“I know you guys love this stuff. Which is fine. It’s your job. But – and I’m not trying to insult you guys – but you have no idea what goes on in this room. You may hear stories once in a while, but that’s the way it should be -- things shouldn’t be getting out. … The day-to-day, and over the last three, four years, you guys really have no clue, so it’s hard for you guys to make judgments.”
That was Jets defenseman Mark Stuart, speaking to reporters about the Evander Kane situation, which continues to develop.
While Kane has received his fair share of blame for what’s happened this week, so too have his teammates for allowing things to get to this point.
Some in the media have charged the Jets with bullying, with others drawing comparisons to what happened to football player Jonathan Martin when he was with the Miami Dolphins -- a situation that resulted in the commissioning of a 144-page “workplace conduct” report (PDF).
Stuart’s argument is that anyone who hasn’t been in the Jets’ room on a day-to-day basis for the last few years doesn’t have close to all the information required to make an educated judgment on who’s to blame.
And let’s face it, he’s got a pretty sound point. What do we really know about what happened Tuesday with Kane? All that’s been reported is that he showed up during the day in sweat pants, his teammates weren’t impressed so they threw his clothes in the shower, Kane got upset, and then didn’t play later that night against the Canucks. There are conflicting reports about who, exactly, made the call on his status for the game.
So...
Has this sort of thing happened before? We have no idea.
What other methods, if any, had the Jets tried to change Kane’s ways? We have no idea.
Did Kane feel bullied by what happened Tuesday? We have no idea.
Has he ever felt bullied? Again. No idea.
Remember that the only reason reporters started digging into this story is because Kane didn’t play against the Canucks. If he had, would we know about his clothes getting thrown in the shower? Yeah, probably not.
More information will be coming out about all this. We still haven’t even heard from Kane. But we probably won’t ever know the full story, with all its subtleties, because as much as we’d like to be, we’re not in the room.