Former head coach Joel Quenneville addresses his part in the 2010 Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault scandal

The man helped bring three Stanley Cups, but he needs to remain in exile.

First, you can never wash away that stain. The team literally discarded a human being's safety because they needed to win a championship more than anything else. The head coach could not be bothered to address his subordinate because preparing for the San Jose Shark was more important. It was a first-round pick too. In any other sport, a first rounder has something like that happen with an assistant coach, that coach is gone.

Second, he will forever have that issue of does he cares about his players' safety more than he cares about winning. Third, any organization willing to hire him will have to deal with the massive blowback of his hiring. The Hawks are still trying to win fans back from the scandal and there is no one left in the organization from that era.

Heck, opposing fanbases were enraged that the Hawks got the No. 1 overall pick last year and hoped Connor Bedard, who was five when this happened, would not join the Blackhawks in protest. You can expect the same to happen to whoever hires Quenneville.

Two things can be true at the same time. You can appreciate how Quenneville coached the Blackhawks to their greatest success, and you can also be disgusted with his explanation of the events that took place.

He can claim the Hawks were run like a law firm, but if he stood his ground, it would have been hard for the team to cover up what happened if they took a retaliatory response against Joel. People would have asked questions had the Hawks say, fired Quenneville after 2010 for asking too many questions.

That is why Quenneville must remain in exile. Sometimes the act of doing nothing or blowing it off has to have this severe type of consequence. What happened to Beach, and what Coach Q did or did not do, has risen to a harsh level of consequence.