Rather than talking about P.K. Subban's double overtime Game 1 winner, or the electrifying hour and a half of playoff hockey that preceded it, the hockey world spent the bulk of the time before Game 2 talking about the racist comments it generated.

Well, not so much the racism itself. Not even the victim of it.

The primary concern here was the city of Boston, wherefrom this handful of despicable comments came.

Fortunately, when Subban spoke on the issue after Game 2, he said exactly what the good people of Boston wanted to hear.

"First things first," he began, wisely, knowing where the heart of the issue lay for many, "the Boston Bruins are an Original Six franchise. They’ve been around for a very long time. They’re respected. It’s completely unfair for anybody to point the finger at the organization or the fan base."

He closed by saying the same thing two more times.

And with that, Boston's long national nightmare was put to bed, absolved by the victim, as was his responsibility, apparently. Subban was praised for his powerful words, for his class, and a great sigh of relief poured into Boston harbor like tea from the patriots. Their ordeal was finished.

P.K. Subban's ordeal, however -- the one of a black player in a league that still, in 2014, has absolutely no idea what to do with him -- continues unabated.

There was more going on here than just a handful of racists being racist in a racist vacuum. There's a serious underlying issue at play: hockey's relationship with its black players is progressing slowly -- too slowly. That got missed, as the controversy devolved into Boston fans washing their hands of it while loudly, aggressively, invoking the No True Scotsman fallacy.

"This guy's not a fan!"

"Yes he is."

"He's not a TRUE fan, though."

But of course he is. There's no morality clause in fandom, and the sooner we accept that the jerks walk and cheer among us, the sooner we might be able to move on to hockey's problematic relationship with its players of colour.

The coverage of P.K. Subban, let alone the rest of the league's visibly ethnic players (and honestly, any group of foreigners, for that matter, and especially Russians), remains slanted. It's difficult to put a finger on. All that Subban and the other players of colour know is that the rules are different for them.

Subban casually pointed this out after Shawn Thornton sprayed him with a water bottle from the bench in Game 4. “I don’t know if it’s part of the game," he said, of the move. "I’m sure if it that was me who did it, that would be a different story. It would probably be on the news for the next three days."

He's right. The coverage takes on a different tone with Subban. Consider the squirm-inducing column from the great Ken Dryden that ran in the Toronto Star over the weekend. It opened like this:

Hey Mom! Mom! Mom, look at me! I’m doing a somersault. I’m hopping on one foot. I’m scratching my left ear.

— P.K. Subban craves attention.

If only they wouldn’t shoot to one corner, deflect the puck to the other, make me split to one side, then back again, and throw up my glove to the top corner to catch it. It’d be a lot simpler.

— Carey Price prefers to avoid it.

This is a column that's supposed to be singing the praises of Subban and Price. Instead, it opens by painting one as a mature, team-first guy, and the other as an attention-seeking little boy.

Part of this is Dryden's goalie bias. He's a legend of the position, and he sees the netminder as a special kind of hero. But Dryden is also operating with a racial bias, even if he doesn't recognize it.

He continues, going so far as to actually note Subban's race in the piece -- a rare, helpful clue that there's something bubbling under the surface. After praising Price as understated, in control of his emotions, and spare in his movement, we get this:

Subban is his antithesis. Hey Mom, hey opponents, hey world, I’m here. His size, the fluid, forceful grace of the way he moves, his black skin in a mostly white-skinned game, his confident, risky style. Subban could be only scratching his left ear, and people would still notice.

It's true about the ear-scratching. It's not often that hockey fans see a black man scratching his left ear. That is, unless they also watch one or more of the other major sports, where black players populate the game to an extent that their skin colour really no longer bears mentioning.

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