Gary Bettman: NHL expects ‘full co-operation’ from players in league investigation of Hockey Canada sexual assault case

The National Hockey League is still hammering out details on how its investigation into the gang rape of a young woman in London, Ontario in 2018 by eight players from Canada’s World Junior Championship gold medal winning team will unfold. But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made it clear on the eve of the 2022 NHL Draft in Montreal that he is expecting full co-operation from players and the league is committed to discovering the truth of what happened.

“It’s being set up to go,” Bettman said Thursday evening. “We’re working with the Players’ Association to make sure that there’s full co-operation and that the Players’ Association is comfortable with how we’re dealing with the players.”

Asked whether the league would compel players who have knowledge of what transpired in the hotel room that led to an out of court settlement paid by Hockey Canada to tell the truth about what happened, Bettman sounded confident the league was going to get full co-operation from the players.

“We don’t have to get into compelling or not, we’re expecting full co-operation,” the commissioner said.

“I don’t see why a player wouldn’t do that (come forward), but we’ll have to see. We’ve got to do it one person at a time,” Bettman added. “We’re still we’re in the process with the Players’ Association of laying out the parameters of how this is going to work out.”

Hockey Canada has been publicly excoriated for their handling of the sexual assault that took place after a Hockey Canada gala and golf tournament and the subsequent lawsuit filed by the 24-year-old woman.

Hockey Canada executives have been called to answer questions by Canadian Parliamentarians in Ottawa and more questions will be asked of the national hockey body’s leadership in a few weeks.

Key sponsors for Hockey Canada’s marquee international event the World Junior Championship, including Canadian Tire, Tim Horton’s and Scotiabank, have pulled sponsorship from the tournament.

Immediately after news of the lawsuit settlement broke, the NHL issued a statement decrying the behavior of the players involved and promising a thorough investigation.

Last week, defenseman Victor Mete, who played on the 2018 World Junior Championship team, released a statement indicating that he was on a family vacation the night of the incident and was not present for it, nor did he know that it happened at the time.

Bettman repeated multiple times during his press briefing Thursday that the league is determined to get to the bottom of what transpired in that hotel room. He said NHL clubs have been informed that they are expecting their players to make themselves available to the league’s investigators.

“We’d like them to ensure that their players are available to us and they tell us the truth,” Bettman said. “We’re asking for any information that we can get our hands on.

“As you know from covering it, this this is not easy stuff,” the Commissioner added. “It’s horrible. It’s not easy to really get a full understanding of it at least at this stage, but we’re going to try.”

The NHL’s investigation will be headed up initially at least by new head of security for the league Jared Maples who is the former director of Homeland Security for the state of New Jersey. Because none of the eight defendants in the law suit were named it’s unknown how many are playing in the NHL although the team was loaded with future NHL players.

As for potential league discipline, Bettman would not speculate on what if any kind of punishments the players might face.

“Let’s cross that bridge if we have to,” the commissioner said. “In light of the seriousness of the allegations and how horrific it was, we don’t need to be speculating right now. We said at the outset we’re going to investigate and to the extent that we can get a fuller understanding as to what transpired, we’re going to do that.”

Because the league is basically starting from scratch in trying to find out what happened and who was involved a time line for completion of the investigation is impossible to gauge.

“The timeline isn’t completely within our control,” Bettman said. “We require the co-operation of a lot of people to actually get to the bottom of this.”

“We’re going to try and do as thorough an investigation as possible to see if we can learn more than obviously Hockey Canada was able to make us aware of, either because they didn’t have the information or there were some limitations. But our goal is to get to the bottom of this and get a full understanding of what actually happened by whom,” Bettman said.

The commissioner said he hopes to make the league’s investigation public although he acknowledged there may be caveats when it comes to gathering information that make full openness difficult.

“It depends on what we need to do in terms of agreements to get full access to information,” he said. “We may be put under some limitations that if we want some information we can’t make it public. I hope that’s not the case. I hope we’re in a position to learn everything there is to learn and make it public. That’s our goal.”

Bettman suggested this incident doesn’t reflect a problem with hockey’s culture but rather societal problems, though he insisted the league needs to hold itself to a higher standard.

“I think there are problems that are experienced in all sports and throughout society that are unacceptable and I don’t think we’re any different in that regard than anybody else, and I certainly don’t think that’s an issue at the NHL level,” Bettman said.

“I can’t speak necessarily to the other levels of hockey,” he added. “Not to suggest it makes it OK, but there were widely reported other incidents in other sports and conduct that’s unacceptable. I want to hold our game to a higher standard and that’s something that we, (NHL senior executive vice-president of social impact, growth initiatives and legislative affairs) Kim Davis in particular does, in terms of the discussions and the work we’re doing with hockey at all levels.”

Gary Bettman: NHL expects ‘full co-operation’ from players in league investigation of Hockey Canada sexual assault case

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