Rocky Wirtz may consider it “old business,” but the Blackhawks’ sexual assault cover-up will very much also dictate his current and future business.
The Hawks chairman refusing to talk about the subject won’t make it go anywhere.
Wirtz’s already-infamous Wednesday meltdown in itself has made the scandal quite present. Videos of his irate reactions to easy-to-anticipate questions — about how the Hawks have improved their culture since 2010, and since last summer — have gone viral, reviving the hockey world’s memory of and anger at the Hawks over the scandal. For no discernible reason, Wirtz manufactured yet another public-relations disaster for his franchise.
Even putting Wednesday aside, though, the fallout from the scandal has continued — and should continue for years — to headline the list of concerns for an organization that sits in shambles on every front.
They have no permanent coach. They have no permanent general manager — directly as a result of the scandal. (And although they might have one soon, Wednesday’s debacle might have lost them a few possible candidates.)
They’re a mess on the ice, with just 16 wins through 46 games — their fewest at this point in a season in 16 years — after suffering a brutal 5-0 home loss against the Wild on Wednesday following Wirtz’s tantrum. Their beloved old core is almost gone; they have little game-changing talent in the prospect pipeline; and they have no first-round pick in the coming draft.
Attendance is lagging, too, with Wednesday marking their second-smallest crowd in 14 years (their smallest came in November). The announced total of 16,373 tickets sold seemed to significantly overstate the number of fans actually in seats. The remaining 19 home games probably won’t be much better; roughly 2,000-3,000 tickets for each were listed on Stubhub as of Thursday, for prices as low as $20.
Based on the mood of the fan base at the moment — with many longtime supporters fed up with either the scandal, the losing, the high ticket prices with little resale value or all three — attendance will be even worse next season. Business president Jaime Faulkner even acknowledged that trend Wednesday (one of many comments Wirtz’s explosion rendered irrelevant by comparison).
“Attendance is definitely not where we’d like it, definitely lower than it was before,” Faulkner said. “Thankfully, we’re very lucky we’ll still have the fifth-highest attendance in the league [this season]. But it hasn’t been easy for our season-ticket holders. If we want to create value for them, the first thing we have to do is put a winning product on the ice. Until we do that, it’s going to be hard.”
It’s also going to be hard to put out that winning product. It’s probably not going to happen soon. And as attendance goes — which, currently, is steadily down — so too go community partnerships, business sponsorships, advertising revenue, television viewership, and so on. Those areas all have to be worrying the Hawks’ business department right now.
Even on the legal front — an issue that, in December, seemed finally resolved — the scandal continues to create more new issues for Wirtz. A Chicago-based lawyer said Thursday he’s planning to file three new lawsuits against the Hawks on behalf of three other people victimized by ex-Hawks video coach Brad Aldrich and the ensuing assault cover-up.
One thing the Hawks did maintain Wednesday is a 0% success rate this century at avoiding embarrassment with town-hall meetings.
Way back in 2000 and 2001, former GM Mike Smith was interrogated by fans — and fought back just as unprofessionally — over the Hawks’ penny-pinching approach of that era.
Two decades later, the Hawks brought back the format, eliminated the opportunity for fans to ask live, unscreened questions and still made Smith’s exchanges look tame. After all, there’s a big difference between defending Boris Mironov’s fitness and defending a culture that enabled sexual assault.
Comically, everything Wirtz said has had the exact opposite effect. The “not going to talk about [it]” line? It’s all anyone is talking about. The “old business” description? It hatched more new business, and not the good kind.
And the “moving on” quip? Even Wirtz himself must either already know, or will quickly learn, he — and his bank account, and the hockey franchise he owns — won’t be able to do that for a long, long time.