Red #23 explained

Scott Sepich of the Portland Oregonian has finally gotten to the bottom of what happened in the big "red #23" mess in Portland a few weeks back.

Basically, Alessio Bertaggia (#23 himself) is the son of a Swiss coach whom Portland coach/GM Mike Johnston knew, and whom was in Portland for a coaching clinic. The kid asked if he could take part in training camp, and the Hawks said yes after clearing that with the WHL. The catch is, the WHL told the Hawks not to use Bertaggia in any formal, "official" scrimmages in camp.

For whatever reasons, the Hawks did use Bertaggia in an official scrimmage and that's when all heck broke loose of course.

After hearing the explanation, it is 100% believable in my opinion, and it is highly likely that whatever punishment the WHL dished out on the team is sufficient....we don't know what the punishment was of course, but I think we can mostly all agree that this was an unfortunate case of bad judgement and not of any sinister intent here. No extremely severe punishment warranted, in my opinion anyway.

The one remaining question that lingers over the whole incident is, why didn't the Hawks just explain what happened right off the bat? To me, THAT part made the whole situation bigger than it needed to be. The whole story could have been dead and buried two weeks ago already instead of lingering around like this.

In any case, it's dead and buried for me now.