What we want, and why
We want one thing, and it is specific: a collectively bargained Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Policy in the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement, with defined minimum penalties, mandatory investigation, survivor provisions, and neutral, independent appeals, applied by a binding standard rather than commissioner discretion.
An organized, survivor-led campaign is already petitioning the NHL and the NHLPA for precisely this kind of formal, written policy. It is run by SOAR Initiative Canada, through its Ontario Says No More project.
Organizations and teams can sign the open letter.
The only league without a rule
The NHL is the only one of the four major North American professional leagues without a formal, written domestic violence and sexual assault policy. The NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball each adopted one in the wake of the sport-world reckoning that began with the NFL. The NHL did not. It handles every case individually, under Article 18-A of the collective bargaining agreement, which empowers the commissioner to discipline conduct deemed detrimental to the welfare of the league or the game. There is no defined standard, no mandatory trigger, and no consistent minimum penalty. A player may appeal off-ice discipline to a neutral arbitrator, but that is the only structured element: the underlying decision of whether, when, and how much to punish rests entirely on the commissioner’s discretion.
A standard the league invented on the spot
In September 2025, the NHL announced the reinstatement of five players who had been acquitted of sexual assault, setting a timeline that brought their total time away from the league to nearly two years. In that 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 in this case, while found not to have been criminal, the players’ conduct certainly did not meet that standard.
Read that again, because the league said two things in one breath. “Unacceptable” is a floor word. It is the lowest-bar verdict there is, a judgment that a line was crossed. “Did not meet the highest level of moral integrity” is ceiling language. It is a near-miss on a summit almost no one reaches. The NHL conceded the floor was breached, then dressed that breach in the language of falling short of excellence. It did not measure this against the floor it had just named. It buried the floor and quoted the ceiling.
So we are asking the NHL two questions.
Define the ceiling.
What conduct meets “the highest level of moral integrity”? By what process is it measured, and who measures it?
Define the floor.
What is the lowest conduct the NHL will accept from a player and still let him sign and play?
We framed it as two questions. The league already answered the second one. In the same statement that reached for “the highest level of moral integrity,” the NHL called the conduct “unacceptable.”
So read what they actually did. The league named a floor, said these players stepped over it, then dressed the discipline in ceiling language to make a floor violation sound like a failure to be excellent. “Highest moral integrity” is the part built to be quoted. “Unacceptable” is the admission buried next to it. Conduct a league calls unacceptable does not fall short of the highest standard. It falls short of any standard.
That leaves the NHL with one honest move. Put the floor in writing. Name it, and it has finally committed to the standard it has refused to write for a decade, a standard it must then apply consistently to conduct it has waved through before. Refuse, and it admits there is no floor at all, only one executive deciding case by case. Which is the whole problem, stated in the league’s own voice.
Sources for this section
- NHL statement on player reinstatement, September 11, 2025. nhl.com ↗
- NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article 18-A, “Commissioner Discipline for Off-Ice Conduct” (conduct detrimental to the welfare of the league or the game).
- Comparison policies: NFL Personal Conduct Policy (2014); MLB Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy (2015); Joint NBA/NBPA Policy on Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Child Abuse (Exhibit F, 2023 NBA–NBPA CBA).
- R. v. McLeod et al., 2025 ONSC 4319 (CanLII). canlii.org ↗
- Campaign: SOAR Initiative Canada / Ontario Says No More. soarinitiative.org ↗