This is not the sort of update anyone around Hockey Canada can dress up as housekeeping. Carter Hart is suspended until Nov. 10, 2027, and the date alone tells you how far this story still reaches into the future. The goalie is one of five players from the 2018 world junior hockey team whose case has already dragged through criminal proceedings, an acquittal, and now a separate disciplinary ruling that keeps the fallout alive long after the trial ended.
On Wednesday, Hockey Canada said an independent appeal board found all five players breached the Hockey Canada code of conduct tied to their actions in June 2018. Four of them accepted suspensions, with Hart’s ban set to expire on Nov. 10, 2027. Cal Foote’s suspension ends on Nov. 10, 2026, Dillon Dubé’s on Nov. 10, 2028, and Michael McLeod’s on Nov. 10, 2030. Alex Formenton is the outlier only in the sense that his hockey path has already taken him overseas, with parts of two seasons for HC Ambrì-Piotta in Switzerland’s National League from 2022 to 2024.
A ruling that keeps the punishment in the present
The most striking part of this update is how much it undercuts any attempt to treat the July 2025 not-guilty verdict as the end of the matter. It was not. Hockey Canada’s position is that an acquittal in court does not erase its own code of conduct findings, and that distinction now matters enormously for Hart and the others. The organization has effectively drawn a line between criminal guilt and institutional standards, and this latest decision shows it is prepared to enforce that line on its own timeline.
That is especially significant in Hart’s case because he was the only one of the five who played for an NHL club last season. That made his status the most immediate and the most visible, and it is no surprise that the suspension now lands as the clearest sporting consequence yet. A player with that level of profile does not just disappear quietly from the conversation. A date like Nov. 10, 2027 is a public marker, a reminder that whatever happens in court does not end the reputational damage or the governing-body sanction.
Hockey Canada has also said that any player under consideration for a national team will now face an enhanced screening process introduced in 2023, including a criminal records check and social media screening. That is the sensible response, but it also reads like an admission that the system needed tightening after the damage had already been done. The organization may want to frame this as reform. Fair enough. But reform after the fact is still reform after the fact.
The broader point is uncomfortable and unavoidable: this remains a case that has hurt everyone attached to it, and Hart’s suspension until late 2027 is another sign that the consequences are not fading just because the criminal trial ended. The NHL has already said the players were woefully short of the standards and values that the League and its Member Clubs expect and demand. Hockey Canada’s latest ruling does not change that judgment. If anything, it makes it harder to pretend the issue has been neatly boxed away.
So yes, Carter Hart has a date now. But this story is still bigger than one date, and Hockey Canada has made sure nobody will be allowed to forget it in a hurry.
