Former Blackhawks video coach Bradley Aldrich’s alleged sexual assault of two Hawks players in May 2010 was widely known by the entire team during the 2010 playoffs, per a Friday report by The Athletic.
An unidentified player from the 2010 Stanley Cup-winning team told The Athletic that “every single guy on the team knew.”
Nick Boynton, a defenseman on the 2010 team, told The Athletic he was also aware of the incident and trusted then-skills coach Paul Vincent to alert upper management and take the necessary steps to remedy the situation.
Vincent told TSN earlier this month that he did inform then-president John McDonough, general manager Stan Bowman, executive Al MacIsaac and skills coach James Gary about Aldrich’s alleged assault at a 2010 meeting, but that the group of Hawks executives rejected Vincent’s request to report the incident to police.
Brent Sopel, another defenseman on the 2010 team, tweeted Friday that The Athletic’s report was “accurate.”
“The front office staff should be in jail,” Sopel said in a separate tweet. “The NHL is showing [their] true colours. Gary [Bettman, NHL commissioner] doesn’t care about anyone but himself. This is absolutely disgusting that the NHL is doing nothing.”
The Hawks are currently facing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court from one of the two former players — identified under the pseudonym “John Doe” in the lawsuit — who alleged Aldrich assaulted him.
Aldrich “sent . . . inappropriate text messages,” “turned on porn and began to masturbate in front of [Doe] . . . without his consent” and “threatened to injure [Doe] . . . physically, financially and emotionally if [Doe] . . . did not engage in sexual activity,” according to the lawsuit filed May 7.
The player reported Aldrich’s assault to James Gary, the skills coach, but Gary “did nothing” and instead “convinced [Doe] . . . that the sexual assault was his fault,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages from the Hawks, claiming the player continues to suffer from the trauma of the incident. The player told WBEZ Chicago this week that the sexual assault “took me out of the high point of my game.”
The Hawks filed a motion June 14 to dismiss the lawsuit, but the motion was based on legal grounds — arguing the statue of limitations had expired and the player did not exhaust his legal options before suing — rather than the alleged facts of the assault, according to court documents obtained by the Sun-Times. The Hawks also filed an objection to discovery requests by the player’s lawyer this week.
The Hawks denied wrongdoing in a statement last month to the Sun-Times, but have not responded to repeated requests for comment since. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Athletic on Friday that the NHL has “been in contact with the [Hawks] regarding the matter but there is no ongoing investigation.”
Aldrich left the Hawks after the 2010 season but continued a pattern of inappropriate behavior.
Aldrich was briefly employed by the Miami (Ohio) University men’s hockey team in 2012 but resigned “under suspicion of unwanted touching of a male adult,” the university’s general counsel told a Michigan police officer in 2013, according to Michigan police documents obtained by the Sun-Times. Miami University recently hired a third-party firm to investigate Aldrich’s time at the school, per numerous reports.
Aldrich later became a volunteer coach with the Houghton (Michigan) High School men’s hockey team. He pleaded guilty in December 2013 — and was sentenced in February 2014 to nine months in prison and five years of probation — for a criminal sexual-contact incident with a 16- to 18-year-old member of the team.
The victim of that assault told police in September 2013 that Aldrich — after a team party — climbed into bed with, sexually touched and performed oral sex on the victim and forced the victim to also sexually touch Aldrich, despite the victim’s frequent objections, according to Michigan police documents.
The victim of that assault filed a separate lawsuit against the Hawks on May 26 in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging the Hawks “provided positive references to future employers” of Aldrich. The Hawks requested a time extension in that case Wednesday, according to court records.
Even after Michigan police began investigating Aldrich’s assault of the high school student in September 2013, Hawks head of human resources Marie Sutera told police the Hawks would require “a search warrant or subpoena to give out any information” about Aldrich’s tenure, according to Michigan police documents.
Bowman, MacIsaac, Gary and Sutera are all still employed by the Hawks. Vincent now works as a volunteer assistant coach at Dartmouth University and did not immediately return a request for comment.
