The Blackhawks held a livestreamed "town hall" meeting Wednesday night in advance of announced 8:30 start against the Minnesota Wild, which is as close to a playoff feeling a fan will be able to get out of the Hawks this season. The stream had about 800 viewers as it entered a Q & A session, which, to put in terms of NHL viewership, would make it "a rousing success for the Arizona Coyotes."
Before it was done, it was guaranteed to be the most-watched video in the league for the evening, and had a nationwide trend on Twitter, all thanks to one W. Rockwell Wirtz.
And now he goes after @_phil_thompson. Absolutely insane from Rocky Wirtz. Smh. pic.twitter.com/dMHYOHUbkQ
— Wally Maz (@WallMaz35) February 3, 2022
I'm not going to go too deep into the substance of this embarrassing tirade here; Mark Lazerus has already posted a very good column about it for The Athletic, and you can (and should) probably read it for a dollar right now, plus the New York Times will probably make it a bundle deal with Wordle or something down the road. But I do want to note two things that struck me.
First, Rocky went off on a question that he apparently did not understand or did not want to. Lazerus asked about what the team has been doing to ensure another horrific abuser does not receive shelter in their inner sanctum. After all, the report the team commissioned cited organizational failures in allowing the abuse to occur and consciously covering it up, even if there was no proof Rocky knew about it up at the top. The Hawks publicly pledged change and reform after releasing the report. They have not been available to take a single question on the matter in the months since. This is a more than fair question to ask. And yet, as soon as it's asked, you can see the gears turn in Rocky's head, and it is classic Wirtz Corp. thinking. I didn't pay out a huge damn settlement and pay a bunch of lawyers to draft an airtight non-disclosure agreement to have to put up with hearing about this crap anymore. And so, he was not going to hear about it. Like Mark McGwire on Capitol Hill, he was not here to talk about the past, because the past makes him look bad.
More importantly, you see Danny Wirtz, the alleged current head of the franchise, try to get this disaster back on the tracks, starting to actually answer the question in his role as CEO. And all it takes is one word from Rocky.
No.
And Danny clamps it airtight.
There was supposed to have been a passing of the torch to the younger generation of the family this season, as Rocky busied himself with booze and real estate and the other affairs of the family business. Danny was going to take the Hawks into the future, working past arguably the franchise's darkest moment back toward success on and off the ice. And with one word, two letters, Rocky, in the words of Jay Zawaski, "cut his nuts off" on that stage for all the hockey world to see. They can arrange the names however they want in the media guide, there's no doubt as to who's still running the show on West Madison.
The second point comes from the follow-up question from the Chicago Tribune's Phil Thompson. After a bit more stonewalling and fury about the club's response to - let's state it again for emphasis - covering up the sexual abuse of an employee by one of his superiors, Thompson pivoted to a question about the disappointment he's seen from season ticket holders in interviews, not only about the product and its direction, but the downward trend of ticket resale values accompanying it. Rocky's tone and approach do not change one bit, as he faces a question that is indisputably about the present, not the past.
"Is that a fact? Are you, are you... I didn't realize you are in our ticket department. C'mon. C'mon. Let's talk about the negative stuff. Let's talk about your paper, and what the sports page looks like."
So we can't ask the Blackhawks about the past. We can't ask about aspects of the present or the future that may relate to the past, because that's in the past, which we don't talk about. We also can't talk about the present in a way that's negative, because bad things are to only be discussed in private by executives only, or something, and to bring it up is, I don't know, failing fake news media or something? John McDonough may have met the curb, but the strongarm omerta he instilled in the front office certainly still resides.
If you close your eyes while listening to it all, you can almost see Bill Wirtz and Bob Pulford blustering at a folding table, speaking in a dismissive, above-it-all tone that somehow made scotch leech out of your cable box.
For this, they would like you to pay money.
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