Questions about the case.

As of October 26, 2026, no official website operated by Carter Hart is publicly known. To be clear: this is not it. This site is independent commentary, not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Carter Hart, any team, or any league.

In June 2018, players who had won gold for Canada at the world juniors gathered in London, Ontario for a Hockey Canada gala. That night, several of them were in a hotel room with a woman the court identified only as E.M. What happened in that room became the subject of a criminal trial seven years later. Five players, Michael McLeod, Carter Hart, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dubé, and Cal Foote, were charged with sexual assault. On July 24, 2025, Justice Maria Carroccia of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice acquitted all five (R. v. McLeod et al., 2025 ONSC 4319 (opens in a new tab)).

Yes. Hart was the only one of the five accused to testify, and the only one cross-examined (para 461 (opens in a new tab)). McLeod, Formenton and Dubé gave statements to London police in 2018 that were entered at trial. None of the three testified, so none was cross-examined on them (paras 296, 461 (opens in a new tab)). Cal Foote neither testified nor had a statement in evidence.

Hart took an indefinite leave (opens in a new tab) from the Philadelphia Flyers in January 2024. On June 30, 2024, the Flyers did not issue him a qualifying offer (opens in a new tab), which made him an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2024.

The court acquitted all five men. It did not find them innocent. An acquittal in Canadian law means the Crown did not prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The reasons went further than a bare burden-of-proof finding: the court found it could not rely on E.M.’s evidence and did not find that evidence credible or reliable, and it was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that E.M. did not consent. Those are the court’s findings, reported as the court stated them. Reasonable doubt is not exoneration, and an acquittal is not a finding that nothing happened.

The Crown had a limited window to appeal the acquittals and did not pursue an appeal. The verdicts are final. In Canada, the Crown can appeal an acquittal only on a question of law, not because it disagrees with the outcome.

A publication ban under section 486.4 of the Criminal Code protects her identity. The court referred to her only as E.M., and so does this site. The ban is standard in sexual-offence proceedings in Canada and says nothing about the merits of the case. The site publishes nothing that could identify her.

The case content is built from the primary record: the reasons for judgment in R. v. McLeod et al., 2025 ONSC 4319 (opens in a new tab), the agreed statement of facts, the trial exhibits as published by the court, and the transcripts of the 2022 parliamentary hearings. When the site reproduces a message or an exhibit, it uses the court-published version rather than a news summary, because secondary coverage has repeatedly fused and misquoted those texts. Statistics and outside claims carry their sources. Contested facts are attributed, not asserted.

Because acquittal and accountability are different questions. A criminal court asks whether the Crown proved specific charges against specific people beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not ask whether Hockey Canada handled the complaint properly, whether the sport’s institutions protected the people inside them, or whether the culture that produced that night has changed. This site examines the second set of questions. Its subject is the institution, not the men the court acquitted.

No. A court acquitted all five, and this site does not assert or imply that any of them committed a crime. Where the site sets out what was alleged, what was testified, or what the court found, it attributes each to its source and reports the acquittal alongside it. The argument here is with institutions and a culture, not with the verdict. Readers can weigh the record and reach their own conclusions.

That is the more comfortable version, and this site does not accept it. The pattern is older than one hotel room. Laura Robinson’s Crossing the Line documented the same machinery in junior hockey in 1998; an early-2000s manual that circulated among junior players wrote the vocabulary down; a 2003 World Junior allegation, still under investigation with no charges laid and nothing proven, sits in the same era; and 2018 is where the same shape of allegation surfaces again. Researchers call the mechanism male peer support: closed, ranked, all-male groups that supply the vocabulary, the encouragement, and the cover, locating the cause in the group rather than in a few individuals. The site’s subject is that structure, not the guilt of any acquitted man.

In May 2022, TSN reported that Hockey Canada had quietly settled a civil claim brought by E.M. over the 2018 incident, resolving it in a matter of weeks, without a full investigation and without requiring the players to take part. The claim sought $3.55 million; the amount paid was not disclosed. In July 2022, the Globe and Mail reported it was paid from the National Equity Fund, a reserve fed largely by the per-player insurance fee included in registration fees paid by ordinary hockey families, which by the chief financial officer’s testimony to Parliament had paid nine settlements totaling $7.6 million since 1989, $6.8 million of it tied to Graham James. That figure does not include the 2022 settlement, whose amount was not disclosed.

The money was the participants’ own, not the public’s: a federal audit completed in February 2023 found no public funds had been used in the settlements. The disclosure triggered parliamentary hearings, a freeze on Hockey Canada’s federal funding, and the withdrawal of major corporate sponsors, and Hockey Canada said it would stop using the fund for sexual-assault claims. The organization’s board and chief executive were replaced over the following months.

Game Misconducts argues the NHL should adopt a published policy with defined minimum penalties. A related campaign: a petition from Ontario Says No More, led by SOAR Initiative Canada, asks the NHL and the NHLPA for a survivor-centered policy on sexual violence, domestic violence and child abuse, with independent reporting and investigation, support services, mandatory training, public reporting and a joint policy committee. Minimum penalties are this site’s position, not the petition’s. The goal is a rule, not a punishment.

The NFL, MLB and the NBA each have a written domestic-violence and sexual-assault policy. The NHL’s collective bargaining agreement contains none. Commissioner Gary Bettman has said (opens in a new tab) the league has a sexual misconduct policy, but Article 18-A (opens in a new tab), the clause on Commissioner discipline for off-ice conduct in the CBA in force in July 2025, never used the words “sexual assault” or “domestic violence.” Under it, the commissioner handled each case individually, disciplining conduct deemed detrimental to the league. There is no published standard, no mandatory trigger, and no consistent minimum penalty. Without one, the league decides each case against a standard no one outside it can read. Writing the standard down is the change this site asks for.

On September 11, 2025, the NHL announced it would allow the five acquitted players to return, setting a timeline that brought their total time away from the league to nearly two years. In the same statement the league called the events “deeply troubling and unacceptable,” said it expects everyone connected with the game to conduct themselves with the “highest level of moral integrity,” and concluded that the players’ conduct, while found not to have been criminal, did not meet that standard. On October 16, 2025, when Carter Hart joined the Vegas Golden Knights on a professional tryout, the team said in a statement: “The Golden Knights are aligned with the process and assessment the NHL and NHLPA made in their decision. (opens in a new tab)” He signed a two-year contract (opens in a new tab) with the team on October 24, 2025 (opens in a new tab). In June 2026, general manager Kelly McCrimmon said the team did a “lengthy process of due diligence with Carter (opens in a new tab).” What that review covered has not been made public.

The NHL said the players’ conduct “requires formal League-imposed discipline” and set that discipline as delayed eligibility: they could sign with an NHL club no sooner than October 15, 2025, and play no sooner than December 1, 2025 (NHL statement, September 11, 2025). The NHL Players’ Association declared the matter closed (opens in a new tab).

Separately, on August 12, 2026, Hockey Canada’s independent appeal board (opens in a new tab) confirmed that all five had breached Hockey Canada’s code of conduct. Hockey Canada accepted its recommended suspensions from sanctioned programs, including international play and coaching: Michael McLeod until November 10, 2030; Dillon Dubé until November 10, 2028; Carter Hart until November 10, 2027; Cal Foote until November 10, 2026. Alex Formenton was reinstated immediately. The finding applied Hockey Canada’s own code, was separate from the criminal case, and does not affect the acquittals.

Several ways, none of which involve giving this site money. Sign the SOAR / Ontario Says No More petition for an NHL policy. Train with RAINN or a local center to answer a crisis line, or become a court or hospital companion for survivors who would otherwise go alone. Bring bystander training to your own team or league. Share the documented record with people who follow the game. If you coach or parent, the Cause page lists free, evidence-based prevention programs built for locker rooms and for raising boys. The site links all of it and profits from none of it.

No to affiliation, and no to money. This site is independent and noncommercial, a project of Game Misconducts, which documents institutional accountability in hockey. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Carter Hart, any other man named in the case, the Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL, the CHL, or Hockey Canada. It sells nothing, runs no advertising, and solicits no donations. The case content is assembled by a computer working from the public record, so every claim can be checked against its source. Sections marked ‘Our opinion’ are the site’s argument, not the record, and are labeled wherever they appear. Game Misconducts doesn’t name the people behind it. The work is meant to be judged on its sources, and corrections go through the contact page. Corrections are logged at /corrections.

This site publishes only allegations attributed to a named player by an identifiable source, together with their outcome. Anything that does not meet that standard is left out.

Carolina fans chanted it (opens in a new tab) at Carter Hart during the 2026 Stanley Cup Final. The headline quotes the fans. It is not a finding of the court, and the acquittal stands.