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On Tuesday, we learned Calgary Flames forward Dillon Dubé is one of the players who’ve been charged in a sexual assault scandal that’s been brewing for years, and the team is being criticized for the explanation it provided to explain the leave of absence he took before the news broke.
Over the past few years, the hockey world has been preparing for the day when we’d learn the identity of the former members of Canada’s World Junior team who’d been implicated in a sexual assault that allegedly unfolded in a hotel room in London, Ontario 2018.
That incident was thrust into the spotlight when the woman who claimed she was victimized filed a lawsuit against Hockey Canada and the CHL in 2020, and while police had initially closed a criminal investigation into the matter the previous year, the case was reopened after the story made headlines.
It was widely believed at least some of the alleged perpetrators had found a home in the NHL, and this week, those suspicions were confirmed when Carter Hart, Michael McLeod, Cal Foote, and Dillon Dubé were directed to surrender to the police (former Senators forward Alex Formenton was also implicated and turned himself in on Sunday).
Plenty of people had already managed to connect the dots after all four of those players took a leave of absence from their teams last week.
The Flyers cited “personal reasons” to explain Hart’s hiatus while the Devils declined to issue an explanation when McLeod and Foote stepped away, but the Flames took a slightly different route by telling fans Dubé was taking time to “attend to his mental health.”
— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) January 21, 2024
It’s been refreshing to see the NHL and other leagues take strides to normalize the need to take some time off to work on one’s psychological well-being, but there were understandably plenty of people who were not thrilled that excuse was used to justify the absence of a player who was charged with sexual assault a week later.
It’s worth noting the Flames quickly issued another statement in which the franchise claimed “We had no knowledge of pending charges at the time Dillon’s request for a leave of absence was granted,” and longtime ESPN hockey reporter Emily Kaplan said she’s heard the players who were implicated were told not to share details with their teams before asking for time off.
At the end of the day, it’s not a huge stretch to suggest the Flames were kept in the dark, and while it’s obviously not a great look for the franchise if it was aware, the bulk of the outrage here should probably be reserved for heinous allegations that sparked the controversy in the first place.