As Joel Quenneville and the NHL move on, don’t forget what they’re moving on from

Posted October 20, 2025 3:24 pm

By Mark Lazerus

Before we get into the hockey of it all, the relative frivolity of a Ducks-Blackhawks game in October, let’s begin with the most important thing. The actions — or more accurately, the inaction — of John McDonough, Joel Quenneville, Stan Bowman, Al MacIsaac, Jay Blunk and Kevin Cheveldayoff led to a child in Michigan getting sexually abused.

There’s no getting around that, no burying that. The leadership of the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 was told that assistant video coach Brad Aldrich was preying on young men and decided not to do anything about it, putting the Stanley Cup first, and as a result, Aldrich was free to prey on more young men. Which he did and was convicted of criminal sexual misconduct with a minor in 2013.

None of those men went to the police. None of those men went to human resources. None of those men confronted Aldrich. None of those men pressed McDonough, the boss. None of those men stood up and did the right thing. Nothing can ever change that.

You might be sick of reading that. You might want to just move on, to put it in the past, to allow yourself to lose yourself in the hockey of it all. But you shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. We can’t. It’s part of the story of the Blackhawks now, part of the story of those men. And it always will be.

Most of them have paid a price. McDonough, MacIsaac and Blunk are out of the league and surely never will return. McDonough, the man in that room with the most authority, a man who burnished his own image as the savior of the Blackhawks, a man who never met a camera or a microphone he didn’t like, has disappeared into oblivion, his legacy shot to hell. Bowman spent three seasons out of the league until the Edmonton Oilers made him their general manager. Quenneville spent nearly four full seasons in exile until the Anaheim Ducks made him their coach.

Those are sizable chunks of their careers lost. That’s not nothing. Both Quenneville and Bowman have also taken steps to make amends with Kyle Beach, to learn from their failures. Whether that’s sufficient, well, that’s up to each individual hockey fan to decide. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman decided they had done their time, and Edmonton and Anaheim wasted little time in putting them right back in the positions from which they were ousted — general manager and head coach. No halfway house necessary.

And so, there was Quenneville on Sunday afternoon, his hair and mustache a few shades whiter than when we last saw him, standing outside the visitors dressing room at the United Center, three or four good strides away from the door to his old office — the office from which he orchestrated the Blackhawks’ golden age, the office he used to nap in every game day, the office he used to celebrate in more nights than not. He was first asked about his lineup on Sunday, and he said he’d be rolling with seven defensemen. The hockey of it all.

Then he was asked about being back after “a lot happened.” To his credit, Quenneville didn’t duck the issue. He said his time away “made me a better person.” He said he “could have been more forceful or asked more questions and gotten more involved in the details of what happened” involving Aldrich. He said he addressed it immediately with his players after he was hired by the Ducks, preaching “accountability,” and said “the players’ health and safety is priority No. 1.”

And when asked if he expected some sort of acknowledgment in the game that night, he offered his trademark, “We’ll see.” There was none. There won’t be. The Blackhawks are spending the year celebrating their centennial season, and Quenneville — as big a name, face and personality as any in the franchise’s long history — won’t be a part of it. Asked about that, if his relationship with the team was reparable, he said he had “moved on” and is “part of the game and the league” but that his championship era has “got to be a part of it.” Nothing new. Nothing salacious. Nothing all that newsworthy.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time Quenneville had been back at the United Center. When he returned as head coach of the Florida Panthers on Jan. 21, 2020, he held a full-blown news conference thrown together in an auxiliary locker room across the hall. He got a tribute video on the scoreboard and a roaring standing ovation. He waved and said, “Thank you.” Afterward, he called it “special,” saying, “It was kind of like saying thank you to me, and I was thanking them.”

But this was the first time Quenneville had returned since he was essentially forced to resign as Panthers coach in light of the revelations in the Jenner & Block report, in which Quenneville was painted — largely by Bowman — as cold, restless and indifferent in light of the accusations levied against Aldrich after the 2010 Western Conference final.

There were just a handful of reporters in Sunday’s pregame media interviews. No makeshift news conference room required. The Ducks have not been bombarded by interview requests since the hiring. And Quenneville, perhaps surprisingly, was greeted mostly with indifference when he was announced along with the Ducks’ starters about 10 minutes before puck drop — a smattering of tepid cheers, a smattering of tepid “Qs.”

That was all he got. The Blackhawks can’t do videos and tributes and lingering camera shots on the videoboard; they know better. But Quenneville remains a hero, an icon, to a sizable portion of the Chicago fan base. That’s their right. Every fan decides where his or her line is. Every fan decides for him or herself how much punishment is enough.

The hockey world, like Quenneville, seems to have moved on. And this felt like turning the last page on the darkest chapter in Blackhawks history, the last time anyone who was in that room will be obligated to address what happened in 2010. Beach’s lawsuit was settled in December 2021, and Beach seems to have gotten at least some measure of closure with Bowman and Quenneville. Bettman reinstated Quenneville and Bowman in July 2024.

The Blackhawks settled a second lawsuit brought by a former player, known only as John Doe, last month. Bowman made it through his introductory news conference and the scrutiny of a Stanley Cup Final, and successfully dodged a subpoena in the John Doe civil suit. Now Quenneville has been hired and introduced. Making it through one last interrogation in Chicago was probably the end of this story for Quenneville, maybe for the hockey world at large.

Quenneville is back where he feels he belongs, behind an NHL bench. He has an up-and-coming team in Anaheim, one which he compared favorably with the up-and-coming team he took over in Chicago in 2008, and the early returns are promising. Four years away haven’t dulled Quenneville’s passion, nor has the game passed him by. The Ducks are fun and fast, and Quenneville has resumed his chase of Scotty Bowman’s all-time coaching wins record, making millions of dollars to do so.

Hockey has moved on. Always does. And Quenneville’s on-ice legacy was secured long before anyone outside of Blackhawks die-hards had ever heard of Brad Aldrich.

Well down the road, when Quenneville is inevitably elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, we’ll remember the championships, the mustache and the cult of personality, the spittle-laden fiery rants at officials, the innovative offensive and defensive tactics that helped usher in the modern era of the NHL, where speed and skill rule. We’ll remember the hockey of it all.

But we should also remember Kyle Beach. We should also remember John Doe. And we should always remember that child in Michigan. The story — the true legacy — is incomplete without them.