Joel Quenneville made a rare appearance today as he was on The Cam & Strick Podcast talking about what he did and didn’t know regarding the Kyle Beach sexual assault controversy. Now a lot has been said about who knew what and who was at fault for what went down back in 2010. This is an interview that is worth listening to because it gives us another look at what went down from Joel's perspective, and of course everything should be taken with a grain of salt, but I wanted to talk about my takeaways from this interview. These are all based on the assumption that what Q said is truly what went down.
Kept in the Dark
What we were told was that Q, Bowman, McDonough, and others were in a meeting to discuss the sexual assault and what should be done. According to Q, this meeting happened differently. He was brought in for maybe 5 minutes to talk about Black Ace players receiving inappropriate texts from Brad Aldrich and him hanging around the players. Q says that he was never told that the assault took place and wasn’t asked for his opinion on how it should be handled. He was given that information and was sent on his way; he would follow up more in the interview, but no one from upper management ever updated him on the situation and never gave him an exact reason as to why Aldrich was no longer apart of the franchise. Q described the way the Hawks front office worked: you knew your role and you stayed in your lane. When he was made aware of the situation, he assumed that the people who oversaw making these calls were going to handle it, and he went on to stay in his lane, which was coaching the Hawks. He doubled down on the fact that he was never told anything about what had happened, as he said the first time he heard about everything was when he read the report on his way to the meeting with Gary Bettman.
Takes the blame
While he talked about how he didn’t have control over what was done, he did say that he takes the blame and wishes he had done things differently. When asked how he would handle this differently, he talked about how he would push to get more information and do a better job following up and making sure things were taken care of.
Believes he deserves to coach again.
Q believes that he has done everything that has been asked of him in terms of learning and growing from this situation. He has taken classes to learn how to handle this situation better and has talked with numerous groups of survivors and foundations that fight SA. When asked how he gets back into the league, he didn’t seem to have any answers and did seem a bit frustrated that he hasn’t been cleared to coach again. He talked about how he still follows the game and has his eyes on about 10 teams he would love to coach if the opportunity came up.
Overall Takeaway
Again, it is hard to know what the truth is and what is being said to make the party look better. We must take everything with a grain of salt and not jump on the side of one person because you hear something you like or dislike. At the end of the day, we, the public, will never know who truly knew what happened, and we will have to accept that. I want to believe that Q truly didn’t know what was going on, and McDonough and Bowman kept him in the dark. From this interview, I get the feeling that they used Q as a fall guy so that they didn’t look like the absolute terrible human beings that they are. If what Q said in this interview was what really went down with his involvement, there is no reason why he shouldn’t get the chance to coach in the NHL again.
That’s going to be it from me. I’ll be back tomorrow with a preview for Hawks vs. Blues.
Chicago Blackhawks Blogger • 
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