Canada's 2018 world junior players ineligible for 2023 world ...
No players from Canada’s 2018 world junior team will participate for Team Canada at the 2023 IIHF Men’s World Hockey Championship, Hockey Canada confirmed in a statement to The Athletic.
“Earlier this year, Hockey Canada made a decision that until the investigation and adjudicative process of the alleged incident in 2018 are complete, no players from the 2018 National Junior Team will be considered for participation for Team Canada,” Hockey Canada said in the statement. “This has been communicated to the management group for Team Canada at the 2023 IIHF Men’s World Championship.”
TSN first reported the news. The 2023 world championship will take place May 12-28 and be co-hosted by Tampere, Finland, and Riga, Latvia.
Hockey Canada’s statement comes after the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage passed a motion Monday directing Hockey Canada to hand over the final report the governing body received from law firm Henein Hutchison Robitaille’s investigation into the alleged sexual assault of a woman in a hotel room by members of the 2018 world junior team.
The allegations of sexual assault were made public in a 2022 lawsuit that Hockey Canada settled. In the complaint, filed last April in Ontario Superior Court, the woman alleged that she was assaulted by eight players in a London, Ont., hotel room on June 19, 2018, following a Hockey Canada Foundation event. Members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team were among those accused of assault in the lawsuit.
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One night in London: Allegations of sexual assault and a reckoning for Hockey Canada
London police investigators said in a filing to the Ontario Court of Justice last October that they have reasonable grounds to believe that five members of Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room, The Athletic reported in December. The evidence has not been tested in court and no charges have been laid.
Hockey Canada has been under intense scrutiny since May 2022 when the allegations of sexual assault were made public in the lawsuit. Police in London, Ont., and Hockey Canada have since reopened their investigations into the incident. The NHL is conducting an investigation as well.
In the wake of Hockey Canada’s scrutiny, CEO Scott Smith left the governing body and the entire board of directors stepped down in October. The federation elected a new board of directors in December. The board will serve a special one-year term focused on “making the changes necessary to improve the governance at Hockey Canada,” the federation said at the time of the board’s election.
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Hockey Canada timeline: Major developments so far
(Photo: Andy Devlin / Getty Images)
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