Carter Hart arrives at the courthouse in London, Ont., on July 24.Nicole Osborne/The Canadian Press
On Thursday, a few hours after the first level of his suspension ended, the Las Vegas Golden Knights announced they would sign Carter Hart.
Hart was one of the five men acquitted in the Hockey Canada sex assault trial, and by far the most talented. The others were journeymen of varying levels of competency. Hart was a frontline regular.
He can’t play until a second level of suspension passes on Dec. 1, but that seems like a formality.
Vegas threw Hart in front of the cameras before much dissent could build online. The 27-year-old goalie delivered a statement that sounded memorized.
“I’m excited to get the chance to play in front of [the fans] … just get to show the community who I am and what I’m about,” he said, in part.
By doing what? Putting up a .920 save percentage?
I assume Hart is being sincere, but there’s nothing he can do as a hockey player to show what kind of person he is. That’s the whole point of sports. You are what you can do on the ice/field/court. Everything else is marketing.
The only thing Hart can show “the community” is what kind of hockey player he is. Fortunately for him, that’s the only thing he’s being judged on.
Through their comments on Thursday, the Vegas Golden Knights have decided that Hart is a good guy who deserves a chance.
“We’re looking forward to having him here, looking forward to where our team is going,” said Vegas captain Mark Stone. The second part of that thought is the one that matters.
Hart last played for the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2023-24 season.Abbie Parr/The Associated Press
The NHL is already pushing the story to its completion. You won’t see any more angry columns on the official hockey channels.
Over in the usual online rage factories, some people are angry about the Golden Knights’ decision. They should withhold their money and their attention from the NHL in protest. That is the only effective way of registering a complaint.
But there should be no question that someone who is acquitted of a crime be banned from work forever because he or she was charged. Are we liberal-minded or not? If the answer’s ‘Yes’, you don’t get to pick and choose.
What we’re talking about here is something different – the rules of show business. Those have nothing to do with legality or morality. The question there is who gets to put the show in disrepute, and still get back on the main stage? It’s guys like Hart, and not the other four.
Once the sordid details were out there, what everyone seemed to want most from the Hockey Canada debacle was a series of lessons. We would all sit back and learn something and – this was the important part – change as a result. A thousand articles were written on the topic of change in all its guises.
Read the judge’s full decision in Hockey Canada sexual-assault trial
Here’s one of the lessons we ended up getting instead – sport doesn’t change. I don’t care if it’s men’s hockey, women’s basketball or bear baiting. If there’s enough money involved, there are no hard and fast rules about who can do what. There’s a ‘Who?’, followed by a ‘What?’, and the rest is up for discussion.
A fourth-line winger cannot get away with being caught on video being really mean to a waitress.
A second-line centre can’t be convicted of a serious crime.
A 50-something goal scorer in his early 20s can do just about anything, as long as he is not incarcerated. The minute he’s out, someone will find a way to hire him.
This rule holds in every field of human endeavour. It’s just most obvious in professional sports.
Hart guards the net during a game in January, 2024.Derik Hamilton/The Associated Press
Here’s another lesson, one that the Golden Knights are reminding us of – value will out.
If someone or something can provide enough value to someone able to capitalize on it, that value will be surfaced. Sport is uniquely positioned to transform talent into gold.
The Golden Knights have a program to support cancer patients. They do events around Black History Month. They do outreach to the Hispanic community and first responders and service dogs. But the only thing they actually care about is winning hockey games. Because if they don’t, everyone gets fired.
That doesn’t mean they will hire anyone. It means that they will theoretically hire anyone. It depends on who he is and what he can do for them. Everything beyond that is negotiable.
Their Hart problem has already been neutralized with Thursday’s availability. What are people going to do? Stop going to Las Vegas? We already did that.
That doesn’t mean Hart won’t hear it in every Canadian arena he plays in, but the team is in the clear.
You know how you avoid the PR problems of a redemption tour? You don’t do one. You just put the guy out there and tell him to win. If he wins, it’ll be fine. If not, nice knowing you.
The wonder to me here is that people expected that hockey would change, like hockey’s the problem. If Hart’s hiring makes you angry at hockey, you’ve got the wrong culprit. Winning is what drives these decisions.
If you put winning above everything else, then there’s not much you won’t do to get there. A total focus on winning is what got Hockey Canada into trouble in the first place, and what got them out of it. At all times during this, winning has been the north star of everyone involved. I’m talking the average fan as well as the key players.
There are lines that cannot be crossed, but I’m hard pressed to think of one. If the player involved is good enough, and young enough, and marketable enough, any crisis can be ridden through. Some team somewhere will try.
That’s not changing until people are willing to pay to watch soccer-without-a-scoreboard and just-for-fun baseball.