Riley Tufte was called up to the Dallas Stars last week to play on their fourth line. He saw a few minutes of playing time in the victories against the Red Wings and the Flyer, but the big game was going to be his home game against the Minnesota Wild, and he was going to watch his first NHL game. It was a dream come true for him, and he told the press how excited he was to come home and for his family to watch him on the ice.
Great story, right? Rick Bowness scratched him for no apparent reason. It would have been a big ask for him to go into a big game like today, he said after the game. Bowness chose to shirk any responsibility and claim that he had not been the one to make the decision after making some clearly fabricated excuses about speed and energy. Right.
This is going to make you feel bad. Tufte told reporters the morning of the game that he had dreamed of playing in the NHL when he was a kid with diabetes, laying in a hospital bed with a view of the Minnesota Wild arena outside his window.
He said that it was pretty crazy the amount of people that reached out. Gah. After the Stars dropped the game 7-2, the lineup decision and total lack of accountability from Bowness are not a good look. Tufte bought so many friends and family tickets for the game with the help of his opponent and friend, Wild forward Nick Bjugstad. It is difficult to find the words that describe how shitty this is and how much you dislike it, and how it would have triggered this lineup switch.
This isn't the first time a power-hungry NHL coach has benched a hometown player. The point seems to be the cruelty. Spezza was not allowed to take the ice in his hometown against his former team in the Maple Leafs home opener in 2019. Babcock said that he benched the center to give him more time to kill penalties. You can get more comfortable after 17 years in the league. The rationale for benching Spezza was condemned by former Maple Leafs players.
Babcock had disrespected a veteran player before. When Mike Modano was 1,499 games, he was scratched for the last regular season game as the head coach of the Red Wings. You have to have a certain amount of ambition to get these coaching jobs in the first place, but to let that desire for power over other adults consume you is probably a sign that you don't want to be a coach.
The NHL has had a rough month, with a slap on the wrist to the Chicago Blackhawks for covering up an employee's sexual assault of a player, and a new investigation into the behavior of the GM and president of the Anaheim Ducks. Sports are about more than the game on the field and alienating players and fans is not going to help the sport as a whole.
