Ice hockey player Carter Hart to join Golden Knights after sexual assault acquittal

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Ice hockey player Carter Hart – one of five players acquitted of sexual assault charges in Canada – has signed a new contract with National Hockey League (NHL) team the Vegas Golden Knights.

The players – all members of Canada’s World Junior Championship gold-medal team – were accused of assaulting a woman known as EM in a hotel room in 2018 in the Canadian province of Ontario. They were cleared in July.

The NHL is composed of 32 teams in North America – 25 in the US and seven in Canada.

Hart is the first to sign a contract with an NHL team since it ruled the acquitted players could not join teams before 15 October, or play in games until December as part of a reinstatement process.

Speaking at a press conference, the 27-year-old said he was “excited to move forward”.

“It’s been a long road to get back to this point, to get back to playing the game of hockey, a game that I love, and I’ve been out of the game for a year and a half now,” Hart said, adding that he had “learned a lot”.

The Golden Knights said in a statement on X that they “remain committed to the core values that have defined our organization from its inception and expect that our players will continue to meet these standards moving forward”.

Michael McLeod, one of the other players acquitted in the case, signed a three-year contract with Avangard Omsk of the Kontinental Hockey League in Russia last week, the NHL reported. The other three remain free agents.

Hart, McLeod and fellow ice hockey players Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton and Cal Foote were all found not guilty of sexually assaulting EM following the eight-week trial that attracted significant attention in Canada. Hart was the only player to testify in his own defence.

In her ruling, the judge said she did not find EM’s evidence “credible or reliable”, and that “the Crown cannot meet its onus on any of the counts”.

The central issue of the trial was whether EM, who was 20 at the time of the incident, had consented to every sexual act in the hotel room that night. The team had been attending a Hockey Canada gala.

The court heard that the woman had met the players at a bar and later went back to the hotel room to have consensual sex with Mr McLeod. Other players then entered the room and engaged in further sexual acts with her.

Lawyers for the players contended that she asked the men to have sex with her and they believed she gave consent.

EM, however, testified that she was intoxicated and felt fearful of the men. While she had initially agreed to have sex with Mr McLeod, she testified that she did not agree to what unfolded afterwards.

Prior to the trial, the case forced a reckoning within Hockey Canada – largely seen as Canada’s voice for ice hockey on the international stage – after it emerged that the sports body had reached a quiet settlement with the alleged victim in 2022, and had set aside a fund to settle similar allegations.

Hockey Canada lost major sponsors, faced a parliamentary probe, and had its federal funding frozen in the aftermath. It later announced a plan to address “systemic issues” in the culture of ice hockey.

In a statement in September, the NHL said: “The events that transpired after the 2018 Hockey Canada Foundation Gala in London, Ontario, prior to these players’ arrival in the NHL, were deeply troubling and unacceptable.

“The League expects everyone connected with the game to conduct themselves with the highest level of moral integrity. And, in this case, while found not to have been criminal, the conduct of the players involved certainly did not meet that standard.”

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