The Athletic Hockey Show - Hockey Canada players found not guilty in sexual assault case

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Mark Lazerus and Dan Robson discuss the Hockey Canada sexual assault case that concluded today in London, Ontario and give their reaction to the not guilty verdicts for the five former players, Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote.Host: Mark LazerusWith: Dan RobsonExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello and welcome to the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Mark Lazarus, joined by Dan Robson, to talk about the conclusion of a seven-year process that today led to five members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior Hockey Team, Carter Hart, Michael McLeod, Dylan DuBay, Calfoot, and Alex Formanton, being found not guilty on charges of sexual assault following a celebration event in 2018 in London, Ontario. Now, this was a trial that drew incredible media attention in Canada, saw a mistrial declared,

saw two juries dismissed. The judge take over the case on her own. It's been quite a road to get here, Dan. You've been following it since day one. You and Katie Strang have a piece out right now on the athletic about how this was supposed to be a reckoning for hockey. What do you see now that it's in the rearview mirror? I think there's a lot of questions that are going to follow now.

So, I mean, the question, the central question of guilt in the court of law has been answered. The question now for hockey at large is what comes next. And I think that comes at all levels of hockey. What comes next with the NHL, with NHL teams and professional hockey and what happens with these particular players. But then also a question of the culture of hockey and how it grapples with what was a very high-profile conversation about hockey culture in general and specifically in relation to misogyny and sense of entitlements and all of these things that we've seen over the years in repeated allegations against junior hockey players in particular, coming back to the, coming through the forefront, what happens next?

I mean, this by far was the most high profile view at something that we couldn't look away from. So what happens now, I think, is the question that we'll all be discussing for some time. Yeah, I mean, this is a conversation we've been having for years now in hockey, from hazing and junior hockey to racism in hockey, to sexism in hockey, to the welcoming or not welcoming of LGBTQ fans, to this kind of history of sexual assault among entitled young men. And I think a lot of us were waiting for that to kind of come to the forefront, but it really seemed like over the course of this trial,

it went from these five men being on trial to EM. that's how we know the accuser by Canadian law, to her being on trial. And today was just, it was, it was hours of Justice Maria Carossia of Ontario Superior Court, just eviscerating her, you know, saying that her testimony was not credible or reliable. I mean, even at one time suggesting that she was exaggerating how intoxicated she was on the night in 2018, it was very pointed. It was a very, you know, thorough repudiation of her accusations. and it feels like that reckoning is not going to come,

that we're just going to kind of move on from this as a hockey world. And I'm not sure a lot of people are prepared to do that. Yeah, it was very interesting to watch the court, the trial play out in court. You know, Katie and I were there frequently and followed the entire case very closely from the very beginning when the allegations first emerged in 2022 and, you know, when the charges were laid. And one of the things in the court documents that we wrote about it in the story that we published just following the decisions coming out was that EM was actually had this

conversation a year before right before the charges were laid, I guess the players, that this is going to be incredibly difficult. The narrative at that time was all based on EM's civil suits and sort of what had come out as sort of a one-sided account, you know, dispactually, it was one-sided account of what had happened. And that had been written. This conversation was very, was out there in the media. And then we knew from the beginning that obviously you have five defense teams,

that their job is to discredit that story. And so throughout the trial, and particularly when EM in particular was on stand for, on the stand for nine days, seven days of a withering cross-examination, we saw them, you know, every single day pick apart her story from the moment that she, you know, got to her bedroom before going out that night and had, you know, pre-drinks and everything that happened. after that subsequently, they set out to make her seem uncredible and not reliable. And as the judge today presented her decision, you know, one of the first things she said this morning was that she did not find EM to be a credible or reliable witness.

And from there on, she went through all of the evidence in the case and sort of rehashed every argument that was made over over a couple of hours and then went to her analysis of what happened and basically just dismantled the arguments that EM had presented her and sided with the defense on pretty much every single sort of claim they had. So the trial went, and this often happens in sexual assault trials, but it went from being sort of, you've got five players on trial for something, but the claimant, the person who's sort of made these allegations, that person ends up being the person whose credibility is on the line. And that's what we saw play out over, over two months. And the final outcome, as was decided today, was, you know, that the judge found those arguments to be much more credible than the prosecution's analysis of and claim of what had happened. Yeah, I mean, there were five defense teams basically going after EM's credibility throughout this trial.

And, you know, I realize this is two men talking about this and that's not the most, the best optics. But you understand why people are so reluctant to come forward. with sexual assault allegations, especially very public ones when this is the strategy. And regardless of the verdict, whether this was a guilty or not guilty, and these players have been acquitted. So that's important to note,

regardless of that, the whole process of this is, it's got to be absolutely gutting for a complainant. Yeah, I mean, you could just watch, if you were watching the following case, you could see how it sort of, was sort of this withering experience for EM. And one day she left, you know, left early crying.

The court ended early because she was upset. And, you know, she was taunted at time. She was, you know, words were used back against her. I mean, this was all standard defense tactics. I mean, it was what to be, it was to be expected. And as I mentioned before, when she was discussed, this was discussed a year before by the crown and her lawyer saying, like, this is going to be ugly. This is not going to be easy.

You know, this is often people who are victims of sexual assault. they will say that going on the stand and pressing forward is a re-traumatizing experience, sometimes even more traumatizing. That was what was said to her before the charges were laid. And as I said, well, will you come forward as a witness in this case? Because it's important to remember, too, that she's, you know, she's just a crown witness in this case. There was a civil suit before. In this case, the state or the crown in Canada move forward saying, this is a crime against

the state and we're going to prosecute you. She cooperated with that assessment. And she put herself out there in a very public way. And, you know, in many ways, as has been stated by, you know, by observers who was humiliated and put on trial herself. And what message that sends, I mean, I think that that's, you know, there's an obvious message here that it's, this is, you know, when you come forward with, with claims, you're going to face a great deal of scrutiny. And it is going to be an incredibly public and difficult experience. So how does it get to this point where there is this? this big, very, very public trial, were there attempts to, to quash this earlier, to do this more

quietly? Well, no one knew about these allegations. I mean, in the general public until 2022, but this was happening. Unfully behind the scenes, I mean, the allegations emerged the day after, or the same day, actually, as the incident occurred in June 19, 20, 2018 in London, Ontario. But it happened behind the scenes. I mean, there was a police investigation that was opened up at that time. There was a Hockey Canada investigation that was opened up at that time. The police investigation was subsequently closed with no charges laid. And Hockey Canada then faces a civil suit along with John Doe's that were named in the civil

suit saying by the complainant in this case. And that was settled quietly without anybody knowing about it. And actually none of the players that had been. involved knew about the settlement either. But that civil suit was filed in court in Canada. It was a payment was made. Nobody knows how much the payment was, but we know there was an NDA that was sort of signed as an agreement. And this sort of hockey Canada as this massive, powerful organization basically made this sort of tried to make this go away by paying up the claim. I mean, they said they were trying to do the right thing by by paying this, this woman

money for what she said it happened to her. But that became public in the media. That story was broken by TSN and what ended up snowballing out of that was a massive national crisis in Canada. And I think within the sport, you know, globally in terms of talking about these issues, but in Canada, there was parliamentary hearings about what had happened with Hockey Canada, the governing body of the sport in this country and what was happening. The players weren't named at all. But it also put pressure on London police to reopen the investigation under this intense spotlight. And that investigation was reopened in the summer of 2022. And that's what subsequently led to these charges in which these five players were, um, were accused of sexual assault

afterwards. So in a different world, I mean, if this never come to light had had this story never been broken, I guess, and sort of this conversation, these charges never would have been laid. The case would have remained closed. And we would have never known that this incident, had occurred, the incident that everyone, you know, agrees to, where obviously there's different accounts of what happened that night, but there are agreed facts of what happened that night. And this would have stayed sort of under, you know, under the radar completely hidden had it not come out. And so, I mean, you know, there's this real, you know, looking back at it now, you know, we look back at sort of like figuring, seeing how massive this story became and how

public it became and sort of what the ramifications ended up being. I think it's something that we, you know, we can step back in and look at now and sort of see what are we left with after all of this. I feel like we could sit here for hours and talk about everything that's happened since it became public. This court, this whole trial has been adventurous to say the least. How much did things change when it went from a jury trial to a single judge deciding the case? Because it was so point. And I mean, Judge Corracea spent, you know, like I said, hours going through this whole process very pointedly. It would have been different, obviously, if the verdict had come from a jury. How did the kind of tenor of the proceedings change when she took it over solely?

You know, it was very interesting. I mean, I'll be honest, in sitting in that courtroom, I was kind of surprised. I mean, I'm not a legal scholar, you know, so in it. But in watching the case, I was surprised by just how pointed the, the, uh, the conversation, the questioning of EM was and sort of how like some of the taunting and some of sort of the laughing at her claims and sort of what it felt like, you know, a very combative cross-examination was towards her because there was a jury sitting right there. And they're, you know, they're not legal experts. They're instructed obviously with an understanding of sort of legal process and what they're supposed to do. But, you know, they're sitting there watching all this just like, you know, a regular members of sight. And they're going to decide the sort of the fate. of the outcome of this trial. So we don't know what they were thinking. We have no idea.

In Canada, we're not allowed to speak to previous judges. It's against the law to discuss the case beyond what their obligation is. So we don't know what those previous jurors felt at all. But I do know what the tone in that room felt like. And I was curious just about how the jury was sort of taking this on. And when the entire cross-examination was done with the jury. And then it was like a day after that the second jury was dismissed. The first jury was dismissed before the proceedings really got underway.

The second had been like was sort of in the middle of this trial right after EM's lengthy marathon testimony and cross-examination. So we don't know what the outcome will be. But, you know, obviously Justice Carosier, who had been following the case, she said like, you know, we can either stop the case now and have to do this all again or everyone can agree to move forward as a judge or alone trial. And the Crown agreed. And the Crown had fought to try and keep the jury. The Crown really pushed to say, you know, we think that this case needs to proceed. It can proceed with an instruction to the jury. What had happened, I should say, was a lawyer had said that one of the defense attorneys' groups had been sort of taunting them with the way they were looking at them.

It was sort of a very bizarre accusation that kind of came out of really out of nowhere. But it set up this sort of concern about whether or not the players could have a fair trial, because jurors were feeling this way towards the defense. And so the crowd has said, well, we can move forward with some instruction about sort of what to put behind them. But the defense, all the defense team said, no, this is not going to work for our clients. And so it proceeded to judge alone. And, you know, we, I don't know what the outcome would be. You know, we saw the outcome today in the verdict, though, and it was a very clear sort of evisceration of all the claims that EM had in that trial.

and it was a very thorough dismantling of her credibility in the eyes of the court. And obviously, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, it's on the Crown in Canada's case. It's on the state in the United States case, obviously, and that bar wasn't met. But it was the force with which it was reputed that was so remarkably. And obviously, this case comes, it came down as consent like so many other sexual assault claims do. And this one was interesting because the players had a video of EM giving her consent. And the crown said it was given under duress because she was scared. She didn't know what was happening.

She dissociated. The defense said it was exculpatory that it was here. We have proof. And ultimately, the judge found that the crown didn't meet that really high bar of proving that beyond a reasonable doubt that she was under duress. Carracia, she said, in this case, I have found actual consent not vitiated by fear. I don't know how you judge that, but that's when it's a reasonable doubt. one person deciding it. That's what she saw and that's what she decided.

Yeah, just some of the claim that that they had, sorry, was the fear elements. That was sort of her central claim of like, I did, I was in that room because they had made claims and there was cohesion in those claims. Like there was gaps in everyone's married, but there was sort of a continuing narrative that she had said certain things and invited certain

acts. And so her EM had said, I was afraid and it was a trauma response, right, which is a very, you know, it's a complicated idea, but something that, you know, I think that, like, of course, aren't necessarily fully equipped to understand sort of what happens with sexual assault victims in this case. That's a conversation probably for someone much more educated on that element than me.

But the fear was central to sort of E.M.'s claim of what she experienced that time. And Justice Kerosia said, like, I don't believe that the idea of fear vitiates consent. And the consent videos that you're talking about that I found those were really interesting as well. because in those cases, the consent was actually given. It was after the fact. And so as consent videos, they don't really hold up as sort of like, this is a consent video because you can't receive consent under King of Law after the fact. It has to be juring and continuous throughout an act.

But what the videos did show, the judge ruled, was that in those cases, you could see that she wasn't slurring her word, she wasn't drunk, she didn't seem afraid. So there was evidence of her in that room. And they seem to be used for those purposes. as opposed to sort of saying, I fully consent to this. Now, Carter Hart was the only player who took the stand in this trial. And Hart's lawyer, Megan Savard, had an interesting comment, I thought,

because there's a lot of, I don't recalls, I don't recall, you know, I don't remember exactly how things went down. I don't remember this, that, the other thing. And obviously, there's some back, there were, there were some texts that were allowed and some texts that weren't admissible for evidence, a lot of, you know, conflict over that. But Megan Savard, Carter Hart's attorneys, had this quote earlier. he said, it is this insidious idea that hockey players, by virtue of the fact that they play closely together on a team in professional sports, naturally protect their own, circle the wagon, form a perjury phalanx, so to speak. Close quote. I found that fascinating because that is kind of one of the, you know, universal complaints about the hockey world and junior hockey in particular is how close the ranks are, how insular the community is, and how these guys will do anything to defend a teammate.

I don't feel like we got the verdict on that that maybe we were looking for in this case. But I found it fascinating that she used it almost as a defense. Yeah, I mean, she refuted it. She attacked, I mean, the crown was sort of setting that argument up. And I think she was attacking that directly. But obviously, more broadly, I mean, as you know, anyone who follows hockey and has followed issues within hockey culture, recognized that idea. And, you know, if you've been studying this and, you know, read about it, reported on it or experienced it, yourself, you know that there absolutely is a sort of an axiom of like protect the room,

protect your own, you know, with the team first and all these things that are built in sort of the game itself, but then also in the the culture around it in the locker room. And I, you know, I've spent time in the locker room. I know this is the reality of, I mean, this world that, you know, hockey likes to be insular and to keep its issues internal and not public. In the case specifically, that argument was looking at these text messages that came together a week after the incident in the hotel room in London when they found out that hockey. The players found out that Hockey Canada was doing an investigation. And all of a sudden, you see these guys sort of saying, well, what are we going to do?

And they're sort of scrambling. And there's this conversation. The crown frame that is them trying to get their story straight in the way sort of colluding, saying we've got to get this right. We've got to say this. And in the end, Justice Carosia viewed that statement. with Megan Savard in that sense really saying, you know, this wasn't, this was, this was scared players sort of reacting in a way that was sort of understandable. It wasn't them trying to get their stories together. So, I mean, in the court of law, that's what happened in that incident.

That's what was decided by the, by the judge. But beyond that, if you were to take that statement about this sort of insidious culture in which players will protect their own, and if you, you're a stakeholder in this game and you, you, like, you cover it or you, you, you, you cover it, or you, your kids play it or you coach it or you know you play it yourself you can you can assess that yourself you can look at that and say like is is there a culture of protecting the room that that persists and and is that something that we're comfortable with all right i want to continue this conversation in a moment we're going to take a quick break right there okay back here with dan robinson and dan i've been following the case closely through the athletics coverage and

other companies obviously but there's one quote from em from the cross-examination by um i believe was Cal Foote's lawyer, Juliana Greenspan, that really has stood out with me. And this is the quote, from E.M. Literally, any one of those men could have stood up and said, this isn't right. And no one did. No one noticed that. No one thought like that. They didn't want to think about it if I was actually okay or if I was actually consenting. And I feel like that's the end of the quote. I feel like that kind of encapsulates the dilemma we have as the hockey world is like we've had this argument before. I think back to the the Brad Aldrich sexual assault case with the black Blackhawks and nobody in that room, a room full of, that was all room full of grown adults.

Nobody stood up and did the right thing. Nobody went to the police. Nobody went to HR. Nobody went to ownership or anything like that. That's the case. Do you see, does this case, do you think it will have any kind of ripple effect? We're just the exposure of their names and the negative press that came with it. Will this maybe still have a chilling effect in the hockey world where maybe players will

think twice a little bit more, even as 17 and 18 year olds? about the entitlement that they do have as superstar athletes? Well, there's two things to that question, I think. But the first, I do think it will be a ripple effect, but I cynical perhaps a little bit about sort of the outcome as to why. I mean, I think anybody who's a high level hockey player right now and, you know, in the junior level or minor hockey or, you know, sees what happened with the allegations and what happened to these players and is, you know, fearful.

I mean, there's a real, you can look at them and just say, like, obviously their careers were absolutely derailed. They were released from or they were not, leaves of absence from their teams if they're playing in the NHL and then their contracts were not renewed. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it was a very damning experience for all five of these players, you know, regardless of the outcome of the courts. I mean, that's just the reality of of what happens when you're charged with sexual assault. So I think there will be inevitably an effective like, hey, you know, don't get caught. Hopefully the outcome is also, they don't. don't be involved in anything. But there's that sister. The other question, though, I think that

you hit that there is a sort of idea of moral culpability. And, you know, that was addressed in court today, you know, what the judge said before getting into a ruling, that the job of the court is not to decide morality. My job isn't here. It's not to decide whether anybody in this courtroom is moral by any sort of societal standard. My question is, my job is too says guilt in the court of law to say that this was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. There's a very high, specific bar. that had to be reached there. But beyond that, any observer, anyone that's involved, has the ability to look at this from a moral culpability standpoint

and say, well, like morally, what will happen there? And as, you know, that quote that you mentioned, you know, anybody in that room could have stopped this going on. Anybody could have gone up and said, you know, guys, this shouldn't happen. You know, when Carter Hart on the stand said, had he seen anything that he felt was speaking specifically about the allegation of Dylan Dubay slapping Eam on the butt? he'd seen anything like that, he would have, you know, left the room because, you know,

it wasn't, he would have thought it wasn't okay or that there was like a, any sort of, it was like, it was like, you know, it was like, you know, but like, the reality is people didn't leave that room. People left that room after a couple of hours. Some people left and, you know, at certain times, but they also texted others to come and join. I mean, so there's a, there's a question here of like, okay, so the legal conversation has been, has been settled, right? But, But the moral culpability question is that's a conversation that everybody can have and it can look at it and that these players still will have to grapple with. But in a wider sense, I think is something that we're sort of left with. Like, what is the moral question here in the game?

What is the moral obligation? Not just sort of the team to your experience about Aldrich. And in terms of cover of that kind of coverage, it's like there are these wider questions, hazing, all these questions in hockey that continually come up. There are questions of morality. I mean, they end up spilling into questions of the courts and legality at times. But at their core, the fundamental level that can be addressed in hockey, it is a moral question. And I don't know that hockey is fully ready to grapple with it because it's been so adverse

to grappling with these kinds of conversations for so long. Yeah, I think you and I have done both done a lot of writing and reporting in this kind of sphere. And I think about Brock McGillis, who's an advocate for queer inclusion in hockey in particular, and he talks about shift makers, right? It takes one person in a room to say, hey, stop doing that. And then everybody thinks about it and stops doing that. And it kind of has a ripple effect.

And then another person in another room does it. And that's how you gradually make significant change. And I think that's one of the things that was missing here, obviously. But I do think it's going to be, it's an interesting dilemma. Like, is it if this does lead to a change in attitudes, even cynically, is that still good? I think back to this is a much more frivolous example, but, you know, pre-social media, hockey players were out at the bar before the game every night on the road. And they're hammering beers and they're drunk.

They're publicly out there, you know, making fools of themselves sometimes. We've seen it time and again. And then once in the social media age, a few guys get caught on camera. I think about the Blackhawks limo in Vancouver, Cinco de Mayo with Patrick Kane. And now these players go out.

They go into private rooms or they, you know, they don't go out at all. And, you know, I don't think it's because they realize that it's healthier not to go out the night before a game. It's because they don't want the bad press. don't want to be humiliated. And I wonder if this case has a similar effect where, you know, cynically, we do kind of get a, a kind of internal reckoning of treating the way you treat people because you don't want to be put in the same position that these five men were put in.

Right. And I think that's, we are going to see that kind of outcome. I mean, I think you, you, change is change. And I guess we can't really assess the, the, the reason for it. We don't know if change will come. I mean, this is one of those sort of intangible. things. We don't really know what the outcome will be here. But I think in speculate and say, I think that yes, there's certainly a lot of people, players who have something to lose are a lot more careful, as you mentioned, just in general, but also moving forward, I think that will be the case as well because of how I profile and damning this case was. But at the end at the end of the day, I don't really know, you know, sort of like, is that, is that enough? Is that something that

everybody's sort of, you know, that, that alone, you know, if you, if you uncover, if you don't disclose sexual allegations of your organization, you might be banned for four years from coaching, but, you know, you're going to get back in the game at some point, you know, like these, these situations,

the final outcome, I don't know what the, what the lesson ends up being, and I think we're still kind of figuring out, and we still would figure out for some time what this meant, beyond the more important conversation of, like, guilt in the court of law and that's what was addressed today. What does this mean for

for hockey in general and for hockey culture in general and for the future of hockey in general? I think we can be hopeful, but I think it's a question that we can't stop asking. Yeah, there's no doubt these players are losing millions of dollars because of this. Is that going to be enough to have that ripple effect we're looking for? Let's get into these players' futures next. We're going to take a quick break right now. All right, we're back. And Dan, I've been saying this for a while now. Joel Quenville, who I covered in Chicago, so I was covering that case for a long time.

He was one of the men in that room that didn't speak up, didn't further the issue about Brad Aldrich's and the sexual assault allegations against him. He was out of the league for three years. He got hired by the Anaheim Ducks to be their head coach this year. And I kept saying that the best case scenario to me to really send a message would have been for the NHL to reinstate him and then for all 32 teams to take a pass and say,

you know what, we don't need that. that would have affected change. Well, he's back in the league. Stan Bowman is a GM again in Edmonton. Corey Perry left Chicago under circumstances that we don't know all the depth of, and he got immediately signed again by Edmonton. Carter Hart's really the only NHL player among this group.

Michael McLeod, Dylan Jubay, Calfoot, they all played in the KHL last season. Maybe they get, I don't know if they're, I hate to put it this harshly, but are good enough for a team to stick their neck out and sign at this point in the NHL. Foremanton hasn't played in the NHL since he was with the senators in 21-22. He spent two years in the Swiss League.

It was out of hockey last season. So this comes down to Carter Hart. Carter Hart is 26 years old. He was a number one goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers. There are always teams looking for goaltending help. He was pretty good. He was a top elite prospect. People thought very highly of him.

Do we think he's going to get a job in the NHL? And if so, how long will it take? Well, I mean, it's a, it's such a, it's just, and comfortable question, and it's the question that everybody now will turn to and we'll be asking for weeks ahead. I think it's going to take a little bit of time before it's addressed sort of in a professional standpoint from sort of a team, you know, willing to have that conversation or is agent willing to make a statement or, you know, my guess is it'll take some time. I mean, this question came up before the verdict was, you know, was relayed today. I mean, it came up

during the free agency already. People looking ahead said, oh, well, team like Edmonton might need a goaltender. Hey, there's a pretty good one sitting right there in a courthouse in London, Ontario. You know, and I think that that, I mean, that conversation is so, so uncomfortable and in the court of law sort of sort of, like, besides the point of It feels unseemly to talk about, right? But to your point, Mark, I mean, I think this is, like, in the end, this is where the conversation goes now.

I mean, this becomes a free agent signing. That's the case. And the question becomes the equation of, like, is the free agent worth? the blowback. I mean, because, you know, whoever reaches out and says, hey, would you like decide you, of course, there's going to be articles that are going to be written about it, that are going to be critical. There's going to be fans who are very critical. There's going to be statements made by, you know, advocacy groups who are, who are very, it's going to be very critical. It's going to be, you know, there, any team that that approached this will, will wear somewhat of a

black eye for, for some time. But how long will that last? I mean, now with, with the fresh sort of acquittal, I mean, it's sort of like there's, you know, it's sort of there's a reality of like, okay, this was tried. These allegations were tested in court and everything moves on. So, I mean, they really, you know, I think there's an avenue for any team to kind of say, well, you know, this was already addressed and now we're moving forward. So I think that question will be very interesting. I think it's the next question that hockey has to grapple with.

And I'll be curious to see where the answer lies. To be clear, all five players are done. They're not under contract. They're not yet eligible to be signed. The commissioner will have a say in that, but it's a, it's a, you know, it's a formality at this point that they will be eligible again. And I do think Carter Hart's going to be the litmus test here, right? Dan, he's going to be the one where is the talent enough to, you know,

outweigh the baggage here? That's, that's the cold calculus that these teams are doing. Yeah, and I think there's probably a lot of conversations being happening, happening right now, you know, amongst teams that that might be something that, an area in their team that they might need to look to acquire and there might be an opportunity for them. How they will play that out, how they will decide, you know, what the cost benefit is on stepping into that right now will be very interesting. You know, it's one of those sort of questions where I think there's precedent in the past

to say, you know, a player might get, we'll get signed. But I mean, there's sort of a, as you mentioned before, it's going to be a conversation of what's this worth to us. And I think we'll find that out sooner than later. And Hart, you know, he seems like he's already taking steps towards reinstatement by saying

he wants to be a force for good. He wants to be, you know, not a cautionary tale, but he wants to be able to speak to other athletes and explain the lessons he's learned from things he did when he was 18 years old that maybe at 26 he would have done differently. It's going to be really interesting. We've been having this

conversation for years in hockey. We're going to be having this conversation for years in hockey. Dan, I want to thank you for all your reporting you, Katie, Haley, Sean, all you guys. I've done great job up there. Thank you for listening to The Athletic Hockey Show. The show returns on Monday.