If you are surprised that the Carolina Hurricanes may offer a contract to a player who is currently suspended by the NHL for his role in a sex scandal, you just haven’t been paying close enough attention. And not to Michael McLeod and the crimes of which he was accused and found not guilty — which have kept him out of the league since February 2024 and captivated the attention of Canada for years — but to the Hurricanes themselves.
For better or for worse, this is the team that signed Tony DeAngelo over the vocal objections of many fans. This is the team that let two beloved broadcasters walk. This is the team that rebranded Pride Night this season as “Hockey is for Everyone Night.” This is the team that’s going to do whatever it thinks will help it win regardless of what some or all of its fans think, regardless of whatever feel-good stuff it posts on social media. That’s neither a criticism nor a compliment nor a complaint. It’s just the reality of the situation.
The Hurricanes, from owner Tom Dundon on down, think if they keep winning, people may complain but they’ll still keep coming. That’s an organizational philosophy.
And nothing speaks to that more than the potential signing of McLeod, the former New Jersey Devils first-round draft pick who was found not guilty on sexual-assault charges after a two-month trial of five Team Canada players this summer. The case, dating back to 2018, was revived amid concerns that the original investigation was mishandled, with the five players accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in London, Ontario. McLeod alone faced an additional charge of being party to an offense, a charge typically levied in murder trials.
At the end of a bench trial — and a mistrial and a second dismissed jury — the presiding judge said she found the accuser’s claims not to be credible and acquitted the five players, McLeod included, on all charges.
Michael McLeod, left, arrives at the London Courthouse, in London, Ontario, Canada on July 24, 2025. Former world junior hockey players Dillon Dube, Cal Foote, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod, have all pleaded not guilty to a sexual assault that allegedly occurred at a London hotel in June 2018 as the team was celebrating their world championship win months earlier.
Nevertheless, the NHL said the players would remain suspended through December 1: “The conduct at issue falls woefully short of the standards and values that the League and its Member Clubs expect and demand.”
“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’s statement read. “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.”
The five players can agree to terms with teams as soon as Wednesday and sign contracts Oct. 15, which the Hurricanes have explored with McLeod, although that decision is unlikely to come immediately.
The Hurricanes see a former first-round pick available for nothing, a right-shot center who wins faceoffs, now acquitted of the charges against him. Dundon made his billions in part by buying distressed assets like this, especially since entering the world of pro sports. He bought the Hurricanes from a broke Peter Karmanos, the Portland Trail Blazers at an estate sale and a football minor league that ran out of cash (only to shut it down). This is his metier.
Do the Hurricanes need McLeod? He’s a bottom-six player who brings some useful tools to a Stanley Cup contender. The Hurricanes probably wouldn’t be trading for him, let’s put it that way. This is a choice.
Once again “identity” would become a load-bearing member within the dressing room. The belief is the culture Rod Brind’Amour has built is strong enough to absorb any disruption, and so far that’s held true. Hockey players tend to forgive each other for any sins.
The real question is whether Hurricanes’ fans would forgive the team for signing McLeod? That’s a question everyone may have to ask themselves, because the Hurricanes would be wagering that whatever fuss fans make now, they will still be in their seats 41 nights a year. And the team has more than a little evidence to demonstrate that its fans are all bark and no bite.
For all the hubbub over the DeAngelo signing, for all the ticket-holders who wanted meetings with their reps, the Hurricanes sustained no lasting damage. DeAngelo kept his nose clean here, got along with his teammates and all was forgotten and forgiven. The departures of Chuck Kaiton and John Forslund, while lamented, didn’t measurably alter the fan experience. The radio simulcast works fine. Mike Maniscalco was already within the organization. But DeAngelo was a Jersey loudmouth, not someone suspended by the NHL for his participation in a “deeply troubling and unacceptable” situation. Broadcasters are accessories to the product.
The Hurricanes would be crossing a different line here.
There’s also the question of optics beyond fan reaction, at a time when the Hurricanes are working closely with the Centennial Authority to renovate the Lenovo Center using tourism-tax money, and negotiating with the city, county and state over the development of the 80 acres outside the arena. This isn’t a time to be attracting the attention of politicians, let alone activists. The Hurricanes need all the friends they can get.
A major-league sports team is a business, but it is also a public trust. If you’re going to ask taxpayers for land and money — for arena renovations, for infrastructure, for development, even to build an MLB stadium — you need to remain in good standing with the community.
There are people who have never attended a Hurricanes game who are going to notice if the team signs someone recently on trial for sexual assault. They may not know Sebastian Aho from Seth Jarvis, but they would sure as hell know the name Michael McLeod.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article312307267.html#storylink=cpy
25 comments
Thanks for posting. Seems to be inviting trouble. For the “but he was acquitted!” Crowd… go read the trial transcripts. We don’t need that shit here.
It’s wild to me someone sat down and wrote this article about a dude we haven’t signed and it got published. Professional shit stirring.
while i agree with a lot of what is being said, i do kind of want to offer some pushback on the idea that signing tda means fans are “all bark and no bite.” you do address how different the situations are, but it feels unfair to still list them together.
at the end of the day, this is a professional hockey team worth a billion dollars, and i’m not. our frustration about this situation will almost always amount to vocal rather than financial as individual fans, because there is simply no way i can compete with that in a monetary means.
maybe the better question is is this worth alienating a group of fans, when they’ve built this team with an identity surrounding an underdog narrative and the emphasis on being family friendly.
i’ll be pissed if they do sign him but i’m not going to waste energy being mad over (what is still) a rumor
People are acting like taking a risk on hart isn’t worth it. Same with McLeod. Best case scenario is you get a starting goalie, and a 3c to replace Staal so u can dump kk to oblivion
he’s a defensive center who is good at face offs, a useful type of player that a lot of other teams would want as a 3~4c, but for Carolina we’re absolutely stacked on Centers. he’s a near strict downgrade from Staal or KK.
if he does sign with us, it’ll be on a team friendly deal to play on our AHL team cause nobody else will give him the time of day. Alternatively, like every other rumor with Carolina in it, Canes are in it case Eric Tulsky works harder than any other GM in the league and has fingers in every pie.
also I doubt anyone who follows hockey well enough to know the names involved in the 2018 scandal past Carter Hart would not know the star players of a playoff contender for the last 7 years.
All I know is that if they sign him, I’m gone. They can choose to make the dubiously “hockey first” choice and I can choose to watch another hockey team.
I’m a huge hockey fan and I don’t give a flying fuck what they’re doing outside of hockey or who they’re dating or anything else unless they end up on the shit list. I’m not advocating for signing a problematic player, much less one with legal issues or allegations hanging over them, but lets not act like everyone is super plugged in.
You’d be wildly wrong to say “There are people who have never attended a Hurricanes game who are going to notice if the team signs someone recently on trial for sexual assault.”
No, no they won’t. Very few people are going to know there was a thing in the past that this dude was acquitted of. You don’t have to love the verdict, but it is still out there as a not-guilty.
We should probably pass just to avoid the ~draaama~ but to imply there will be casual fan ticket sales affected is just funny.
Damn, this is somewhat aggressive writing for DeCock. This seems more scathing than expected from him, but definitely sounds like we will be signing McLeod, which is extremely unfortunate
The not discussed part of this is I would expect a lot of backlash from corporate sponsors, which matters a whole lot more than some fan complaints.
Just from a pure hockey sense. I don’t understand why we’d sign him to the roster but say there’s not enough room for Nadeau. I know the whole Winger vs. Center thing but is Stankoven is gonna play center this year then you’ve got KK/Jankowski to play 4th center. Where is there a spot for another player? Let alone one that would draw this much ire?
I’m not sure I can hang with the team if they do this. There’s still time for it not to happen, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. I don’t know how I would explain it to my daughters. What if EM was one of them? My account rep ghosted me when I asked her about the process for potential refunds. That’s the first time she has ever not promptly responded to me over all the years we’ve been buying tickets from the team. I think that speaks volumes over where we are headed. It’s deflating and disappointing that the team would choose to go this way.
I mean I don’t care how good he is at hockey if he’s a piece of shit he’s a piece of shit.
The highlight of the browns fandom was when they cheered an injured Watson. (Because he got injured)
Everyone one the team would be debased and lose respect. they would be posed difficult questions especially whenever play in Canada. Most of the evidence was excluded, mostly bc Hockey Canada investigator compelled each of the 8+ players to do interviews. At best they showed no loyalty to each other, ratting each other out. Howden posed as a white knight for years, only to have video evidence of him cheating on his wife at the bar dirty dancing and touching the victims ass before the group assault. like all the men Howden claim the victim was begging to pleasure them but at court conveniantly « couldnt remember » anything the men did or minimized their behaviours. Brett Howden even denigrated the victims distress by stating the victim that she was having « her little episode ».
In the interviews which Hockey Canada released they accused each other of threatening her with golf clubs, talked of inserting golf balls in to her vagina , spat on her and one teabagged her as she was laying on the ground. She was coerced in to making « consent videos ». The prosecution really struggled bc the witnesses « cant remember « what the men allegedly did but all claim « she was begging for it »
Most of the digital evidence had been excluded by the defense of which there were five teams of lawyers for the five accused.
Howden had testified he didn’t recall how he was feeling when he saw Dubé slap the victim but the prosecution said that Howden told the investigator said he felt that smack was “drawing a line for me to leave” and that was what “pushed me out the door.” But Howden did not help EM (victim) even just to say guys chill. He testified he was scared and left. In addition he denied video evidence he too engaged in sexual activities at the bar and he denied it while watching the actual video in court.
In a 2018 text message from Howden to world junior teammate Taylor Raddysh he wrote: “Dude, I’m so happy I left when all the shit went down. Ha ha.”
And then he says: “Man, when I was leaving, Duber was smacking this girl’s ass so hard. Like, it looks like it hurts so bad.”
From what came out at trial Mcleod seemingly lied to the investigator and Police claiming she asked him to invite a bunch of guys over so she could pleasure them but did not write this in any message to her after nor in texts or group chats. He bragged he “pretended” to help EM look for a heirloom ring she lost in his hotel room.
Formenton’s interview with the investigator Robittaile on Oct. 14, 2022, Formenton admitted that he lied when he said he had not seen Dillon Dube slap E.M. during the first of their two interviews. Formenton explained in a second interview with Robitaille four days after his first meeting with the lawyer that Dube had asked him to lie about the incident, Formenton told Robitaille, according to her notes that “It was a tap but loud enough to hear.” In his second interview with Robitaille, Formenton also admitted he saw Dube holding the golf club and swing it in E.M.’s direction when she was on all fours on the ground. “I did not see contact with EM + club, but saw Dubé held golf club in right hand [and] made putting practice motion and swung towards her butt,” Formenton said, according to Robitaille’s notes. In 2022, Formenton also told Robitaille that he had seen E.M. crying toward the end of the night. Formenton justified the sexual assault to the investigator. They all deny, justify and minimize and Howden actually wrote they should put allegations on the victim.
i dont mind downvotes. I would prefer the team not lose respect
I think about this question a lot:
What if McLeod (or any of them) had been convicted, sentenced to prison, and had served their time. Assume they are still elite NHL level players. Should a team still avoid signing them? They’d have paid their debt to society – and a judge has issued a ruling on the current, very real situation.
It becomes a question of what the purpose and mission of the organization is. Is the goal to win a Cup? Or is it to build a community around the team? Probably both, but a Cup tends to create the community, even if you lose some fans along the way.
I can’t say I’d refuse signing them after a prison sentence, so I feel hypocritical saying we should refuse to sign them now.
> There are people who have never attended a Hurricanes game who are going to notice if the team signs someone recently on trial for sexual assault. They may not know Sebastian Aho from Seth Jarvis, but they would sure as hell know the name Michael McLeod.
I really doubt this. I’m a hockey fan and have been aware of the SA trial and the drama around it, but I’ve generally not cared for the specific names of the players involved. So I kind of doubt that a significant number of people outside of the sport fandom are going to even know about the case, particularly when the case was in Canada.
That said, I’m really hoping the team doesn’t hire this crap. I wasn’t happy about DeAngelo and I’ll be even less pleased this time around and I’ll be vocal about it where I have the ability to be.
This story is clearly not going to go away until he either signs with us or someone else, but here are some quick thoughts (some of which I have already shared before).
1. I don’t get why we keep comparing him to DeAngelo. I didn’t particularly like DeAngelo as a person, but he has not ever been credibly accused of a felony. McLeod has, acquittal notwithstanding. I can’t believe I have to defend him here but I think it’s kinda fucked up to say “guy B wasn’t a problem so guy A won’t be either” when guy A lost his job because he had to convince people he wasn’t a gang rapist and guy B is just a dickhead on twitter. Let’s stop pretending there’s any analogy whatsoever to be made here.
2. McLeod’s legal woes are behind him and he deserves a chance to reenter his career from a purely legal standpoint. We would all expect and deserve the same if we were acquitted of a serious crime. But let’s remember that he put himself in a situation that ultimately cost him his job and reputation. He may not have done anything wrong, we’ll just have to trust the justice system on that one, but he still participated in group sex with a total stranger and that got him in hot water. You don’t want to be depending on a guy who then leaves the team in the middle of a playoff run because, giving him the full benefit of the doubt, he sleeps with random women who then try to extort him in court. This is poor decision making. You can say he was just a dumb kid thinking with his dick, but I never would have done that even at that age, so I can only judge him how I would judge myself.
3. Extrapolating from 2, if you’re going to take a risk on a player who has a track record of disappearing off a roster indefinitely, then his production on the ice better be worth it. McLeod was a bottom 6 guy at best before the scandal and bad PR became a part of the package. Yes he’s a righty, yes he wins face-offs. But beyond that what is he going to provide this team that justifies being ahead of any of our current prospects or scratches, much less actually bumping a current player off the roster? If he is on a line of players on the ice, is he actually elevating the scoring potential of that line over currently available options? When you account for rust from not playing, I kind of doubt it. In past years, our problem hasn’t been a lack of righties or bad face-off performance, it’s been scoring. Is he a scorer? Not historically. So what is it he brings to this team that justifies taking a roster spot that offsets the bad PR and history of questionable decision making?
With all due respect, this fanbase needs a swift wakeup call that the front office just truly does not care about any of us individually. They only care about you to the point where they get your money. If the money wasn’t involved they wouldn’t interact with you. At all.
They will absolutely price you out of your tickets the first chance they can get. They will not apologize, they will only do a small ‘college try’ on getting you something else, but they have no obligation to make you right if they screw you over. And the second you drop from STM, you’ll never hear from them again. I should know, it happened to me 12 months ago. I bought STM during the 2018-19 season, kept my money with the team during COVID and never missed a game. And guess what, none of it mattered when they doubled the price of my seats.
They are going to do whatever they are going to do to build a winning team. If they feel McLeod will help them win, he’s going to be signed. And if you don’t like it, they’ll open the door for you on the way out because they know 2 people are right behind you who aren’t going to be turned away by him being on the team. And before you think that we might be able to scrounge up enough resistance to make a dent to them financially, just know that a main focus of the renovations they are undergoing have a very clear stated goal (they were very explicit with this desire when they went over proposals with some of us STMs after the 2019 season) of wanting corporate purchases to take over as much of the 100 level as they can. In a way, they want to force people out because it allows them more opportunities to sell those tickets to businesses in the area. And unless you’ve been completely head in the sand the last 18 months or so, corporations by and large (especially in this area) don’t care about social issues anymore, because they don’t want to face the wrath of the White House.
So before you get all bent out of shape and try to grandstand about your thoughts, just know that the team doesn’t care. They already have your money for this year, you’re not getting it back, and they know you’re replaceable in the playoffs and next year.
And also, the idiot who doxxed Tulsky didn’t do anyone any favors.
Not sure Decock is accurate about people knowing the name McLeod over Aho, especially in this market. Hockey barely gets any national media coverage, and the trial was only really a Canadian story…
Still holding hope that these are just rumors, but this makes it seem like the FO is pulling the trigger. There’s no reasonable defense for adding any of those guys to the roster, much less the damn ringleader. At this point, whatever. I’m done defending my home team. If they want to get booed to oblivion, I’ll join in.
u/Canesofficial If the Canes sign him I’ll drop ESPN+ and sub to my local FanDuel (Red Wings) instead.
Pass
I’ve said this before, but signings like these make it very hard for me to justify the 5 hour drive up to see the Canes play a couple times a year. Granted I’m maybe giving the team $500 directly over the course of a season, but this is seriously making me reconsider catching a live game.
Regardless of whether there was criminal liability, McLeod and the other players in the trial exhibited frat boy and sex pest behavior and that’s just plain awful. I don’t care what people do in the privacy of their homes, but that kind of behavior is reckless and morally reprehensible.
I actually did stop watching and attending games after TDA’s signing…my decision was about a lot more than just TDA’s history running counter to what I (naively) believed was the Hurricanes’ culture, but it was the breaking point for me.
I obviously returned to following the team more recently and have attended a few games. I understand that I’m just one person and not at all reflective of the fanbase at large, but the people who actually represent the organization matter to me. For myself, I was much more concerned with TDA’s on-ice behavior than his Twitter fights, which I think was a bigger factor in the Rangers letting him go.
That being said, this article spells out pretty clearly how the McLeod and co. situation is on a different level. These guys have been accused of felonies. There will be negative national attention directed at the team that they’ll have to deal with in a number of press appearances (especially for road games). It was a big story in Canada; my Canadian friends who don’t have any interest in the NHL were following the legal proceedings.
I’m not sure how a potential signing would impact things locally. My guess is not very much, but depending on national attention it could attract a lot of conversation and sour North Carolinians on the team. With Roy Cooper being such a public fan of the team he might get baited into discussing the “Hurricanes player(s) acquitted of SA” during his ‘26 US Senate campaign which would draw even more attention and not be good for anyone (the team, the fanbase, or the political campaign…regardless of whether you want to vote for him, I’d say that weighing in on the Canes’ personnel decisions shouldn’t be a focus for a national campaign).
I honestly don’t think I’d be able to enjoy following the team if they go through with signing somebody accused of crimes like that. I won’t stick around to complain either. It won’t make me feel any better, and I know ownership doesn’t care about appeasing people like me anyways.
Stop comparing him to TDA. Tony is a loud mouthed, obnoxious shit stirrer.
McLeod is a sex pest named in two rapes.