Dear John Tortorella,
Nope, that’s too formal for a man who’s been suspended for attempting to punch a referee. Let’s try something different.
Hey Torts,
If that’s what most of the hockey community calls you—lovingly or patronizingly—allow me to do the same. Congratulations on being named coach of Team USA. Must feel nice after you got chased out of Vancouver for punching a referee as your team went into a tailspin. I see that as you march into the NHL’s reindition of the World Cup with your Phil Kessel-less squad, you’ve taken your brash opinions with you.
On one hand, thank you for that. In a league that squashes any attempt in growing the game by putting players with personalities that are as dry as slices of white bread, you’ve never been afraid to speak up.
Yet your words are tone deaf. Before you argue—because I know you will—yes, it is well within your Constitutional right to disagree with San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaerpenick’s protest and threaten to bench your players that might follow suit, but you also work in sports, which is a world that governs itself by PR, not by legality. From a PR perspective, your words alienated a segment of the population that hockey has always alienated more than any other sport.
So of course you don’t get Kaerpernick’s protest.
You don’t have to walk around an NHL arena for long to notice that hockey is a largely white sport. When I went to the United Center last October, I could count the number of non-white fans on both of my hands. Hockey fans’ demographics only reflect the player’s demographics. For most of the NHL, they were born in small suburban towns in Canada or Midwestern America--seriously, drafting a kid who grew up in Arizona was a victory for the NHL on the diversity front. When you have these limited demographics dominating a sport, Kaepernick’s protest cannot be seen as anything but a threat, rather than a validation, since Tortorella’s and many hockey fan’s background renders them incapable of experiencing the gravity of the problems Kaepernick speaks about.
Now, Torts, I know you aren’t exactly best buds with the media, but let me ask you this: would you bench Brandon Saad if he sat for the national anthem?
You know Brandon, right? He’s arguably your best player on the club that you coach during the regular season? He’s twenty-three, but looks like he’s forty? He’s not on Team USA because the NHL has such a diversity problem within its own parameters that they needed to put together an Under 23, Canadian-American team to fill out a mere eight team World Cup? You know him.
If Trump were to have banned all Assyrian immigration in the late 1980s, you wouldn’t even have Brandon Saad because he wouldn’t have even been born. The son of a Syrian immigrant, Brandon Saad and his father have spent the last few years attempting to bring his father’s family to the US, according to an article in the Guardian. Under a potential Trump presidency, that might not be allowed. During April, in a speech to Rhode Island voters, Trump urged them to "lock their doors" to keep safe from Syrian refugees coming into the US.
I wonder if Saad would turn his back on the flag then? And if he did, would you bench your club team’s highest leading goal scorer?
Good luck with the Blue Jackets this season, Torts. Hope you don’t finish in the bottom of the standings again.
