The Athletic Hockey Show - What to expect as Hockey Canada trial begins this week

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Five members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior hockey team — Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, Dillon Dube, and Cal Foote — are set to stand trial on sexual-assault charges this week stemming from a June 2018 incident in which a 20-year-old woman alleged she was assaulted over several hours in a London, Ontario, hotel room. The Athletic’s Mark Lazerus, Dan Robson, and Katie Strang discuss what to expect during the trial over the next several weeks, beginning with jury selection on Tuesday.Host: Mark LazerusWith: Dan Robson and Katie StrangExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Chris Flannery Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Mark Lazarus. I'm joined today by the Athletics Investigative reporters Katie Strang and Dan Robson, and we're going to discuss the Hockey Canada trial, which begins this week. For those who haven't been following closely, five players from Canada's 2018 World Junior Championship team, Michael McLeod, Alex Formanton, Carter Hart, Dylan Dubay, and Cal Foote, all of whom who went on to play in the NHL will stand trial on sexual assault charges

stemming from a June 2018 incident in London, Ontario during a hockey Canada gala weekend celebrating Canada's World Juniors Gold Medal earlier in the year. A 20-year-old woman alleged she was repeatedly assaulted over several hours in the London hotel room. Katie and Dan, along with our former colleague Ian Mendez, have been reporting on this story for years now and it's coming to a head this week with jury selection beginning on Tuesday. So Katie, what should we expect over these next several weeks? What's going to be the focal point of this trial? I think what it'll ultimately come down to is likely,

the issue of consent in the issue of credibility, both with the complainant and the five players who are facing charges. We have a good idea of what the woman who's the complainant in the case said happened that night from her original statement of claim that was filed in Ontario Superior Court in a civil lawsuit. But we are going to have a much more nuanced, detailed sort of roadmap of like the contours of the case that both the Crown is going to put forth and that each of these five players' respective defense councils are going to put forth. And so this will be a jury trial. It's hard to predict sometimes how this will play out and exactly, you know, how long it will take and which evidence will really be the most resonant with the jury. Every sort of case and trial is kind of its own

living, breathing thing with all these different, you know, iterations and nuances. And so it'll be really interesting to see how it plays out what evidence and testimony really becomes central to the case and what new things that we learn as people are providing evidence and testimony. So the five defendants are being tried together. Does that mean that they're going to share a verdict or can the Can the verdict be individualized here? How will that play out? They're all facing separate charges of sexual assaults. One count on each, and Michael Cloud is basing two separate charges. So they're all defending themselves independently of each other.

The case is all being heard at the same time, but they stand separate in terms of the accusations that they face. Okay. And forgive an ignorant question here, but for our American listeners, are there any significant differences in the Canadian legal system that we should know about that might kind of affect our understanding of the case? There are. And I think we're still trying to feel out exactly what that will look like in practice. But there is a publication ban on the court proceedings. One way in which U.S. courts and Canadian courts are similar is that, you know, they generally try to be sensitive and respectful of, you know, potential sexual assault victims' privacy and identifying details. about someone who has said that they are a victim of a sexual crime.

Both countries try to be very sensitive to that. But I would say that the publication ban that has been placed on this case seems significantly more stringent upon, you know, what details that come out in court can be reported and when. But I will defer to our resident Canadian here. So, Dan, like, obviously correct me if your interpretation is different. Yeah, well, obviously, I've very little experience covering cases in the state. So I'm not as familiar with that. But I think, you know, there's a lot of focus on making sure that, you know,

that this is that everyone's given due process in this case. And so we'll be obviously sticking closely to the publication ban is put in place as things carry forward. You know, there's, I'm not sure in terms of exactly what's different. One of the things, for example, that is different. We can't interview the jurors at the end of the trial. We're not able to go and speak with them about how they came to their verdict. There's issues like that that come into play.

But I mean, I think for the most part, you know, sort of the nuts and bolts of what's going to play out here is what most people will be familiar with. Okay, so Dan, who is prosecuting this case? Is this being brought by the complainant by the alleged victim or is it a provincial case? Is it a federal case? Who's prosecuting? So in this situation, initially there was a civil. that was brought forward by a complainant that was sort of talking about what had happened that night and that was settled by Hockey Canada and that came to the public.

And when that did, a criminal investigation was reopened by the London police. And after that lengthy investigation, a criminal charges were filed and those were filed by the Crown. So in this case, it will be the Crown versus these five defendants. So I believe 19 of the players in that team were there that we. weekend and almost all of them have made it to the NHL. There's some big names in there, and this trial could last, you know, according to reporting up to two months here, it could carry all the way into the Stanley Cup final. Seven players currently in the playoffs

were in London the weekend of the alleged incident. It was Vegas is Brett Howden, Ottawa's Drake Batherson, Washington's Taylor Radish, Dallas is Sam St. Colorado's Kail McCar, Florida's Yona Gajovich and St. Louis is Robert Thomas. What's going to happen if, you know, their call to testify? Well, we certainly have to allow for the possibility that, players, even those who, you know, were in town that weekend, but, you know, were not charged with any criminal wrongdoing still could be called as witnesses. I think it's important to remember that the complainant in her civil suit, originally, you know, the suit had eight John Does who were unidentified because she, you know, identified there being eight players in the room at the time of

the alleged incident. So there are five that have been charged with sexual assault charges, but I think we can expect reasonably that they will try to, you know, elicit testimony from those who were either in the room at the time of the alleged incident or were, you know, you know, part of the group that had gone out that night as a precursor to subsequent events. So what would it look like if one of these players were to testify? Because obviously, there's some inherent risks of admitting you are in that room for an alleged sexual assault, both legally and in the court of public opinion. What will that kind of testimony look like? Well, I mean, it's, it's hard to say exactly what they'll be discussing in the courtroom when they,

when they are on the stand. But I mean, they'll be under oath. And so there'll be in a situation where, you know, this isn't speaking to a reporter or speaking to teammates. This is speaking to the courthouse. So I think we will hear more information than we've heard in the past. And that information will be public at that time. So what that means for the players who are called as witness in this case,

we'll find out. But I think that it will certainly shine. more light on what happened that evening and who was there and what their involvement in the evening was. Is that as a reporter going into cover this? You've been writing about this for so long now. Is that what you're looking to see in this trial is just some under some details that maybe have been kind of, you know, held under wraps until now?

Yeah. I mean, not so much details, but I think, you know, the, as a reporter, you're, you're always trying to find as much information as you can. You know, one of the early assignments that Dan and I took on as part of our coverage for this case was to try to kind of recreate the, retrace the steps of that, what happened that night. And so, you know, we spent like a week in London and pounded the pavement and talked to a bunch of people and tried to, you know, get a sense of what really happened. And so I think, you know, we don't have subpoena power and we are not the court of law. So people are talking to us by choice. But, you know, you're going to have people, I think, who are going to be compelled to answer truthfully about something that has been, you know, a very, you know, a source of much discussion and concern and contention.

And I think getting some answers to those big questions is one thing that, like, I'm really looking for. forward to hear. And I think one thing that, you know, the public really wants and deserves to know. Dan, this is obviously a story that the hockey world has been fixated on for a while, but isn't really resonating in the larger United States. What does this mean in Canada, this trial? Is this like a, you know, a trial of the century kind of situation up there? No, you know, it's actually been pretty quiet recently. There was enormous news when the civil suit was first revealed. And when there was a, there's a promontory hearing into what had occurred. Hockey Canada was sort of grilled in terms of its practices. And so this was a massive

news in Canada. I mean, it was a story of the year for sure at the time. And I think everyone this kind of stepped away from it for a time and are just kind of realizing that, you know, this trial is coming next week. I think next this week, as as this trial unfolds, it will be headline news, absolutely. It's something in Canada that, you know, a sort of questioned the very sort of fabric of, you know, this sort of cultural touchstone. in our country. As a Canadian, growing up playing hockey

and watching the World Junior team, it was something that, you know, you did every holiday season, you know, with your family. And if you were a hockey player in any capacity, you know, these were the young heroes

that you were watching as a younger person. And so this has resonated deeply from coast to coast to coast to coast in Canada. And it's, aside from the election that's coming up next week,

it'll likely be the story of the notion. Yeah, I kind of want to get to that. Stepping away from this specifics of this particular trial, there's obviously a much larger issue at play here, something that I think all of us have written about and reported on and opined and talked about over a drink extensively is that this troubling culture of junior hockey, right? You take these young men, I mean, they're boys, really.

They're 14 and 15 years old sometimes. You sort of isolate them from normal society. You put them in this insular world of the locker room with the same teammates and the same coaches year after year. They don't get properly socialized in a normal high school setting. They're put on pedestals. They're idolized. They're drafted and traded like the pros is such a young and delicate age. I mean, as disturbing as it is at how often we hear about sexual assault and hazing and bullying in junior hockey, I hate to say it, but it's not terribly surprising either. How steeped in Canadian culture is junior hockey? Is there any hope of fixing it from the inside without just completely dismantling it? The question of junior hockey is really interesting. I mean, I just think from a broad perspective, trying to understand what it means within. Canada, I mean, it's a unique, it's a unique structure. I mean, as you mentioned,

Lazim, you've got these young people that are playing essentially something that's very professionalized and in small communities, taken away from homes, about taking away, they leave their homes and they're living in these environments where they're sort of the local heroes, the town. These are the guys that have a chance to go to the NHL. So it creates a unique, I think, Canadian sort of version of what you may see in sort of college football in the States or other sort of high profile platforms for young athletes. We see all of that happening within Canada.

But in a particular, we've also just seen decades of allegations like this coming forward. And Katie and I have written about that with our past colleague, Beaumendez, as well. We kind of dope back into 30 years of headlines that essentially came forward, repeated allegations of group sexual assault. And so it's something that, you know,

I think Canada, the nation, anyone who's involved in hockey in particular, has been sort of looking at for some time. And it's sort of this thing that comes up as a conversation of like, well, what's going on here? And then it kind of goes away until the next allegation occurs. And so, you know, I think where we stand right now, this is certainly being the most high profile in some time. And the fact that it involves no allegations against specifically the world junior team where you've got the best of the best in junior hockey, sort of these, you know, I think elevated people who are on their way to the NHL and have to sort of achieve their dreams and are looked at with great esteem across the country, I think that it's really sort of shove this conversation back into an uncomfortable spotlight.

Yeah, you want to say it's a tipping point, but it feels like we've had so many tipping points over the year and it's never really tipped, right? Yeah, I'd say within junior hockey, I don't know that there's a tipping point. That's kind of the question, right? This conversation is one that, you know, I've had many times in my career. And, you know, as we can just see by looking, by Googling different incidents, you know that or a large incidence and just actual instance in the past, we know that this is something that, you know, has been around for some time in terms of a cultural discussion about what's happening in junior hockey. And it's one that I don't know we're at the end of at this moment. McLeod and Formanton, Hart, Dubay, Foot, they're all out of the NHL, obviously, but I think some of them are still an organized hockey.

right? Yes. So they're playing in, I mean, last year, McLeod and Dubay both played in the KHL. Harder Hart was, has been practicing. He hasn't been playing specifically professional hockey. Formanton is no longer playing hockey at all. And I'm not sure actually about Calhford at the moment. But I know, you know, there's, I think it's fair to say that, you know, that, that, that, that they are, these are young men in sort of what would be sort of the primes of their, the careers that they were in the midst of. And so, you know, hockey is absolutely still something that I think it's fair to assume would be something that they would be hoping to continue again, if, depending on the outcome

of this trial. Well, we're certainly going to be following both your reporting for the next, however many weeks this takes. I appreciate your all the reporting you've done. I appreciate it take some time to help explain it to us. The Athletic Hockey Show will be back. on Wednesday with Sean Sean and Frankie Corrado. They'll be back to talk about the playoffs.

Until next time, I'm Mark Lazarus. That's Katie Strang and Dan Ropson, and this is The Athletic Hockey Show.