![]() ![]() Recent incidents in Canada (note that Canada is not unique in this regard), for example, include St. The role of consent in these rituals in less clear. The custom of hazing or inducting a rookie player onto the team involves subjecting the player to demeaning or degrading acts – often involving alcohol – and upon completion of said humiliating acts the player will have passed the test and is accepted onto the team. Indeed, such infractions are contemplated in the rule books and are presumed to be understood and consented by all those who participate. Generally speaking, the courts have historically taken an similarly accommodating view to the extent that it approves not only intentional and inadvertent legal contact such as open ice hits or checks but illegal conduct such as fighting, boarding or blindside hits. In a take on the Las Vegas expression, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,’ hockey traditionalists believe that what happens on the ice, or by extension in the locker rooms, should stay there. ![]() The legal system may once again be tested to determine where the line lies between the culture of a sport which permits behavior within and outwith the rules on the playing surface as well as behind the scenes. The MJHL has fined the team $5000, suspended assistant coach Brad Biggers five games, captain Danil Kalashnikov five games, assistant captains Richard Olson, Tyler Gaudry and Shane Harrington were suspended three games each and another 12 players were suspended one game each. Five players were victimized during the rookie hazing. Lastly, The RCMP are investigating an incident in which it is alleged a 15 year old hockey player with the Neepewa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL) boy was forced to walk naked with water bottles tied to his scrotum as part of a hazing ritual. Judge Tyma wryly stated that, ‘This case arises from two mothers dispensing with the time-honored notion of playground justice and taking matters between their sons into their own hands.’ The defendant’s lawyer called the decision a ‘vindication of common sense and our system of justice’ and summed it best: ‘The plaintiff’s case didn’t belong in the witness box, it belonged in the penalty box.’ In the spirit of an eye for an eye, Fromageot walked over to the players’ bench, grabbed the boy’s helmeted head and began banging it against the Plexiglass wall, yelling ‘don’t hit my son.’ It was after witnessing her son’s head bouncing off the wall that Bennett intervened when the alleged assault took place. Fromageot was apparently exacting retribution for what she perceived as an unfair hit by Bennett’s 10 year old son against her son. To begin, Judge Theodore Tyma of Connecticut Superior Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by Madeline Fromageot (click here for the story) which alleged Joan Bennett assaulted her (the extent of the alleged assault was that Fromageot’s headband was knocked from her head during a confrontation) after Bennett came to the defence of her son whose head was being banged against a wall by the plaintiff. Plus the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have launched an investigation into a hazing incident which allegedly involves a teenage boy walking naked in a locker room with water bottles tied to his genitals. A case was settled in Connecticut last month in which the mother of a seven year old son sued the mother of another player, claiming that she was assaulted, albeit after allegedly assaulting the defendant’s son. Whilst it is comforting not to report on concussion or fighting, hockey has descended to a new and – in a sense – bizarre depth. ![]()
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