Found not guilty, Hart can resume his career...but far, far from here

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

By Bob Herpen

Phanatic Magazine

Former Philadelphia Flyers starting goaltender Carter Hart is a free man.

Pronounced not guilty of sexual assault stemming from a 2018 incident in London, Ontario, Provincial Superior Court Justice Maria Carrochia on Thursday deemed Hart and fellow Team Canada teammates Michael McLeod, Alex Formenton, Dillon Dube and Callan Foote, have cleared a very important hurdle in the resumption of their lives. 

If you recall, Hart – the Flyers' latest choice to become the heir apparent to the Parent-Lindbergh-Hextall legacy – was given his unconditional release in January 2024 following news of the allegations. When the club declined to make him a qualifying offer last summer as a restricted free agent, Hart became an unrestricted free agent who could sign with anyone he chose.

I’m sure in light of the verdict, there is doubt in many minds, both in the real world and online. “Not guilty” is far from “innocent.” Hart’s actions and behavior on the night in question with the alleged victim and his teammates is a matter of public record. 

Airing out that unsavory conduct should plant a tremendous seed of doubt in the minds of National Hockey League general managers as to their suitability, both character-wise and fitness-wise, to resume his career. 

Hart and his co-defendants apparently cleared another hurdle with public support of the NHL Players’ Association, which, according to TSN of Canada on Friday, stated they should be allowed to resume their careers.

However, we all know it just takes one brave soul among 32 to stick his neck out – whether it’s for Hart or any of the other four defendants – and the rest of the league will follow along dutifully despite any initial blowback. Front offices have found redeeming qualities in players for worse.

In the Fall of 1992, another former Flyer, Dan Quinn, was arraigned on suspicion of raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room in a Twin Cities suburb. Worse, Quinn’s former teammate, golf buddy and future Hockey Hall of Fame entrant Mario Lemieux (during the season he missed time due to treatments for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, no less) was alleged to have been present in the room when the incident was supposed to have occurred.

Quinn was freed on bond and never formally charged, but the stain of the accusations forced the North Stars to release him unconditionally, days later. Already an established 10-year veteran, he was not picked up by any other club, NHL or otherwise, for the remainder. 

When Quinn did get the call, it was the expansion Ottawa Senators who scooped him up for 13 games in desperation in March of the following season. Lemieux, on the other hand, felt the tide of public sentiment turn for the worse only briefly before the press fitted him for laurels after battling and beating cancer.

What separates this situation from a more cut-and-dried incidence of assault or rape is Hart’s misdeed being a sin of omission – failure to act once in the room to stop anything else that happened after McLeod and “E.M’s” first encounter in the hotel – and not a sin of commission, which would place on him greater culpability. 

It was obvious once Hart was named as a defendant, he should have disappeared and not been allowed to remain in good standing with the Flyers. And that happened. 

And let’s be clear: if Hart were facing prison time for sexual assault or rape, there is no way he should be allowed to continue unabated anywhere in hockey or in life, nor could I justify any thought process to the contrary. But he wasn’t. 

I’m not advocating the Flyers welcome him back with open arms – that is, if Hart even wants to reunite with the franchise that selected him 48th overall in 2016. I’m saying for a lack of a “guilty” verdict, Hart should be allowed to start rebuilding his professional profile somewhere, but far, far away from the top professional league in the world.

I hear it’s lovely in Death Valley around 3 p.m. this time of year. If there’s a midnight beer league starting up in Norway or Kazakhstan let him stew there. Oymyakon goes from 80 above to 70 below in the blink of an eye on the Siberian plateau.

Of course, I understand the nature of social media. Its boundaries are extremes of thought, and nothing about the online discourse regarding this trial for its duration shows it can be any other way. Men suck. Believe all women. There are going to be readers outraged that I dared to embrace nuance, or failed to express sufficient anger that I don’t want Hart burned at the stake for guilt by association.

For those of you who passionately wish to damn all involved, I salute your commitment. Nobody needs to tell you this is a free country and you are free to hold that deeply-felt opinion close in your heart. Absence of nuance in thought works best on social media, not so much in the real world. There are very few moral absolutes, less so when legal posturing further blurs lines while paying lip service to seeking truth. 

If you have beef, then bring the ruckus to Judge Carrochia, a woman who failed to find the complainant’s testimony “credible or reliable.” Take it out on the absolute joke of a prosecution team whose misconduct was so egregious it resulted in two mistrials, the second one forcing the proceedings to be a judge-only bench proceeding.

If, somehow, Hart gains the good graces of the Flyers front office – or any other NHL front 

office – I fully support any fans’ or otherwise concerned citizens’ desire to protest his signing or any subsequent on-ice appearance.

Anywhere. On any platform. And by any means they deem fit without resorting to violence or property damage. Same goes for the other four smacked-asses who shared the “not guilty” verdict if they are allowed to play again.

Unlike the other four, Hart projected the biggest profile and is likely to be given greater and quicker consideration for a shot at resuming his career in the NHL. The rumors swirled online practically the whole month of July that the Oilers had (or didn’t have) interest in the 26-year-old native of suburban Edmonton. 

Even if you put it out of your mind in favor of touching grass, putting a drink in your hand and toes in the sand, or shut off all online behavior to enjoy real life before football jolts us all back to reality: be prepared for, and not shocked by, Hart’s inevitable return to our TV screens and a rink near you. 

The further away from anywhere good, the better.

Cool, calm and collected: Cote continues championing cannabis

Courtesy of CBC News

 by Bob Herpen 

Phanatic Hockey Editor 

According to former Phantoms and Flyers player and assistant coach Riley Cote, the moral arc of cannabis use among hockey players is long and it seems to favor justice. 

In a relatively short span, perception of marijuana in hockey culture – against decades of intertwining with alcohol as the main method of stress relief, team bonding and celebration – has morphed from lessons more apt to be gleaned from the original “Reefer Madness” to a substance viewed as a viable option for pain relief and recovery.

“Even when I was coaching the Phantoms (from 2010-17 in Glens Falls and Allentown), we had suspended a few guys for cannabis use who got popped vaping after the game so it was still very, very taboo,” Cote revealed during a July 7 Zoom call with the Phanatic. “And if you got popped with it, it was like, ‘the Devil’s lettuce,’ you were looked at as a drug user and everything else.”  

Oddly enough, that need for secrecy meant there was no peer pressure from teammates to quit the green and sink some golden brown. 

“So I was always, up until I retired, absolutely quiet about it outside of the group of guys I could trust,” he continued. “Because that would essentially be career suicide.”

But the tables have turned. Once freed from the discretion required of employment with a multi-million-dollar enterprise that is a National Hockey League franchise, Cote went full force into not only talking about his brand of self-medication, but also promoting that million-dollar enterprise in the same spaces that once required stifling.

Just a few years after haltingly introducing the potential professional benefits of cannabis-related products in his final years as Phantoms assistant, Cote says he was openly hawking his interest in a company specializing in cannabidiol products directly in the Flyers locker room where he found interested parties among the strength and conditioning coaches.

Born in Winnipeg, Cote left home to pursue his dream when he was 16 years old. Shuffled off to northern Saskatchewan, his experiences with non-alcoholic substances were a couple tries with marijuana that left him confused and paranoid. 

You can’t blame him. There’s no catchy rhyme to guide the young and inexperienced with cannabis as there is with booze (“Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear, etc.).

What followed was four years with Prince Albert in the Western Hockey League of Canadian juniors, 108 games and a Turner Cup championship during a brief tour in the second tier of professional hockey, 183 appearances in the AHL including a Calder Cup title in 2005, then 156 NHL contests exclusively for the Orange and Black between 2006 and 2010. 

As he rose through the ranks, Cote’s relationship with cannabis grew and became more comfortable, all at a time when there was little guidance except the lessons learned through trial-and-error titration, along with adjusting location and mindset during consumption.

“I think I connected with it more on a level that most people would describe their relationship with cannabis, in lower doses, for managing anxiety because you feel the ‘softness,’” he said. “I found a little grove, again, without science to support it, any literature.”

His one shining moment in The Show came against the Montreal Canadiens, just prior to his 26th birthday – a goal in the dying seconds of a 5-3 home defeat on Feb. 17, 2008. That season also marked Cote’s high-water marks for games played in a single NHL campaign (70), along with the most points (4) and penalty minutes (202). 

It may be surprising, though, that Cote says he really didn’t remember celebrating. And it’s something he says he definitely can’t blame on the Demon Weed, instead chalking it up to being a good teammate who just couldn’t cut loose after a loss.

“I didn’t even celebrate on the ice, so I know I didn’t go out and say, ‘Hey, look at me! I scored my first NHL goal!’ but I would almost put money on that,” Cote recalled. “It was at home, so I probably went out for some pops after. And that’s generally where it would go. It would be alcohol, right?”

It is well established that hockey culture centered around alcohol has existed for decades and with it, the residual disdain for other “hard” drugs. It is also now well established that enforcer culture, which revolves around players groomed or selected specifically to fight opponents, lends itself to anxiety and depression. 

Aside from the catch-all panacea that beer offered, increasing use and subsequent abuse of opioids to combat pain became the order of the day. The honor of The Code might have been blown up for good with the deaths of former heavyweights Derek Boogaard and Wade Belak attributed in part to substance abuse as a result of mishandling the mental and physical toll fighting took on both players.

Cote felt it too, admitting the level of stress and performance anxiety, knowing he had a near-mandate to fight when necessary, was overwhelming and persistent. He said cannabis often blunted intrusive thoughts of hockey as a battleground.

“When Georges Laraque comes to Philly the first time, certainly my anxiety is through the roof,” he added. “I’ve gotta earn my keep and let everybody know I’ve got my street cred.”

One of the benefits of marijuana use after a particularly tough night, was an effect as immediate as words of reassurance.

Cote recalled one night as a Flyer, being tasked with fighting venerable veteran Donald Brashear. Following a particularly brutal bout and defeat, Cote said he smoked “more to soothe the mental pain and my wounded pride than to ease the physical pain” of getting rag-dolled by the Quebec-raised pugilist.

For a long time, Cote was part of a secret society, a de-centralized cadre of conspirators which existed at every level of the sport. 

“No matter what league I played in there was always a handful of guys that used cannabis, whether they knew it was medicine or not, that’s a different story,” he said. “There was always a few regulars and you naturally find those guys.”

Now, the amount of legitimate medical information at the fingertips of players, coaches, agents and staff, alongside the evolution of strength, conditioning and recovery has altered opinions, and forced the matter into the open, Cote admitted. 

If he were involved with management in pro hockey, it would be a ‘no brainer’ to allow athletes the opportunity to embrace any edge they can to compete better. All the better to keep the “meat suits” in top shape.

“It’s changed so much,” Cote acknowledged. “I know there’s not (many) current guys speaking about it but management’s very well aware of guys using cannabis now.

“I think unless you’re living in a hole in the ground somewhere, it’s safe to say that even the most old-school mind would tell you cannabis is safer than alcohol and a better recovery tool.”

For more on Cote's cannabis crusade, hit the link.