Hockey culture is changing, we’re told. Instances of abuse or bullying by coaches are to be reported and addressed, not swept under the rug.

Hazing incidents, once commonplace, are no longer tolerated. We take them seriously now, as abuses of authority.

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What to make, then, of TSN Jets television analyst Kevin Sawyer’s tone-deaf comments during a recent broadcast, and the silence that’s ensued?

Sawyer, a former player and coach, described, with some glee, what sounded like a junior hockey hazing incident during the Jan. 4 broadcast of the Jets at Minnesota.

Sawyer had coached Wild defenceman Jared Spurgeon with the Western League’s Spokane Chiefs.

“Favourite story of Jared Spurgeon,” Sawyer began. “He was a 15-year-old. Two months into the season we saran-wrapped him to a pillar in the arena, about six feet up in the air… he was tiny. He looked like he was 12.”

Sawyer was an assistant coach with Spokane at the time, the 2005-06 season.

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Spurgeon was a WHL rookie, small in stature but going places. Three summers later he’d be a fifth-round draft pick on his way to a 10-year NHL career – and counting.

“As someone who’s been through hazing, what was talked about on the broadcast isn’t a laughing matter,” Akim Aliu told the Winnipeg Sun on Tuesday. “It was sickening to hear, and it has no place in the game.”

Aliu is the man who spurred what some are calling hockey’s #MeToo movement with his tweets back in November, about then-Calgary head coach Bill Peters, his old coach in the AHL.

Photo by Al Charest/Postmedia

Peters was the first domino to fall when the NHL’s reckoning with abusive coaches began. He resigned from the Flames for behaviour that included using racial slurs and kicking and punching players on the bench prior to his time in Calgary.

As disturbing as Aliu found Sawyer’s comments, he reacted like he’d been punched in the gut when he learned who Spokane’s head coach was at the time.

None other than Peters.

“No way,” Aliu said. “Holy geez. Wow. You just hit me with a big surprise there. It just seems like it’s a chain of events that have followed him and his rise in hockey.”

Photo by Lorraine Hjalte / Calgary Herald

Aliu wasn’t the only one shocked by what he heard on that Jets broadcast.

Sawyer’s cavalier description of the Spurgeon incident immediately drew a harsh response on social media, and it continues to this day.

“Who was the announcer who thought it would be a good idea to brag about abuse of a minor during an NHL hockey game?” former NHLer Daniel Carcillo, an outspoken advocate for players’ mental health, said via Twitter on Monday, while posting a video of Sawyer’s comments.

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Scott Campbell, a former Winnipeg Jet, couldn’t believe what he heard on Jan. 4, calling it “jaw-dropping.”

“A story you tell in a bar with your old friends and shake your head at when you’ve had a few maybe, but not while you’re on tv,” Campbell tweeted that day.

Sawyer and TSN, though, are pretending it never happened. Both declined repeated requests for comment, both last week and again on Monday. No apology or explanation of any kind.

Spurgeon, through a Minnesota media relations staff member, also indicated his unwillingness to talk about the incident, as did a former Spokane teammate.

A request for comment from the Jets came up empty, too.

Why the deafening silence?

People are rightfully wondering what Spurgeon was feeling that day and if, under a coach like Peters, it was a one-off or a sign of a troubling culture on that team.

More immediately, what was Sawyer thinking, relating the story to tens of thousands of Jets fans, no doubt many of them kids, and making it sound like that kind of treatment of teenagers by adults is not only OK, but amusing?

And what are the tall foreheads at TSN thinking with the decision to hope this just goes away, instead of getting out in front of it with an explanation or some mitigating circumstances, assuming there are any?

Perhaps the whole thing was innocent, and didn’t offend, threaten or humiliate anyone. Nobody watching and listening on Jan. 4 knows that, though.

Aliu doesn’t see any situation where what Sawyer described was OK.

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“What he was implying was pretty egregious stuff,” Aliu said. “The sad part is even when it’s out there, there’s light on it, people don’t want to talk about it. They end it. How are we going to put a stop to it if this isn’t on the forefront and people aren’t talking and expressing their views on it?”

That conversation could help kids and coaches learn the difference between what’s an acceptable joke and what crosses the line.

Tuesday marked 10 days since Sawyer’s story poisoned the airwaves.

That nobody seems interested in cleaning it up only makes him and TSN look small and out of touch with the new culture of hockey.

Speaking out not easy for Aliu

Not everyone wants to be front-and-centre in a cause that confronts the establishment.

Akim Aliu realizes speaking out isn’t for everyone, even if they have been victims of abuse or hazing.

“If I’d say it’s been easy, I’d be lying to you,” Aliu said. “It’s been super-tough, with the backlash. You don’t really even understand why people are mad at you. You’re coming out about being abused or mistreated by coaches, about racial taunts, and somehow people find your fault in all that. Which is sad.

“And it makes victims not want to come out because they don’t want to deal with it. But it’s a conversation that needs to be had.”

Aliu, 30, forced hockey to look itself in the mirror by exposing the racism and verbal abuse he went through as a professional.

His tweets set off a chain of events that included the resignation of one NHL head coach (Bill Peters, Calgary), the suspension of an assistant (Marc Crawford, Chicago), and the NHL’s adoption of a zero-tolerance policy towards racism, bullying and attempts to keep incidents quiet.

Aliu has also been outspoken about hazing at the junior level.

Hearing TSN Jets analyst Kevin Sawyer, a former coach, casually recount the tying of a 15-year-old to a pillar turned his stomach.

“It seems like you’re belittling somebody,” Aliu said. “It seems like you’re bullying… you’re singled out. I don’t really see any sort of excuse for that.”

pfriesen@postmedia.com

Twitter: @friesensunmedia