It's real easy to say the players should have gone to the police, but you can't just show up at a police station and say, "I heard so-and-so was involved in such-and-such against some other person who is not me and who I only know from a fellow-employee standpoint at best. Can you do something about it?" It only takes a sliver of common sense to know that the police need more than just a word-of-mouth rumor to actually act, especially when you are not the victim him or herself.
If you want to blame the players for not going to HR, that argument would have a little more merit, but HR already knew about it anyway. If Cheveldayoff was blame-free in this situation, as the NHL deemed, then you can't blame the players who were in an even lower rank, right?
Like I said before, I blame all the upper management; I support all the firings that have taken place; I would have even supported firing Chevy, but I understand the NHL's argument. But I think blaming the players themselves is a bridge too far because again, all they had was a locker room rumor.
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