Dhe Montreal Canadiens were prepared. And that’s already the problem with this story. At the weekend the NHL draft was due, in which the teams from the strongest ice hockey league in the world share the best talent among themselves every year. Montreal voted 18-year-old Canadian Logan Mailloux at the end of the first round – and immediately published a statement. Of course, the Canadiens knew there was going to be an outcry. Mailloux last played in Sweden, where she photographed a woman having sex against her will and sent the picture to his teammates.
The woman went to the police and Mailloux was fined. Before the weekend, he wrote on Twitter that the NHL teams should not select him, that he did not deserve it and that he needed time to develop and regain confidence. The Canadiens didn’t care what manager Marc Bergevin justified with the defender’s athletic qualities.
Three Germans were drawn
Since then, there has been a turmoil in the ice hockey world. Once again, the tenor of newspaper and online commentary went on to say that the whitest and manliest of the big leagues in North America is showing that its diversity programs are just marketing. What is the obligation for a signal to young women? What kind of thing to young men? So you can shake a woman’s life forever, but that’s not a problem in the NHL if you play ice hockey well enough? With the record champions, of all places? The Canadiens should be “ashamed,” commented The Athletic.
From a German point of view, the draft was unspectacular. No comparison to the three previous years, in which local talents were each drawn in the first round, Moritz Seider (2019 in sixth place) and Tim Stützle (2020 in third place) even far ahead.
This time the 32 NHL teams selected three Germans: Edmonton moved defender Luca Munzenberger from Cologne’s U20s to position 90, Washington moved Berlin striker Haakon Hänelt to 151, Carolina to goalkeeper Nikita Quapp from Krefeld to 187. A contract is not connected Players from the lower rounds make it into the NHL much less often than those who are drawn at the beginning. In the next few years the trio will have to prove to themselves whether they really have what it takes to play in the elite league.
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