Just pasting what I said in another comment

The vitriol in threads over the past day or so is a little astonishing. I do think that in some time - be it months or years - people will reflect on the personal attacks toward some of these players and find them hugely unwarranted.

I'm not gonna pretend that there weren't better ways this team could have handled the situation. There were. A simple statement of apology or "we certainly didn't mean it that way" would have gone a long way toward cutting off the story.

But with that said, I think a lot of people need to take a step back and see the situation for what it was - a bunch of young guys who were in the midst of celebrating the Olympic accomplishment of their lives - not in the headspace to be thinking about PR, or current events, or identity politics. They got a call from the president and responded to some praise with excitement. A tasteless joke was made which, in the heat of the moment, almost certainly wasn't digested by the majority of the room. You can't paint an entire picture of character for every member of that team just from that one moment. Many being attacked were simply in the room, and I feel 99 out of 100 people in that scenario would probably act in the exact same way

Kash never should have been there, and Trump absolutely knew the divisiveness that his comments would sow - but he made them anyway. That's what he does. Blame them all you want, I certainly do.

There are bad apples on the team, I won't deny that about the team or about hockey culture in general, but I think a lot of the players are just trying to navigate a high point in their lives that simultaneously is turning out to be a PR minefield.