{"id":115422,"date":"2025-08-03T11:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T11:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115422\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T11:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T11:05:10","slug":"gary-bettman-faces-important-question-after-canadian-fives-acquittal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115422\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Bettman faces important question after Canadian Five&#8217;s acquittal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The CBA, extended last month for four years, grants the NHL commissioner essentially unfettered power regarding off-ice discipline. If the NHLPA had issues with Article 18-A, the union should have addressed its concerns during the recent kumbaya negotiations, which apparently never touched larger systemic issues off the ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, the union\u2019s words ring hollow in advance of Gary Bettman\u2019s decision whether to readmit the Canadian Five to the NHL after Carter Hart, Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Cal Foote and Alex Formenton <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/07\/24\/sports\/ex-canadian-junior-hockey-players-found-not-guilty-in-sexual-assault-trial\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">were found not guilty on July 24<\/a> by Judge Maria Carroccia following their trial in Ontario, after being charged with sexually assaulting a woman in her London hotel room in June 2018 following a Hockey Canada event.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this case, not guilty does not equate to innocent. That is my opinion, just as it was the judge\u2019s opinion that the woman \u2014 known as E.M., whose identity is shielded by a publication ban \u2014 was not credible in her testimony. I am not an attorney and I am not conversant with Canadian law, but from the moment the judge refused to admit Brett Howden\u2019s texts into evidence, the verdict seemed inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the language of Article 18-A.2: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The CBA, extended last month for four years, grants the NHL commissioner essentially unfettered power regarding off-ice discipline.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":115423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[2147,293,5513,62,2632,2225,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-115422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-slap-shots","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-sports-columnists","13":"tag-sports-plus","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114964511193477252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}