It is common knowledge that the NHL, that it is riddled with players, are partygoers, fighters and rule-breakers in general. Sometimes a player crosses boundaries outside the rink. or in one case on the ice. Here are fifteen cases where the player did something so bad that he went to jail. Austin Watson isn`t the first NHL player to face legal issues. Here are some other remarkable and shameful situations: Does this absence of crime have anything to do with the sport itself? Or are players simply tied to a better expectation than other players in other sports? The former forward, then an assistant coach with the Phoenix Coyotes, has been accused by New Jersey authorities of funding a multimillion-dollar bookmaker that took bets from other NHL players and allegedly had ties to the Mafia. The incident caused great embarrassment to Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky, whose wife Janet Jones allegedly placed bets with Toccet, who later pleaded guilty in May 2007 and was sentenced to two years of probation. He could have spent five years in prison. Some players on the 2018 team have since gone public and have denied any involvement.
Among them is former Silvertips goaltender Carter Hart, now with the Philadelphia Flyers. It was the first trial for an attack by an NHL player on the ice since Dino Ciccarelli, then with the Minnesota North Stars, was convicted in 1988. He was sentenced to one day in jail and fined $1,000 for hitting Toronto`s Luke Richardson with his stick. Although hockey players are often punished for attacking their opponents with sticks, an offence known as “slashing,” such attacks rarely end up in court. But McSorley`s coup was considered particularly brutal. He was charged after thousands of fans and millions of other viewers watched the coup on Brashear. The blow occurred three seconds before the end of the match. Of course, even if Johnson had accepted the qualifying offer, he would be a Mavericks employee — not a Kraken employee. The affiliation allows the Kraken to add interested parties to the Kansas City roster, but the Mavericks are independent and have their own players who are not controlled by the NHL team.
The talented but problematic forward`s NHL career and victim of sexual abuse ended in January 2003 with a drunken brawl at a strip club in Columbus, Ohio. After signing a two-year contract with Chicago last August, Fleury was suspended for 25 games early in the season for violating his addiction tracking program. He became sober and briefly attempted a comeback in 2009. After a short career in professional sports and a lot of money to spend, it is common for professional athletes to run into money problems. This is exactly what happened to Patrick Côté, which led him to rob two Canadian banks, claiming he was armed. Cote was no stranger to clashes with the law and was found in a stolen vehicle days after the crimes. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and never returned to hockey. Bill Smart, McSorley`s lawyer, argued that NHL players give their “explicit consent” to the risk of contact on the ice and that McSorley`s was not an attack. After signing a seven-year, $52 million contract with the Sabres following his trade from Colorado, the 24-year-old center was arrested in Lucan, Ont., for driving while disabled.
According to police, O`Reilly crashed his pickup truck into a Tim Hortons donut store shortly after 4.am. on July 9, 2015 and fled with his passengers. Police later found him walking down a nearby street and his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit of 0.08%. Plus, their season is incredibly short and they only play once a week. Yes, they train and they don`t, but I can imagine that it gives them more free time to get into trouble. They know that “idle hands are the workshop of the devil” and what is not. As if that weren`t enough, police in Halifax, Nova Scotia, are investigating rumours of another alleged gang rape by members of the Canadian team at the 2003 World Junior Tournament. Half a dozen unknown players allegedly raped a woman on a pool table in a bar while they were being filmed. I think most players grow up in smaller cities or have to move away from home at a young age and yes, some get special treatment, but I don`t think it`s like basketball or soccer in the United States where you`re a young star in high school or college and you almost get away with murder. As a reminder, the above players were punished by law enforcement and the NHL. Watson`s fate will unfold in the weeks and months following his arrest.
Professional athletes can have a sense of immunity when it comes to breaking the law, especially in the NFL, where it seems to have become an epidemic for players to be in the news every week for arrests. With the Ray Rice incident in the news, here`s a list of NHL players who have been charged with crimes related to murder, murder and/or manslaughter. Although these players still managed to get in jail, some of them used their professional status to get away with a warning first, or to mitigate their sentences. Some players never seemed to learn their lesson by being released several times before finally being sent to jail, or even constantly put in jail and still breaking the law when released. Michael McBain, the only player on that list still serving a sentence, is serving just over two years in prison for sexual assault. McBain was convicted of sexually abusing his stepdaughter during a four-year period that began when she was 12, according to CBC. The former Tampa Bay Lightning member played for the ECHL`s Las Vegas Wranglers and noticed that the girl had a crush on one of the team`s players. McBain created a fake email account to impersonate the player and used it to trick the girl into sending him explicit photos, in addition to other actions that we at TheSportster will record for your own research. In every large group of hundreds of men, there are inevitably a few troublemakers. Especially when these men are bombarded with wages and incentives that make them feel safe before the law and in today`s world. The late executor often made headlines for various transgressions, including a March 1989 arrest at the Canada-U.S. border where customs officers found 14.3 grams of cocaine in his underpants.
