What we have here is a conflict between two goods. It's good and fine for The Athletic to demand payment to see their material. (Incidentally, from a strictly legal standpoint it's bad and not fine to violate their copyright by reposting -- which is, in fact, republishing -- anything more than a very small amount of material that might be considered "fair use," as we say here; I presume there's a similar doctrine in Canada.)
It's also good and fine that we have community discussions here that are open to anybody (since this site is not behind a paywall thanks to Rick & Co.'s endless generosity).
The conflict comes when people who are subscribers to TA want to discuss articles in-depth that us non-subscribers aren't privy to. Although nobody intends it, that sets up a not-so-good dynamic: non-subscribers like me can't really participate fully in the conversation.
I'm not saying that subscribers to TA shouldn't post about what they read on there. I'm just stating a fact that any subsequent conversations are qualitatively different than ones using information everyone has free access to.
And no, CTB, I don't agree that we all "should" subscribe to TA. Why should I if I don't want to? I've got plenty of other more important things to spend my limited money on, especially since I can get free high-qual hockey analysis all over the place (not the least of which is here). God bless TA and their paymodel if they can make it fly, but I don't particularly care if they succeed or not.