Hockey Canada Suspends Four Players Even After Court Cleared Them: Here's Why
Hockey Canada announced on August 12, 2026, that an independent appeal board confirmed all five players from its 2018 world junior team broke the organization's code of conduct. The ruling keeps four of the five players suspended while lifting the ban on one. Alex Formenton was reinstated right away. Cal Foote, Carter Hart, Dillon Dubé, and Michael McLeod stayed suspended. McLeod's suspension is the longest, running until November 10, 2030 (Reuters). The New York Times and The Washington Post reported the results in line with Hockey Canada's public update issued the same day.
The case goes back to June 2018. Five hockey players were accused of sexually assaulting a woman known as EM in a hotel room in London, Ontario. They had been attending a gala event. EM met the players at a bar and later went back to the hotel room to have consensual sex with McLeod. Then other players entered and engaged in further sexual acts with her. The central question at trial was whether EM, who was 20 at the time, consented to every sexual act that happened in that room. EM testified that she was intoxicated, felt afraid of the men, and that while she initially agreed to have sex with McLeod, she did not agree to what happened afterwards (BBC News).
All five players were cleared of sexual assault charges in July 2025. The judge, Justice Maria Carroccia, said she did not find EM's evidence "credible or reliable" (BBC News). Those acquittals ended the criminal case but left Hockey Canada's own disciplinary process unfinished.
The appeal board's ruling dealt with a separate process. The original independent panel report that was being appealed was dated November 10, 2023. Hockey Canada announced it had received notice that the appeal process had concluded, leading to the August 12, 2026, announcement (Hockey Canada). The three-year gap between the original panel report and the end of the appeal process reflects the layered internal system Hockey Canada uses, which runs separately from the criminal courts.
The key thing to understand is why players can be cleared in court but still face penalties from Hockey Canada. A criminal court requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard in Canadian law. That means the judge must be almost certain the person is guilty. Hockey Canada's code of conduct process uses a different, lower standard, based on organizational rules rather than criminal law. Think of it like the difference between a court deciding whether someone goes to jail and a workplace deciding whether someone violated company policy. Both can produce findings, but they ask different questions and use different thresholds. The appeal board's confirmation means that within Hockey Canada's own framework, all five players were found to have violated the conduct standards the organization requires of its representatives, regardless of the criminal verdict.
For the four players who remain suspended, the consequences go beyond just not being allowed to play in Hockey Canada games. Under Hockey Canada's updated Non-Sanctioned Leagues Policy, any player who joins a league that Hockey Canada does not approve of after September 30 becomes ineligible to join, affiliate with, or apply for reinstatement (Hockey Canada). This effectively closes the door for suspended players to keep their careers going outside Hockey Canada's system, because playing in an unapproved league means they can't come back.
Formenton's immediate reinstatement removes those restrictions for him. His name, though, stays tied to a case that has reshaped how Canadian hockey is governed.
Adam van Koeverden, Canada's secretary of sport, said the case "started a national conversation about safe sport and the problematic culture in men's hockey" in a statement issued after the appeals board's ruling. Van Koeverden said there has been progress at Hockey Canada to address long-standing systemic failures and that national sport organisations must be held accountable (BBC News).
The broader context here is the pressure that has built around Hockey Canada since the 2018 incident became public. The organization faced intense scrutiny over how it handled sexual assault allegations, how it used settlement funds, and the broader culture within men's hockey programs. The code of conduct process, the independent panel, and the appeal mechanism are all governance structures that Hockey Canada has either used or refined in response to that pressure. Van Koeverden's statement signals that the federal government continues to watch whether those structures are producing results that meet what the public expects.
What remains unresolved is the long-term fallout. The four suspended players face multi-year bans from Hockey Canada-sanctioned competition, with McLeod's running until 2030. Whether those suspensions act as a deterrent, whether the governance reforms last, and whether the gap between criminal and organizational findings weakens public trust in either system are questions that the August 12 ruling sharpens but does not answer.
