Very complicated issue that has been often discussed, but no one wants to solve.

(1) CHL is considered a 'professional league' by NCAA, and therefore all players in CHL are ineligible to play NCAA. There are certain rules such as how players are compensated, how many hours they spend playing/training/practicing, and minimum academic standards. There is also accreditation standards that each school must maintain. So it would take some fairly major changes in both NCAA rules and CHL rules to link Canadian schools to NCAA.

(2) Many kids that go the CHL route decide at age 14-16 to follow that path. Kids that elect to play NCAA can usually wait until age 17-18 (and even then, many schools are asking players to add a year of juniors before attending...so many don't even arrive until they are 19-20). The process for kids who initially decided to go CHL (say at age 16) to change their mind and attend NCAA (at age 18) is very hard and is rarely approved. There has been some talk in recent years to allow 16-18 years to renounce their CHL rights and make NCAA more available to them, but then not only does CHL fight it (because they will lose many overagers), but also USHL pushes back (as they would lose Canadian imports).

(3) Any plan to merge Usports and NCAA become unworkable as it would change all Canadian member schools. They are two very different organizations, NCAA being a huge, multi-billion monopoly that fights any crack on it's status as monopoly. It won't change its rules and it won't put money on the table.

In other words, there needs to be a better solution for the Canadian-born athletes that want access to NCAA (beyond Junior A). But any solution has NCAA, Usports, CHL, USHL all fighting it. So the current tug-of-war on talent will likely continue.

About fukcin time

When the money stops flowing, heads will be rolling, this was a long time coming, now let’s see if whoever replaces the group is actually competent

This was a death by a thousand cuts, should have happened way sooner

11:11 AM
11 october

Didn't even notice that lol, first thing I thought of was Remembrance Day (At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month)

Been a while, but since I haven’t payed much attention to this. Have Any new updates come out since October 11th?

A gentle reminder that nobody is to start naming names until actual trials are held, please and thanks.

I think the 2nd tweet adds some context to the first one, the “sanctions if any part” confused me for a bit until I realized it wasn’t the criminal investigation

Is there a date for any trials on this? Or do we still not know?

Anything of that nature will likely follow the conclusion of the London police investigation. I would suspect early January once most everybody is finished with the holidays.

Nobody has been charged so there wouldn't be a date for any trials.

Ok thanks! Haven’t really been keeping up with the investigation lately so I was curious

According to documents filed in court, police now say they have reasonable grounds to believe five junior hockey players sexually assaulted a 20-year-old woman at the hotel.

I'm still skeptical that any criminal charges will be filed against specific players. In the civil lawsuit, the victim refused to identify any specific players. Unless that's changed in the criminal investigation, criminal charges are a non-starter. The London police never said, to my knowledge, that they have reasonable grounds to believe five specific players committed a crime. Only that, "Five players sexually assaulted a 20-year old woman at the hotel."

The original investigation was closed in February, 2019 and subsequently reopened in early 2022, according to the Sporting News. That's a red flag unless new evidence was uncovered (a witness emerged; the victim decided to name names; physical evidence was discovered). Finally, the civil case was resolved before the criminal case, which is very uncommon, at least in the U.S. The burden of proof is significantly less in a civil case - the plaintiff must usually do so by a preponderance of evidence (more likely than not). Whereas, criminal charges must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I hope that justice is served in this case, but it looks like we're a long, long way from that goal at this point, based on public information.

London Police are asking the 5 members of the team to surrender to face charges.

Goodbye and good riddance 👋

Absolutely sickening that this behavior is so ingrained in hockey culture. Hope these 5 guys get what they deserve and the victim is able to find some semblance of vindication in their downfalls. I can't even imagine how horrible of a process this was to endure.

I really hope hockey "fans" stop empathizing with these literal criminals. The sheer amount of morons I see victim blaming and using this situation as a way to spread sexist rhetoric is disgusting. The culture is in need of a huge change

Also to mention the anonymous 6th person who was called down to the room, stayed for 10 minutes then left. Wonder if they'll ever be named. From originally 8 to now 5, this may be another Blackhawks situation of a lot of people knowing and no one doing anything, All names involved will be forever tainted, some more than others.
Wouldn't be surprised if the NHL doesn't do anything considering it's the IIHF games and their leniency to other crimes (Heatley), stubborn finger pointing to the rulebook (Kuznetsov), and lack of care but silent blacklisting to cases that don't directly involve issues on NHL property (Leipsic, M. Miller).

There are likely more people being told to go to court, just they're not pro-hockey players so the hockey reporters don't care as much. We're also going to get 3 damning reports (a police report, a hockey Canada report and an NHL report) into this so there are a couple more hurdles left before we reach a clear end

i wouldn't be surprised if it's just one long plead nonguilty get off free but blacklisting. No jail time without physical proof unfortunately. Money talks, or in this case, silences.

I don't think you can silence 3 reports, especially the hockey Canada one where there has been significant pressure on the organization ever since the story came out

NHL releasing Expansion news mere minutes after the report went out is gross and shows they haven't learned.