“For those who hate, that was for them,” Nazem Kadri told TNT in a post-game interview after his Colorado Avalanche beat the St. Louis Blues 6-3 to take a 3-1 series lead Monday.
Kadri, referring to his hat trick, wasn’t addressing contained hate allegedly shown to him by Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington, who Kadri said threw a water bottle at him after Game 3, when Kadri crashed into Binnington and knocked him out of the series with a knee injury.
No, this was a hate far deeper, far more widespread and far more appalling than any on-ice rivalry with a goaltender. Kadri reportedly received threats, many of them racially charged, following the Game 3 incident, to the point the NHL launched an investigation and asked St. Louis police to boost hotel security.
To get a sense of how serious the threats and hate speech directed against Kadri have been in the days since Game 3, his wife, Ashley Cave, posted a sample of the messages sent his way on the Jazzy Kadri Instagram account. The messages target Kadri’s Lebanese Canadian heritage and the fact he’s a practicing Muslim.
“This is just a small sample,” Cave wrote in the post. “There are many more. This behavior doesn’t belong in sports, or anywhere. If you are not condemning racism, then you are tolerating it. Praying for the world to be a better place with more love and less hate.”
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