Teh One Who Knocks
06-24-2016, 01:54 PM
By Tony Defeo - Yahoo! Sports
http://i.imgur.com/9pmtVOF.jpg
Patrick Kane, the Chicago Blackhawks’ star forward and the NHL’s scoring champion for the just completed 2015/2016 season, was named the Hart Trophy winner (league MVP) Wednesday evening during the league’s annual awards show.
No surprise that Kane would be so honored. After all, we’re talking about one of the great young players in hockey today and a three-time Stanley Cup champion.
However, as an NFL fan who has seen his favorite league get raked over the coals a lot in recent years because of various transgressions committed by its players, where was the outrage for Kane even being at the ceremony on Wednesday?
The reason I ask, is because last summer, Kane was accused of raping a 21-year old woman at his home in Buffalo, New York.
No charges were filed due to lack of evidence.
As an isolated incident, you can easily dismiss such claims as an attempt by a young woman to take advantage of a professional athlete. After all, in 2002, former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis was accused of rape, only to be later exonerated after it was revealed to be an attempt to blackmail the star running back.
But in Kane’s case, this wasn’t the first time he wound up in the news for things that had nothing to do with hockey. In 2009, shortly after his promising NHL career began, Kane was arrested for allegedly punching a Buffalo cab driver over a fare dispute. After being indicted on misdemeanor charges of assault, theft and harassment, Kane, along with his cousin, eventually plead guilty to non-criminal disorderly conduct charges.
You add those two incidents together, along with a few others involving Kane, 27, and let’s just say he appears to be a modern-day Ben Roethlisberger: In other words, he’s heading down a slippery-slope of behavior but has yet to be held accountable for anything.
In 2010, Roethlisberger was accused of raping a young woman in a bar in Milledgeville, Georgia. Like Kane, the Steelers quarterback and two-time Super Bowl champion was not charged with a crime due to insufficient evidence.
Insufficient evidence or not, the outrage over the Roethlisberger allegations was quite palpable. No. 7 had a notorious reputation around the Pittsburgh-area for years as a late-night partier and womanizer who often displayed an obnoxious sense of entitlement when dealing with the public, bar/restaurant owners, and servers.
And not long before he was accused of rape in Milledgeville, Roethisberger was accused of the same in Reno, Nevada, by a woman who claimed he raped her in a hotel room there back in 2008.
Needless to say, one of their star players having this unsavory reputation and being accused of such heinous crimes was bad business for the Steelers. It was also bad business for the NFL, which is why Roethlisberger, who was never charged with a crime, mind you, was suspended for the first six games of the 2010 season (it was later reduced to four) for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.
Roethlisberger soon went about rehabilitating his reputation and got married in the summer of 2011.
The reason I’m comparing Kane to Roethlisberger is because I find it interesting that there was and still is so much outrage over Roethlisberger, yet there’s hardly been a murmur about Kane.
Two years ago, Ray Rice, the Ravens star running back, was charged with assault and suspended two games for knocking out his then fiancee in the elevator of an Atlantic City hotel back in February of 2014.
Rice’s assault of his fiancee, along with a few other acts of domestic violence allegedly committed by its players, led to more protests against the NFL, as fans–especially female fans–accused the league of ignoring a huge problem with domestic violence and/or not taking it seriously.
The fact that Rice was only suspended for two games didn’t help matters.
In September of that year, when video proof surfaced of what really happened in the hotel elevator–Rice was not only seen knocking his fiancee out, but dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator–Baltimore released the running back, and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.
This didn’t help the outrage, as many fans showed open disdain for the NFL and even turned their backs on the popular league for good.
In October of 2014, Slava Voynov, the Los Angeles Kings young defenseman, was arrested and later charged with “one felony count of corporal injury to spouse with great bodily injury” and faced up to nine years in prison if convicted. According to the site Deadspin which posted Tweets from local L.A. reporters during Voynov’s preliminary hearing that December, officers who responded to the incident described Marla Varlamova’s account of what transpired and how her husband kicked, punched and choked her repeatedly. The officers also reported that she had a gash on her face that required stitches.
http://i.imgur.com/9pmtVOF.jpg
Patrick Kane, the Chicago Blackhawks’ star forward and the NHL’s scoring champion for the just completed 2015/2016 season, was named the Hart Trophy winner (league MVP) Wednesday evening during the league’s annual awards show.
No surprise that Kane would be so honored. After all, we’re talking about one of the great young players in hockey today and a three-time Stanley Cup champion.
However, as an NFL fan who has seen his favorite league get raked over the coals a lot in recent years because of various transgressions committed by its players, where was the outrage for Kane even being at the ceremony on Wednesday?
The reason I ask, is because last summer, Kane was accused of raping a 21-year old woman at his home in Buffalo, New York.
No charges were filed due to lack of evidence.
As an isolated incident, you can easily dismiss such claims as an attempt by a young woman to take advantage of a professional athlete. After all, in 2002, former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis was accused of rape, only to be later exonerated after it was revealed to be an attempt to blackmail the star running back.
But in Kane’s case, this wasn’t the first time he wound up in the news for things that had nothing to do with hockey. In 2009, shortly after his promising NHL career began, Kane was arrested for allegedly punching a Buffalo cab driver over a fare dispute. After being indicted on misdemeanor charges of assault, theft and harassment, Kane, along with his cousin, eventually plead guilty to non-criminal disorderly conduct charges.
You add those two incidents together, along with a few others involving Kane, 27, and let’s just say he appears to be a modern-day Ben Roethlisberger: In other words, he’s heading down a slippery-slope of behavior but has yet to be held accountable for anything.
In 2010, Roethlisberger was accused of raping a young woman in a bar in Milledgeville, Georgia. Like Kane, the Steelers quarterback and two-time Super Bowl champion was not charged with a crime due to insufficient evidence.
Insufficient evidence or not, the outrage over the Roethlisberger allegations was quite palpable. No. 7 had a notorious reputation around the Pittsburgh-area for years as a late-night partier and womanizer who often displayed an obnoxious sense of entitlement when dealing with the public, bar/restaurant owners, and servers.
And not long before he was accused of rape in Milledgeville, Roethisberger was accused of the same in Reno, Nevada, by a woman who claimed he raped her in a hotel room there back in 2008.
Needless to say, one of their star players having this unsavory reputation and being accused of such heinous crimes was bad business for the Steelers. It was also bad business for the NFL, which is why Roethlisberger, who was never charged with a crime, mind you, was suspended for the first six games of the 2010 season (it was later reduced to four) for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.
Roethlisberger soon went about rehabilitating his reputation and got married in the summer of 2011.
The reason I’m comparing Kane to Roethlisberger is because I find it interesting that there was and still is so much outrage over Roethlisberger, yet there’s hardly been a murmur about Kane.
Two years ago, Ray Rice, the Ravens star running back, was charged with assault and suspended two games for knocking out his then fiancee in the elevator of an Atlantic City hotel back in February of 2014.
Rice’s assault of his fiancee, along with a few other acts of domestic violence allegedly committed by its players, led to more protests against the NFL, as fans–especially female fans–accused the league of ignoring a huge problem with domestic violence and/or not taking it seriously.
The fact that Rice was only suspended for two games didn’t help matters.
In September of that year, when video proof surfaced of what really happened in the hotel elevator–Rice was not only seen knocking his fiancee out, but dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator–Baltimore released the running back, and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.
This didn’t help the outrage, as many fans showed open disdain for the NFL and even turned their backs on the popular league for good.
In October of 2014, Slava Voynov, the Los Angeles Kings young defenseman, was arrested and later charged with “one felony count of corporal injury to spouse with great bodily injury” and faced up to nine years in prison if convicted. According to the site Deadspin which posted Tweets from local L.A. reporters during Voynov’s preliminary hearing that December, officers who responded to the incident described Marla Varlamova’s account of what transpired and how her husband kicked, punched and choked her repeatedly. The officers also reported that she had a gash on her face that required stitches.