Hart, McLeod, Dube, Foote, Formenton found not guilty of sexual assault

[blankall]

Originally Posted by MacDaddy77

This all happened after being drafted. Now Dube goes from the highpoint of his life in playing for his hometown team to being a pariah in the community his family members still live in.

Someone will flip on the others I'm guessing. who will it be

Didn't one of them just go up for pizza?...I'm guessing it's that guy.

[trackercowe]

Is Formenton confirmed to be the "ring leader", as in the one who convinced her to go up to the room? I wonder what the maximum term they can receive.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Will they be tried together? I assume if they are all declaring their innocence, that they will be presenting a united front and are collaborating the defense strategy.

Generally, yes, but you can apply to sever the trials. I'm guessing they wouldn't allow that here, as it would force the victim to attend multiple trials and potentially result in differing findings of facts on the same events.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by blankall

Didn't one of them just go up for pizza?...I'm guessing it's that guy.

It's so hard to keep track of everything, but my assumption was there were originally 8 people in the shade, with 5 actually taking part in the alleged assault, and "pizza guy" would be one of the other 3 and likely a key witness.

[codynw]

Originally Posted by devo22

I might be wrong, but wasn't there talk before about 8 players being somewhat involved in this, not just those 5? Maybe someone has already flipped.

5 players on the world junior team and 3 others who weren’t. Varying levels of involvement.

[Azure]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1752436125938155667

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Or they were notified by a family member, teammate, agent, or medical professional that Dube had entered medical care for a mental health crisis.

We don't know. But often in these situations it's not the person themselves that informs the employer that the person is suffering from a medical crisis. It can come from several other people.

No Jiri. I think the most important thing is that we rush to judgement before we know all of the facts. Let’s skewer the Flames as fast as we can.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by codynw

5 players on the world junior team and 3 others who weren’t. Varying levels of involvement.

The headlines are stating that only 5 members of the team are facing charges. It seems odd that of the 8 involved, the only 5 to be charged all happened to end up as NHLers. Are more being charged?

[Monahammer]

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Azure

https://twitter.com/user/status/1752436125938155667

He also says he doesn’t believe the 5 on leave were the 5 to be charged, so do we trust his comments?

[Bend it like Bourgeois]

Originally Posted by Elkyiv

Does anyone know the legal language that is used when drafting up player contracts? Can being charged with certain Criminal Code sections permit the team to terminate a contract, or does it have to result in a conviction?

I haven't followed too many criminal court cases with athletes, but I recall Kobe playing during his case.

There was a good article in the athletic about that today.

It was detailed but I read it as the League can do anything from expel, suspend, cancel a contract, or fine a player if they think behaviour is harmful to the league (and are confident they’d win the argument).

Teams have less leeway but Galchenyuk was an example where the team didn’t wait for a conviction or the league. Perry wasn’t even charged with anything.

[dammage79]

Where does the morality stand against the contractual and legal standpoint of any of these guys playing for their teams before the trial?

Will the teams allow them to play under the innocent until proven guilty, or are they going to say, nah, you go ahead and sort this put, we're good here.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by stang

Weren’t you the guy calling Perry a “POS” and blasting the Oilers without having any idea what he even did?

and you were defending him because he now wears Blue and Orange like Kane

Bob Nicholson also says hi

[bluejays]

From a logical standpoint it’s hard to fault the flames about the statement. There’s zero reason they’d want to cover up for a non star player. Especially if charges were coming down imminently. Dube was also the first player to push the eject button. So if he gave that excuse I’m sure today they’re annoyed given more information. I’m 99% most of the league knew the major names involved so in hindsight they’d have probably wish they put an “indefinite leave for personal reasons” instead of mental health statement. But hindsight is what it is. There would be no reason they’d actively cover up for him but they should have a policy going forward that anyone taking leave should be at first “for personal reasons”.

[CroCop]

The Flames need to immediately separate themselves from this guy and denounce his reason for leave as mental health related.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by Weitz

He also says he doesn’t believe the 5 on leave were the 5 to be charged, so do we trust his comments?

Seravalli? No. God no. But it does seem like something that could conceivably happen. Lord knows it's going to be the team's line of communication.

[Beninho]

Crazy how this all turned into a #### storm of pilling on the Flames on social media. Like it’s a bad look but no one knows exactly what happened behind the scenes that lead to the statement. Regardless the Flames role in this is insignificant and the attention should be focused on the case. The Devils signed Foote in the offseason but somehow the Flames “must have known”. The mincing of words over a PR statement is pretty ridiculous when not all the facts and legalities are known. Social media is acting like the Flames just re-signed him to a long term contract.

[Ped]

Originally Posted by Electricprez

I suggested this and was immediately lambasted by Ped for being overanalytical.

Yes, my one-line reply suggesting that jumping from "under medical care" to "suicide attempts" was absolutely lambasting you.

Leaping from under the care to a suicide attempt is quite a leap.

Such a devastating attack, I don't know how you survived.

[SuperMatt18]

Frank is 100% carrying water on this for the NHL.

First he was saying these leave of absences weren't connected to the WJC charges.

Now he's saying the teams were in the dark and had no idea.

I'm a random person with no connection to the NHL or Hockey Canada and I heard on Jan. 19th that Dube and Hart were the two biggest names that would be implicated and that more would be coming.

To think that the NHL teams had no idea or no awareness at all that this was a possibility is just crazy...they maybe didn't have confirmation but they knew it was a possibility for sure.

[Ashasx]

Originally Posted by Beninho

Crazy how this all turned into a #### storm of pilling on the Flames on social media. Like it’s a bad look but no one knows exactly what happened behind the scenes that lead to the statement. Regardless the Flames role in this is insignificant and the attention should be focused on the case. The Devils signed Foote in the offseason but somehow the Flames “must have known”. The mincing of words over a PR statement is pretty ridiculous when not all the facts are known. Social media is acting like the Flames just re-signed him to a long term contract.

While I agree 100% that the Flames role is insignificant relative to the incident and the focus should be on the victim, the Flames being perceived as providing support for somebody who has been charged with sexual assault is very important for improving hockey culture, especially at a time when incidents like this are at the forefront and sports in general are trying to be more inclusive.