don't know how he can be in charge."
Carlo noted that the hours-long conference call allowed many players to air out their grievances about the PA’s handling of the events — with Fehr later recommending that the union hire an outside law firm for an independent review on the NHLPA’s response to Beach.
“Good amount of frustration, just questioning basically, more so what was going on and a big responsibility to make it known that we want more of an investigation and further review of how things were handled,” Carlo said. “So overall, I think that will be accomplished and that's very important to the players at this point to make sure that things were handled correctly and accordingly going forward and also getting the knowledge out there of who was involved in all this.”
As for the potential of a possible change at the top in regards to NHLPA leadership, Carlo believes more clarity will be needed before pushing ahead.
"Personally, I think everything will be reviewed and I think it starts from step one and gaining an understanding of how things were truly handled in all of it,” Carlo said. “Yeah, it's hard to say necessarily — I feel some guys will be passionate and strongly motivated ... and frustrated with the way that things were handled and there's the other side of things where you really need to gain all the information that you before making a rash decision.”
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Bruins dealing with more lulls in schedule
After a brutal start to the year in which Boston played a whopping … one game … over the first eight days of the 2021-22 NHL season, things appeared to be speeding up for the B’s — who just capped off a stretch of six games over 11 days.
It was a welcome ramp-up for a team that spent much of the last week of training camp twiddling its thumbs and pacing around for the start of regular-season action — but that frustrating stop-and-go schedule isn’t going away any time soon.
In some respects, November is even more irksome as far as the schedule is concerned — with Boston currently mired in a stretch of four days off before resuming action on Thursday night against the Red Wings. Not exactly the type of lull you want after stringing together your best win of the season last Saturday against the Panthers.
And it gets worse further down on the calendar, with the B’s set to have FIVE days off after hosting the Habs on Nov. 14.
Even though this extended time off has allowed some players like Craig Smith and Nick Foligno to heal without missing an extended stretch of the games, the consensus is pretty clear that the B’s would much rather be settling into a rhythm of regular-season action by this point.
“We're going to have another week off coming up, so I mean you're going to value this time at some point," Cassidy said. "It helps you recover, we've got a couple of days to, I don't want to say catch your breath, because we haven't had to catch our breath. But at the end of the day, yes. The season's here, it's starting. We want to get playing and playing on a regular basis. The challenge for us is keeping everybody ready, using practice efficiently.”
One person who hasn’t minded the slower start to the new year has been Linus Ullmark — who, granted, seems to have benefited from ramping up his reps. After a shaky preseason, Ullmark is 3-1-0 on the season with a .927 save percentage.
“Well, not playing as many games now at the beginning of the season this early has helped me a little bit to get accustomed to everything,” Ullmark said. “It's a big decision moving to a different city, different people, a lot of different things that need to be re-adjusted to get the flow of it. So it's been nice. You know, we have a big month before us with a lot of home games and I'm looking forward to every single one."