On Thursday, the Vegas Golden Knights announced that goaltender Carter Hart will join the team on a professional tryout contract. Hart was one of five former Team Canada World Junior players initially charged with sexual assault stemming from an incident in 2018, and, though acquitted earlier this year, remains suspended by the NHL until 1 December. In a statement about Hart’s contract signing, the Golden Knights said that the team remains “committed to the core values that have defined our organization from its inception” and that the team expects “that our players will continue to meet these standards moving forward”.
Which sounds all well and good, but there’s a difference between expecting someone to meet a standard and maintaining it – or even enforcing it. It’s not surprising that Hart is back on the ice in the NHL. For one thing, he was indeed acquitted, along with the other four accused, which is technically grounds for readmittance, whether one agrees with the ruling or not. For the league, the union, and the teams, the story is – or can be – relatively simple: a player cleared by the courts is ready for a comeback. But the real reason Hart’s return will strike many as unsurprising is because, well, this is just how hockey works. That is, yes, everyone can talk about values and standards and expectations, but in reality hockey is still driven by silence.
The 2018 sexual assault scandal was neither an isolated incident nor unprecedented. Shortly after the Team Canada story broke, the Canadian Hockey League and its member major junior leagues publicized the findings of an independent review panel examining its hazing, bullying, harassment, and abuse policies. The panel determined that the leagues and its teams have “a systemic or ‘culture of embedded behaviours’, where off-ice misconduct is perpetuated, condoned, or ill-addressed” and that a “code of silence” existed when it came to reporting misconduct. As the allegations surrounding the 2018 Team Canada players swirled, it also emerged that Hockey Canada, the country’s national governing body for the sport, had paid out $2.9m in settlements in 2022.
And just a year prior, the same code of silence was revealed when former Chicago Blackhawks player Kyle Beach came forward as the player at the center of sexual abuse allegations against the team in 2010. Beach alleged that he’d been sexually assaulted by one of the Blackhawks’ then-video coach Brad Aldrich. A follow-up report found that, though Beach informed the team of his allegation, and the information was discussed in a meeting that included the general manager, Stan Bowman, and head coach, Joel Quenneville, nothing happened for three weeks – until after the Blackhawks had won the Cup.
Much like with Hart, the men at the center of that scandal went away – but not for long. After stepping down from his role as general manager in Chicago, Bowman was hired three years later, in 2024, by the Edmonton Oilers and remains the general manager there. Quenneville is back behind the bench, as of May. He’s the head coach of the Anaheim Ducks. It’s a pattern of redemption without reckoning. As for the moral question, that’s left up to the fans. The NHL and hockey more broadly makes what it might simply call a business decision – even cynically, perhaps, seeing an opportunity for a cut-rate contract – and moves on, leaving its supporters to sort out the ethics of it all, or to do the mental gymnastics of separating the player from the person.
The case of the Team Canada players was billed as a reckoning for hockey – finally. In the end, the case itself, and the judge’s ruling, made a clear line of justice difficult to draw. And so, yet again, no reckoning. The so-called watersheds come and go, the turning points lead to the same place. The behavior, the pattern, remains. A scandal, a moment of reflection, then a quiet reabsorbing of those involved back into hockey’s ecosystem. The machinery of hockey, from development to junior to pro, protects itself. The game goes ahead and change, when it happens, feels incidental rather than intentional.
Hart was acquitted, that’s true. Legally, he bears no criminal responsibility. He has the right to rebuild his career. But what the courts decide and what a sport chooses to celebrate or reward are not the same thing. Neither is acquittal equal to absolution. Acquittal doesn’t negate the power imbalances that shaped the case. And it doesn’t delete the learned behaviour that makes these situations seemingly so common – the kind that teaches young athletes that consent may be negotiable, or that group loyalty outweighs empathy, or that success is a sanitizer. The accused in this case were found not guilty, that is not up for debate. Still, being legally innocent and being ethically fit for a role are two different things. The court may have had its say, but hockey’s silence, as usual, speaks louder.
