It is now official that Carter Hart, Cal Foote, Michael McLeod and Dillon Dube are facing sexual assault charges in London, Ontario for an incident that took place in June of 2018 after an event honoring the 2018 Canadian World Juniors team. Alex Formenton, who plays in Europe, was also charged. All five have denied the charges and plan to plead innocent. The London police will hold a news conference on Monday to address the case.
If one were in a conspiracy kind of mood, and didn’t trust Hockey Canada, the NHL or the London Police, fully — and all three entities at one point or another have done their best to make all of this go away quietly — there is one aspect of these charges to the four NHLers that is just a little curious. There is nothing concrete, and this is just spitting in the wind, but all four of McLeod, Dube, Foote and Hart are in the last year of their contracts.
If one wanted to play it out, just to do so, it is likely that by the time that any possible trial started, all of these players would be out of contract, and thus, the NHL could simply wash their hands of them. Had they been charged last year — remember, the original lawsuit was filed nearly two years ago and settled a month later by Hockey Canada — then these players would have gone on trial while still under contract, forcing teams and the league into an even more awkward position than they’re in now.
And this thing has dragged out mysteriously at times. Hockey Canada launched a couple of investigations, one of them bordering on a sham, as no player was compelled to cooperate. Only after it became public that Hockey Canada had settled this and another sexual assault lawsuit, and had a separate slush fund for settling sexual assault cases at least partially set up by the dues parents pay for youth hockey in Canada, did they launch a real investigation that compelled players to cooperate under the threat of never playing for the national team again. The findings of that were held up by appeals until very recently.
The London police passed on this case once before, in the aftermath of the initial incident in 2018, when they were notified by Hockey Canada. Only in the uproar of the lawsuit becoming public did they reopen their investigation. Given how London as a town is tied up in junior hockey, with perhaps the most famous team in all of the CHL being the London Knights, it is not hard to see the police being more interested in protecting Hockey Canada and hockey players than the alleged victim. It is a familiar tale.
The NHL has been conducting its own investigation, which it has been extremely mum on. It would be unusual for the league, or really any entity other than law enforcement, to come forward with the results of their investigation before the legal process has played out. But the NHL is probably only too happy to not be involved as long as it can be. Which extends out when all of these players’ contracts run out in June.
The original lawsuit was also filed against eight unnamed players, not five. It is just as likely, probably more so, that the evidence the police have can only convincingly charge five players. If you were the mischievous sort, you might think the other three were on long-term contracts. There are currently five players in the NHL from that 2018 team who have contracts that run beyond this season.
There is nothing concrete or even close to it to suggest that the police, Hockey Canada and the NHL got together to put these five up. We’ll find out more, we hope, on Monday. It’s just out there if you want it.
Hope in Baltimore?
News broke Tuesday night that the Orioles will escape the clutches of the Angelos family for the low, low price of $1.72 billion. Baltimore product David Rubenstein will be the one getting controlling interest, though there is a group assembled by him.
Orioles fans will hope that this finally means the O’s can be run like a big-boy team, as even as they’ve sat out the winter, essentially, they are still poised for a long run of being contenders. They’re coming off a 101-win season with exciting young players bubbling over the lid. What they need is to augment this amount of young talent with proven MLB stars, especially in the rotation. The simple willingness to pay for it is all the Orioles have missed. The money is certainly there, given that the other side of the coin of young talent is that it’s all very cheap. The O’s payroll right now is projected to be $81 million.
We don’t have any idea what Rubenstein’s plan or inclination to be something more than the pisshead that John Angelos was. But given that Rubenstein has been chasing ownership of a couple teams in the mid-Atlantic — he tried to buy both the Commanders and Nationals — there is some hope that this is something of a passion play for him. Merely having anything of a pulse regarding the Orioles would be a step up from Angelos The Younger.
