If you were wondering why, how and on what planet the Blackhawks' decision to roll out Patrick Kane on Thursday afternoon occurred, here's an answer: I appreciate the question and I see where youre coming from, but I can't say right now. Just take a page out of their playbook. The Blackhawks, after making a bad situation worse by inviting Kane to camp during an investigation into whether he sexually a saulted a woman in Buffalo last month, steered the car into a ditch on Thursday afternoon. MORE: | Attorneys for Kane and the woman that would end the criminal investigation, and prosecutors in western New York are preparing to send the case to a grand jury in October. UPDATE: | Kane is preparing to play hockey. Alongside team president John McDonough, general manager Stan Bowman and coach Joel Quenneville, he read a prepared statement that said little. He then inexplicably took a round of questions that the Blackhawks hoped would be hockey-related and said even le s. It was tone-deaf, stupid and served no purpose other than to illuminate how tone-deaf and stupid the Blackhawks, at this particular moment, seem to be. Why put Kane up Torrey Craig Jersey there, with a pre-written statement full of legal word salad, apologizing for the stre s he caused his family and team but unable or unwilling to do much beyond that? "I am confident once all facts come to light I will be absolved," . And then, why take questions from the media at all? Sending out a release, or having Kane read one and split, would've at least spared the team from a round of kabuki theater and a deservedly baffled, angry reception on Twitter. Instead, team officials asked that Kane only receive questions about hockey, as if anyone in the room was there to talk about his workout regimen or the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup defense. Kane's go-to deflections I appreciate the question and I see where you're coming from were punchlines before they left his mouth. He appreciated a question asking whether he'd stop drinking, and he appreciated a question about whether he had embarra sed the organization, and he appreciated a question about the people he might have let down, and he appreciated a question about how he expects fans to respond to him. He answered none. He is excited about camp, though. And soon, he was done. Then came McDonough. He opted to open by talking about "short summers" and the joy the Stanley Cup tour brought to the ma ses. The Blackhawks are hungry, you see, and they believe they are going to be measured over decades, or something. He talked for a while about the succe s of his organization, and all of it was irrelevant. Exactly nobody was there, or watching the live video stream, to hear about his front office's work ethic, or the succe s of its AHL Rockford affiliate. They were there to ask about an alleged crime of sexual violence committed by the face of his franchise, and the thought proce s behind that franchise's decision to include him in training camp despite it all. Asked, shortly after his se sion-opening victory lap, if he was worried about coming off as tone-deaf, McDonough said: "I can a sure you that I'm anything but tone-deaf." That's understandable, and exactly what a tone-deaf person would say. That's the definition of tone-deafne s. Nobody wants to hear about your organization's succe s when one of its failures and a large one is unfolding in real time. A breath before, McDonough dodged a question over whether bringing Kane to camp is an endorsement of his innocence: "That is something we can addre s at another time." So why, exactly, did we watch any of that? Whose interest did that serve? That's an unanswerable question, not of the "I can't discu s it right now" variety. It didn't need to be this way, either. McDonough and Kane leaned on the idea of "respecting the proce s," and there's a kernel of truth in that though it's not the one they were seeking. If the Blackhawks really respected the proce s, the severity of the allegations, the opinions of their fans and the intelligence of public at large, Kane would be sitting at home in western New York right now. Instead, we got, a televised organizational mi step. After a summer of only being able to gue s at how the Blackhawks would handle the situation, we now know they're blowing it. At least we learned something. Mason Plumlee Jersey
If you were wondering why, how and on what planet the Blackhawks' decision to roll out Patrick Kane on Thursday afternoon occurred, here's an answer: I appreciate the question and I see where youre coming from, but I can't say right now. Just take a page out of their playbook. The Blackhawks, after making a bad situation worse by inviting Kane to camp during an investigation into whether he sexually a saulted a woman in Buffalo last month, steered the car into a ditch on Thursday afternoon. MORE: | Attorneys for Kane and the woman that would end the criminal investigation, and prosecutors in western New York are preparing to send the case to a grand jury in October. UPDATE: | Kane is preparing to play hockey. Alongside team president John McDonough, general manager Stan Bowman and coach Joel Quenneville, he read a prepared statement that said little. He then inexplicably took a round of questions that the Blackhawks hoped would be hockey-related and said even le s. It was tone-deaf, stupid and served no purpose other than to illuminate how tone-deaf and stupid the Blackhawks, at this particular moment, seem to be. Why put Kane up Torrey Craig Jersey there, with a pre-written statement full of legal word salad, apologizing for the stre s he caused his family and team but unable or unwilling to do much beyond that? "I am confident once all facts come to light I will be absolved," . And then, why take questions from the media at all? Sending out a release, or having Kane read one and split, would've at least spared the team from a round of kabuki theater and a deservedly baffled, angry reception on Twitter. Instead, team officials asked that Kane only receive questions about hockey, as if anyone in the room was there to talk about his workout regimen or the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup defense. Kane's go-to deflections I appreciate the question and I see where you're coming from were punchlines before they left his mouth. He appreciated a question asking whether he'd stop drinking, and he appreciated a question about whether he had embarra sed the organization, and he appreciated a question about the people he might have let down, and he appreciated a question about how he expects fans to respond to him. He answered none. He is excited about camp, though. And soon, he was done. Then came McDonough. He opted to open by talking about "short summers" and the joy the Stanley Cup tour brought to the ma ses. The Blackhawks are hungry, you see, and they believe they are going to be measured over decades, or something. He talked for a while about the succe s of his organization, and all of it was irrelevant. Exactly nobody was there, or watching the live video stream, to hear about his front office's work ethic, or the succe s of its AHL Rockford affiliate. They were there to ask about an alleged crime of sexual violence committed by the face of his franchise, and the thought proce s behind that franchise's decision to include him in training camp despite it all. Asked, shortly after his se sion-opening victory lap, if he was worried about coming off as tone-deaf, McDonough said: "I can a sure you that I'm anything but tone-deaf." That's understandable, and exactly what a tone-deaf person would say. That's the definition of tone-deafne s. Nobody wants to hear about your organization's succe s when one of its failures and a large one is unfolding in real time. A breath before, McDonough dodged a question over whether bringing Kane to camp is an endorsement of his innocence: "That is something we can addre s at another time." So why, exactly, did we watch any of that? Whose interest did that serve? That's an unanswerable question, not of the "I can't discu s it right now" variety. It didn't need to be this way, either. McDonough and Kane leaned on the idea of "respecting the proce s," and there's a kernel of truth in that though it's not the one they were seeking. If the Blackhawks really respected the proce s, the severity of the allegations, the opinions of their fans and the intelligence of public at large, Kane would be sitting at home in western New York right now. Instead, we got, a televised organizational mi step. After a summer of only being able to gue s at how the Blackhawks would handle the situation, we now know they're blowing it. At least we learned something. Mason Plumlee Jersey