NHL’s #MeToo moment?: Players (Wings too) take abuse charges public

December 2019 – From the broadcast booth to behind the benches, from front-office investigations that have reached the highest echelons of the National Hockey League, it’s been a hell of a month.

And it has nothing to do with goals and great saves, with wins or losses or with agonizing losing streaks (winking at you, Detroit Red Wings).

It started with a nationally televised racist rant (“you people out there. . .”) that cost one of the most iconic personalities in the game his job – and Don Cherry refuses to apologize.

Then came accusations from a former player that coach Bill Peters repeatedly used “the N word” to berate one of his players when he was coaching in Carolina. Peters eventually moved on to Calgary, and when the Flames immediately began an internal investigation, Peters apologized publicly. Too late. The investigation reached the inner sanctum of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, where it continues.

Peters, the former Red Wings assistant coach, resigned his position on Nov. 27. Seven days earlier, Mike Babcock – the guy Peters worked for in Detroit – was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the fifth year of an eight-year, $50 million contract.

Then the dam broke. A few days after Babcock was fired, news broke that he asked then-rookie Mitch Marner for a list of his teammates, ranking them from hardest-working to least-hardest. Rookies do what coaches tell them to do, but Marner – one of the Leafs’ best young players – was mortified when Babcock used the list to berate players during team meetings.

Inexcusable? Absolutely, at any level of coaching/leadership/management. But the players he coached in Detroit were hardly surprised.

“The worst person I have ever met,” former power forward Johan Franzen told a Swedish interviewer recently. “He’s a bully who was attacking people. It could be a cleaner at the arena in Detroit, or anybody. He would lay into people without any reason.”

Former Wings defenseman Chris Chelios witnessed some of it. One incident, he confirmed in an interview with the podcast “Spittin’ Chiclets,” took place during a playoff game against Nashville in 2012.

“Some of the things he (Babcock) said to him on the bench. . . he blatantly verbally assaulted him during the game,” Chelios said. “It got to the point where poor Johan, no one really knowing he was suffering with the concussion thing and the depression thing, he just broke down, had a nervous breakdown, not only on the bench but after the game in one of the rooms in Nashville.

“It was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

Chris Chelios spent 26 seasons and 1,651 games in the NHL.

Chris Chelios saw a lot.

And Chris Chelios was nearly a victim, too. In the same podcast interview, he explained how, near the end of his redoubtable career, Babcock decided to make him a healthy scratch for a New Year’s Day outdoor game in Chicago, Chelios’ home town. General Manager Ken Holland intervened and overruled Babcock, forcing him to play Chelios.

The coach’s solution? He dressed seven defensemen, sent Chelios out for the opening faceoff and then benched him for the rest of the game.

Babcock’s arrogant vindictiveness knew no bounds. And sometimes it just seemed mean and spiteful. Case in point: After 20 years with the Minnesota/Dallas organization, Mike Modano signed on with the Wings in 2010 for one last kick at the big silver can. It could have been a fairy-tale ending for a kid who grew up in suburban Westland, became the first overall NHL draft pick in 1988, and wound up in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Modano ended up retiring with 1,499 regular-season games played, but would’ve hit the 1,500-game mark were it not for Babcock making him a healthy scratch for a late-season game against the Minnesota Wild in 2011.

That’s just bleeping wrong.

No wonder the players so despised Babcock, especially the Swedes.

One former Red Wing, defenseman Carlo Colaiacovo, who had a cup of coffee with the team in 2012-13, told a Canadian sports network last week that Babcock was so hated that ever year team leaders went to Holland to try to get rid of their coach.

Holland’s response to the players: “You got a problem with the coach, come see me and I’ll do my best to find somewhere else for you to play.”

The general manager knew, of course. It’s his job to know. But he was in a tough spot. He felt he had one of the best coaches in the game, so he tried to keep him happy by looking the other way amid all the complaints. In that way, Holland enabled the persistent abuse until Babcock leveraged his way out of town with that massive contract from the Leafs.

Little wonder Holland backed away when Toronto and Buffalo got into a bidding war with a guy who suddenly has dim prospects for ever getting behind an NHL bench again.

First Cherry is fired for racial insensitive remarks, then Babcock gets the boot, then Peters exits the Flames over revelations he repeatedly used racial slur against forward Akim Aliu. Now the

Chicago Blackhawks are conducting a review of assistant coach Mark Crawford after former NHL player Sean Avery accused him of kicking him on the bench while he was playing for the Los Angeles King.

A time-honored tradition, the so-called sanctity of the dressing room, has been shattered. Buckle up. Many are hinting what we’ve heard so far is just the tip of an iceberg that will have far-reaching implications regarding the way the league handles its most precious commodity: the players.