Contains descriptions & discussion of sexual assault 

In 2018, members of the Hockey Canada team won the World Juniors Championship and then spent the night engaging in the disturbing, violent (although not according to the Canadian justice system) sexual assault of a young woman, known as E.M. in one of the player’s hotel room. 

This past summer, all five members of the team who were charged with this crime were acquitted by a Canadian judge. This week, the NHL ruled that they would be eligible for NHL play on December 1, 2025. Despite releasing a statement saying, “The allegations made in this case, even if not determined to have been criminal, were very disturbing, and the behavior at issue was unacceptable,” these players will soon have the opportunity to be back on the international stage as players in their league. 

Is it surprising? No, but it that isn’t the point. I love hockey, and I’ve loved it for a long time. The degradation and objectification of women is an unspoken part of the culture, and this is critical to understanding the outpouring of frustrated responses to this ruling. It is not new to the sport, but it has become impossible to ignore as more and more women find the courage, or the scaffolding, or the necessity to come forward. 

Why should you care about hockey or this case at all? You might not watch hockey, or hate sports in general, or maybe you’re the friend at the Superbowl watch party who keeps repeating that you’re “only there for the commercials.” Besides not being very fun at parties, that’s all fair. However, hockey & the NHL maintain a large fanbase, the league generates million in revenue, and political leaders frequently engage with the sport, especially in Canada but even in the U.S. as we saw with the Trump phone call during the Four Nations tournament. The politics at play in this sport reflect a national culture and continues to influence the culture in response. Even if I didn’t grow up watching the Canadiens, the consequences of the trial and the subsequent response by the NHL and its fans would find its way into my life, if not immediately, then through some kind of eventual reverberation. 

The NHL can pink wash their media language and promote whatever initiatives they’re funneling  1% of their budget to in an attempt to seem like they care about women, but it’s moments like these that say the most about the state of hockey. Representation means very little when the structure remains protective and promotional of violent offenders and the silencing of women. 

Let’s talk about the trial itself. It’s a case fraught with missteps and incompetence. The trial saw two juries dismissed, the first when one of the defense attorneys tried to discuss the case with a juror during the lunchbreak and the second when the jurors gave a note to the judge reading, “Multiple jury members feel we are being judged and made fun of by lawyers [Daniel] Brown and Hilary Dudding. Every day when we enter the courtroom they observe us, whisper to each other and turn to each other and laugh as if they are discussing our appearance. This is unprofessional and unacceptable.” 

Instead of a mistrial, Justice Maria Carroccia decides to decide the case herself. In her ruling (which you can read all of here), she makes it clear that she never believed E.M. was a credible witness. She is critical of her alcohol intake, in her telling of the story, in what she describes as gaps in recollection. She mentions that E.M. lied about her weight, which must mean she has no problem lying, although I would guess that this is a lie that many of us have told. Let me catalog some of the other reasons the judge gives for her reasoning that E.M. is not a credible witness: 
-	She miscounted the exact ounces of alcohol she consumed that night
-	She didn’t get help from the bouncer at the bar she was at before the assault took place
-	She said she was drunk but she was walking fine in her heels on video surveillance from the bar
-	She skipped up the stairs at the hotel, arguing she couldn’t have been that drunk
-	Immediately after the assault, she was interviewed by the police and when they asked if she liked the attention, she said “a little bit” at the beginning
-	She wasn’t sure if she was crying from the assault or from the comments the men were making towards her
-	She has gaps in her memory from the night of the assault
-	She had a boyfriend at the time
-	One of the men made her record a video after the assault occurred in which she is shown to be giving consent for what has already transpired, and later, when she says she is rubbing her eyes in the video because she had been crying, the judge is unconvinced 
-	She didn’t leave the room at any point during the assault
-	She didn’t look afraid in the video

All of these reasons, lead the judge to find her unreliable and rule that the assault was not an assault, but rather a consensual encounter between one woman and five men, although these five men are repeatedly referred to as “the boys” throughout the trial and by the press. The men are not given the same kind of scrutiny by the judge. According to her, the men who were in the room should be trusted that their group chat made immediately following the accusations was not for concocting a shared story, but rather just because they were all concerned by the charges. 

The judge acknowledges that one of the men forgot to disclose the text messages he sent to the other guys inviting him to his room for a “three way.” However, she says “Failing to specifically mention the text message causes me concern about this evidence, however it does not cause me to disbelieve his evidence in its entirety.” 

The men in the case are given leniency in their testimonies. They are allowed to forget, to misspeak, to discuss their stories before being interviewed. They make a video to document her consent out of fear it wasn’t. They’re boys, boys with were being viewed as top prospects for the league, one of them already a star goalie, and boys who had just brought home a trophy for their nation. She was drunk, enough to be unreliable, but not drunk enough to be assaulted. She was a cheater, and that must make her a liar. After all, she could have left at any point, she could have gotten up, walked past a group of 5+ men, all much bigger than her, and forced her way out the door into the night. 

The transcripts of what they said to her, of how they described her in the group chats, are indicative of the wider “locker room” culture of hockey. Women are puck bunnies, they are there to admire you and then to be used. They are at once lusting for your fame and the trophy you deserve for obtaining that fame. Despite the ruling of not guilty on all accounts, the transcripts from the trial and from these texts are disgustingly graphic and dehumanizing. While they were deemed not criminal, they are morally reprehensible, and this is only the tangible evidence. We will never know definitively what was said in that room or in the many private discussions after. Yet, this brief glimpse is enough to reveal that women remain subhuman in the eyes of some of the most valued, most profitable cultural corners.

So now, the five men have been given a slap on the wrist and will return to NHL play, if they so choose, in just a few months. In their statement, the NHL said, “Each of the players, based on in-person meetings with the league following the verdicts, expressed regret and remorse for his actions. Nevertheless, we believe their conduct requires formal league-imposed discipline.” It appears that if you say you’re sorry, and oh, I don’t know, have a career save percentage of .906, then the NHL will forgive you for having sex with a drunk woman with four of your friends, filming a consent video, and even texting each other after saying things like:

-	“We all need to say the same thing if we get interviewed [by Hockey Canada], can’t have different stories or make anything up.”
-	“She‘s the one who got naked and started begging everyone.”
-	“No boys, like you don’t need to make anything up. No one did anything wrong. We went to that room to eat. The girl came. She wanted to have sex with all of us. No one did. She gave a few guys head. And then we got out of the room, and things got too crazy.”
-	“What should I say if they ask why I took the [consent] videos, though?”
-	“You took the videos because you wanted to make sure nothing bad would happen and cover yourself.”
-	“Let‘s not make her sound like, too crazy, because if she gets wind of this and then she can get even more angry. And we don’t need that. So just be good about it, but the truth with it.”
-	“The truth is we didn’t do anything stupid. We had her consent. We didn’t force her to do anything.”
-	“Just that, yeah, when we were in the room, it seemed like she wanted it, and the guys said they had consent. So I thought it was all good too.”
-	“Honestly boys, nobody did anything wrong... we got consent for anything that she did. She was the one begging for guys to bang her”

Or the texts the judge wouldn’t  allow into evidence like: 

-	“Dude, I’m so happy I left when all the s--t went down. Haha. Man, when I was leaving, Duber was smacking this girl’s ass so hard. Like, it looked like it hurt so bad.” 

This is all morally acceptable behavior in the NHL, as long as two years have passed, and the players said they were sorry in person. But hey, next March, I’m sure they will have plenty of articles on their website promoting NHL Unites Celebrates Women’s History and maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll even get a post on their Instagram. It might just be right next to one promoting one of 100+ NHL players in the leagues history who have been accused of sexual abuse.