Devils Fan Solidarity Post (In Light of the News)

*I’m gonna sincere post for a moment, and I hope this sub appreciates where I’m coming from. I wanna note that, although I have my own suspicions about what went down in the cases I refer to in this post, I’m not looking to litigate the ethics of “innocent until proven guilty”, hypothetical scenarios, etc. Sure, technically they’re all just allegations, and I’ll just leave it at that.*

I was blessed to grow up in Jersey in the 90s, and my family started following the Devils early in that decade. Talk about timing. Amazing memories of walking among “the cattle” over that rickety bridge to games at Brendan Byrne/Contintental. I then kind of tuned out for basically the past 15+ years, only very peripherally following them (or any sports).

Cut to 2022. Stealing my friend’s maxed out Hulu account, I kept noticing live Devils games on, and started tuning in at the beginning of last season out of sheer chance. Again, what timing. I was immediately compelled by this current team and was fully Devil-pilled. I caught up with the players, the coaches and org, the rebuild, the whole story. It has been immensely gratifying (and infuriating) following this organization at this point in time.

Reckoning with the fact that athletes are human beings as an adult is interesting. For someone like me, so far, that has mostly been appreciating how much these kids put their bodies on the line, and just having experienced the world a little more, imagining the complexity of interpersonal dynamics and politics in the locker room and the organization. Violent behavior off the ice, though, is something I haven’t really confronted until today.

I had no idea about the 2018 Hockey Canada scandal until this past week. I’m glad I didn’t. McLeod has been maybe my favorite forward since I tuned back in. My dad and I have bonded again over the Devils, and we both love what we saw as his Randy McKay-adjacent energy. I think to many of us, he has been one of the bright spots of this last season or so, especially given the struggles in other areas of the team.

It was easy for me as a kid to know I “hated” NHL goons that my dad also hated. Even though there were real life consequences from rough players for their on-ice targets, these were still avatars, not complete people. Dale Hunter might has well have been a cartoon villain to me. I, of course, wasn’t considering cultural problems among players, systemic issues at the NHL, or anything like that.

I know those of you who have diligently watched sports your whole lives probably have a much more sophisticated view of players and organizations than I do, and you know how to navigate these unfortunate moments. I’m not naive. I mentioned in another thread that I just learned about [similar allegations against Scott Stevens in the late 80s](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/05/15/4-capitals-accused-of-rape/97bc50b8-0bf0-493c-b7d1-d8a08591ef6f/). I asked myself how I would have navigated being a Devils fan as an adult in the 90s had I known about that.

“Kill your idols”, they say. I’ve had to confront these kinds of feelings about plenty of artists whose work I love and turn out to be, to various extents, \*miserable\* human beings.

All this rambling is to say I just want to express solidarity with Devils fans who are feeling similarly sick in the midst of all this. I’m going to mourn the loss of a young player I found so exciting. I have no issue doing that. I’m going to keep following this squad and rooting for them. But I hope we can all continue to strive for a world where the players, the clubs, and the league ultimately put people over profit. (I said *strive*.) I hope members of the fan base can be guided by their moral compass above all else so that we can continue to enjoy the bright moments of hockey without being weighed down by darker elements at play. This is the real world, of course, but the solidarity among fans can be something beautiful, and I hope the Devils fan base doesn’t tear itself apart over this.

by TediousSpark