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HOCKEY NEWS
Lawsuit challenging NCAA's ban of Canadian Hockey League players could upend college hockey
CTV News
By John Wawrow
The Associated Press
Staff
August 13, 2024
BUFFALO, N.Y. -
The NCAA was accused of boycotting Canadian Hockey League players from Division I competition in a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday that, if successful, could end college hockey’s longstanding ban on players deemed to be professionals.
The implications of the lawsuit could be far-reaching. If successful, the case could increase competition for college-age talent between North America's two top producers of NHL draft-eligible players. And it has the potential of creating a talent drain among the CHL’s three associations — the Ontario, Quebec Major Junior and Western hockey leagues — which could lose players at the junior prime age of 18 to the college ranks.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, N.Y., on behalf of Rylan Masterson by the New York City firm of Freedman Normand Friedland. Masterson, of Fort Erie, Ontario, lost his college eligibility two years ago when, at 16, he appeared in two exhibition games for the OHL's Windsor Spitfires.
The CHL's three associations are categorized as professional leagues under NCAA bylaws, barring their players from competition.
CHL players receive a stipend of no more than $600 per month for living expenses, which is not considered as income for tax purposes. College players receive scholarships and now can earn money through endorsements and other use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The suit lists 10 Division 1 schools, including the three closest to Fort Erie: Canisius, Niagara and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Other schools named range from Denver to Boston College. They were selected to show they follow the NCAA’s bylaws in barring current or former CHL players.
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Atlantic Hockey commissioner Michelle Morgan, whose league represents the three western New York schools, declined to comment, telling The Associated Press she was seeking more information.
CHL spokesman Christopher Seguin declined comment.The lawsuit cites news articles in alleging that the NCAA has maintained its boycott by forcing players as young as 16 to make decisions about their future, deterring them from joining the CHL. Another concern is that the NCAA bylaws suppress compensation for players by preventing competition between the CHL and NCAA for top-end talent.
The lawsuit suggests that lifting the ban would likely result in CHL teams increasing compensation to players in a bid to retain them.
The suit notes that NCAA bylaws allow the participation of professionals with the exception of men’s ice hockey and skiing. It also points out that players who competed professionally in Europe don't face the same restrictions, citing Boston University’s Tom Willander, who appeared in two Swedish Elite League games last year.
The lawsuit argues Masterson and the class have “suffered injury the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent” and calls the NCAA’s conduct “unlawful.”
The attorneys are asking a judge to certify the members of the class, which would include anyone who played in the CHL or for a Division I school since Aug. 12, 2020.
Such legal action was considered inevitable by many in college hockey circles, especially after the NCAA determined in a 2023 review of its bylaws that its the rule barring CHL players was vulnerable to a legal challenge.
According to the lawsuit, NCAA hockey coaches chose in May not to vote on whether to retain the bylaws, but instead decided to form a committee to monitor potential legal challenges.
More News on this see links:
https://eprinkside.com/2024/08/13/ncaa-hockey-facing-class-action-suit-over-chl-eligibility-rules
Former junior hockey player who joined lawsuit claims CHL treats teens as ‘disposable’
The Athletic
https://theathletic.com/5329581/2024/03/15/junior-hockey-lawsuit-chl-isaiah-dilaura/
By Ian Mendes
Mar 15, 2024
Isaiah DiLaura is not a household name in the hockey world by any stretch of the imagination.
The goaltender played in only 54 games across three seasons in the Western Hockey League with Prince George, Portland and Swift Current. His career wrapped up with a three-game stint with the Maryland Black Bears of the North American Hockey League during the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season.
But DiLaura is one of two former junior hockey players named as plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking to win increased rights and compensation for players in the Canadian Hockey League.
And for the 23-year-old, the decision to publicly attach his name to the lawsuit is not about trying to gain attention for himself. Instead, DiLaura and his family want to help shed light on what they believe is an unfair system that exploits teenaged hockey players in North America.
“For me, I tend to see it as making a positive change in junior hockey. From what I know and what I had to go through, teenagers should not be used as disposable objects,” DiLaura said in an interview with The Athletic. “I want to make a change for the younger generation because they’re just taking advantage of teenage kids.”
“As a parent, how do you support your child when you don’t even understand the process?” said DiLaura’s mother, Stephanie. “We learned that it’s strictly a business.”
The lawsuit — filed on Feb. 14 in New York federal court — argues that North America’s largest junior hockey system violates U.S. antitrust laws. The suit alleges the current junior system deprives junior aged players of “freedom of choice, freedom of movement, and freedom to play for the club of their choice, i.e., the hallmarks of a competitive labor market.”
In a statement to The Athletic this week, the Canadian Hockey League wrote, “We have hired counsel and we are not going to be commenting on this ongoing litigation.”
In DiLaura’s situation, he first drew the attention of WHL scouts at 13 while playing minor hockey in Lakeville, Minn. As a 15-year-old, he was selected in the eighth round of the 2015 WHL bantam draft by the Prince George Cougars.
His family eventually realized the massive logistical hurdle they needed to overcome in order to send DiLaura off to chase his dream. And because his parents were working full time and had other family commitments, they did not have the ability to drop everything and accompany their son — who was by then 17 and entering 12th grade — to his new home in Canada for the start of training camp.
“We got a phone call saying, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been drafted by the Prince George Cougars.’ The magnitude of how far away it was didn’t really hit until you looked it up on a map. This is up near Alaska,” said Stephanie. “He was 17 and navigating this by himself. How does he get through customs by himself? He had never been on an airplane by himself before.”
For DiLaura, it was a 1,700-mile trek from his hometown in Minnesota to Prince George, B.C., which required a 25-hour drive in each direction if travelling by car. He was granted only one visit to see his family — at Christmas time — per season.
“It was tough,” said DiLaura. “Definitely a lot of struggles of missing home and getting homesick, as any teenager would have being away from home for the first time.”
Even though it would have been more convenient for DiLaura to play for the Brandon Wheat Kings — who were located less than a nine-hour drive from his hometown — DiLaura was forced to play for the Prince George team that drafted him. And playing for Flint in the Ontario Hockey League — which was also a nine-hour drive from his hometown — was not an option because players from Minnesota were only eligible to be drafted into the Western Hockey League.
The lawsuit argues the Canadian Hockey League serves as a “cartel” that controls junior-aged players and distributes them to the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League based solely on geography. Players are then subjected to an “involuntary draft” in which their CHL rights are held in perpetuity.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking to recalibrate the system by allowing the players to be represented with something resembling a collective-bargaining agreement that would protect their individual rights. Recent court decisions have ruled in favor of NCAA student athletes receiving more power and control over compensation and the use of their image and likeness.
“These are kids and they need to be protected. They need rules that will protect them and will arm them with information. The best way to accomplish that is somebody representing them,” said Jeffrey Shinder, attorney for DiLaura. “Somebody needs to protect the kids in a comprehensive and systematic way.”
The lawsuit states that NCAA student-athletes have the ability to choose their school, without being restricted to geography or an involuntary draft. And once they have selected the school, they cannot be traded. If their situation deteriorates, they can opt to transfer to a new school — without requiring the permission of their university.
“By comparison, Major Junior Players are traded — often with little to no notice and always with no real choice in the matter — across the vast geographic reaches of each League and often across borders, including before a player turns 18 and without parental consent,” the lawsuit states.
When DiLaura was traded from Prince George to Portland, he says he was given no warning about a transaction that would uproot his life.
“It was definitely a shock. It was out of nowhere,” said DiLaura. “Where am I going to be? How am I getting there? Does my billet family know? Disbelief almost.”
According to the lawsuit, this runs in direct contrast to a promise from junior hockey clubs that they will seek consent when trading their teenaged players to another team.
“The Clubs that traded DiLaura did not even bother to pay lip service to the rule that bars the trading of Major Junior Players without their consent,” the lawsuit alleges.
And after just eight games with his new team in Portland, Oregon, DiLaura was traded yet again during the 2019-20 season — this time to Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
“The second time was actually more shocking,” said DiLaura. “We had a game that night and I got traded right after the game. I was putting my gear away in the locker and the coach called me in. He said to me, ‘Hey. You got traded.’ That was more of a shock because I was about to go home for the night. So I was shocked and scared. I had to call my parents both times.”
“My mom said to me, ‘Are you sure you want to keep doing this, just bouncing around from town to town?'” DiLaura said.
“The reality is that you’re just pawns in this business. You have no input,” said Stephanie. “If you want to play, you have to play their game. But if you don’t, you don’t play at all. And there are no other options.”
According to the lawsuit, the rules of each league stipulate that “underage Major Junior Players must consent to be traded because trades can be very disruptive to a teenager who may already be living far from home, at the home of a billet family, and attempting to finish high school while providing full-time hockey services for his Club.”
Stephanie claims there was no direction given about her son’s high school graduation process in 12th grade. When his season in Prince George ended in April, the family wasn’t sure how to proceed. Would DiLaura stay in Canada to finish off his last year of high school? Would he come back to Minnesota and try and graduate? Would his credits from Canada transfer back to the United States? In the end, the family says they had to navigate the entire process themselves with no assistance from anybody involved with the hockey team or the WHL.
“We didn’t even know if graduation was feasible,” said Stephanie. “After his season, we re-enrolled him back in his old high school. It was tons of coordination. Getting his transcript from Prince George. I never saw his grades at any point in Prince George.”
DiLaura says his post-secondary education was also thrown into disarray when he was traded from Portland to Swift Current in the middle of the 2019-20 season.
“I was going to college in Portland and taking classes there. But as soon as I got traded, that was all off the table,” said DiLaura. “It was all in-person classes, so I couldn’t even do Zoom. I didn’t get a chance to finish it.”
DiLaura does concede the WHL fulfilled its educational promise by paying for his schooling to complete a program to become a certified heating and air conditioning technician at a trade school after he finished his playing career.
But DiLaura contends that the promise of being treated like a professional athlete with “glitz and glamour” never materialized during his three stops in the WHL. Instead, he was subjected to excruciatingly long bus rides. When he played in Prince George, the shortest bus trip for a road game was seven and a half hours away. Road trips to Saskatchewan would be 20-hour ordeals spread over three days.
“It’s tough both physically and mentally. If you’re trapped in a bus with 20-some-odd guys for 20-odd hours, there is not a lot of room,” said DiLaura. “Physically, you can’t stand up and stretch out. You try to use the bathroom at the end of the trip. Kind of gets gross towards the end, too.”
As a goaltender who relied on flexibility, DiLaura says the extended bus trips were taxing. Stephanie says she heard about her son trying to get some sleep on the floor of the bus.
“I used to have a cramping thing where I would get bad cramping in my arms and legs, so it was definitely tough to try and stretch out,” said DiLaura. “You just want to get your leg as straight as possible. And it’s almost impossible to do that on a bus.”
The lawsuit also claims that “player compensation in the WHL is fixed at $250.00 per month.” But Stephanie says that paltry stipend certainly wasn’t enough to cover the expenses of a growing teenager — especially because their son had no ability to take on a part-time job with the rigors of a demanding junior hockey schedule.
“They present it as if you’re living for free, but that’s not the reality. If he wanted something to eat when the team wasn’t playing or his billet family wasn’t making him a meal, he was on his own,” said Stephanie. “So I would send him care packages. Gift cards for local restaurants in Prince George. VISA gift cards he could use anywhere.”
DiLaura says the topic of how he and his teammates were being treated was rarely broached inside the dressing room, because the players felt like they had no recourse.
“No. We just got told what we had to do,” he said flatly. “There was not really much changing.”
Stephanie is happy this lawsuit is moving forward because she wishes her family had been armed with more information before making the decision to send their son away to the WHL to pursue a dream of playing professional hockey. If she had known about all the potential obstacles they would face, she believes they would have chosen an alternate route. She says the family would not entertain the idea of allowing Isaiah’s younger brother to play in the WHL.
“Just looking back at all that transpired, I regret it. I regret every moment of it,” said Stephanie. “There are different avenues to reach that dream. I look at all the time I lost with my child. I truly feel bad for everything he went through. If I had an inkling of half of it, we would have made a different decision.”
Former junior hockey player who joined lawsuit claims CHL treats teens as ‘disposable’
The Athletic
https://theathletic.com/5329581/2024/03/15/junior-hockey-lawsuit-chl-isaiah-dilaura/
By Ian Mendes
Mar 15, 2024
Isaiah DiLaura is not a household name in the hockey world by any stretch of the imagination.
The goaltender played in only 54 games across three seasons in the Western Hockey League with Prince George, Portland and Swift Current. His career wrapped up with a three-game stint with the Maryland Black Bears of the North American Hockey League during the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season.
But DiLaura is one of two former junior hockey players named as plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking to win increased rights and compensation for players in the Canadian Hockey League.
And for the 23-year-old, the decision to publicly attach his name to the lawsuit is not about trying to gain attention for himself. Instead, DiLaura and his family want to help shed light on what they believe is an unfair system that exploits teenaged hockey players in North America.
“For me, I tend to see it as making a positive change in junior hockey. From what I know and what I had to go through, teenagers should not be used as disposable objects,” DiLaura said in an interview with The Athletic. “I want to make a change for the younger generation because they’re just taking advantage of teenage kids.”
“As a parent, how do you support your child when you don’t even understand the process?” said DiLaura’s mother, Stephanie. “We learned that it’s strictly a business.”
The lawsuit — filed on Feb. 14 in New York federal court — argues that North America’s largest junior hockey system violates U.S. antitrust laws. The suit alleges the current junior system deprives junior aged players of “freedom of choice, freedom of movement, and freedom to play for the club of their choice, i.e., the hallmarks of a competitive labor market.”
In a statement to The Athletic this week, the Canadian Hockey League wrote, “We have hired counsel and we are not going to be commenting on this ongoing litigation.”
In DiLaura’s situation, he first drew the attention of WHL scouts at 13 while playing minor hockey in Lakeville, Minn. As a 15-year-old, he was selected in the eighth round of the 2015 WHL bantam draft by the Prince George Cougars.
His family eventually realized the massive logistical hurdle they needed to overcome in order to send DiLaura off to chase his dream. And because his parents were working full time and had other family commitments, they did not have the ability to drop everything and accompany their son — who was by then 17 and entering 12th grade — to his new home in Canada for the start of training camp.
“We got a phone call saying, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been drafted by the Prince George Cougars.’ The magnitude of how far away it was didn’t really hit until you looked it up on a map. This is up near Alaska,” said Stephanie. “He was 17 and navigating this by himself. How does he get through customs by himself? He had never been on an airplane by himself before.”
For DiLaura, it was a 1,700-mile trek from his hometown in Minnesota to Prince George, B.C., which required a 25-hour drive in each direction if travelling by car. He was granted only one visit to see his family — at Christmas time — per season.
“It was tough,” said DiLaura. “Definitely a lot of struggles of missing home and getting homesick, as any teenager would have being away from home for the first time.”
Even though it would have been more convenient for DiLaura to play for the Brandon Wheat Kings — who were located less than a nine-hour drive from his hometown — DiLaura was forced to play for the Prince George team that drafted him. And playing for Flint in the Ontario Hockey League — which was also a nine-hour drive from his hometown — was not an option because players from Minnesota were only eligible to be drafted into the Western Hockey League.
The lawsuit argues the Canadian Hockey League serves as a “cartel” that controls junior-aged players and distributes them to the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League based solely on geography. Players are then subjected to an “involuntary draft” in which their CHL rights are held in perpetuity.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking to recalibrate the system by allowing the players to be represented with something resembling a collective-bargaining agreement that would protect their individual rights. Recent court decisions have ruled in favor of NCAA student athletes receiving more power and control over compensation and the use of their image and likeness.
“These are kids and they need to be protected. They need rules that will protect them and will arm them with information. The best way to accomplish that is somebody representing them,” said Jeffrey Shinder, attorney for DiLaura. “Somebody needs to protect the kids in a comprehensive and systematic way.”
The lawsuit states that NCAA student-athletes have the ability to choose their school, without being restricted to geography or an involuntary draft. And once they have selected the school, they cannot be traded. If their situation deteriorates, they can opt to transfer to a new school — without requiring the permission of their university.
“By comparison, Major Junior Players are traded — often with little to no notice and always with no real choice in the matter — across the vast geographic reaches of each League and often across borders, including before a player turns 18 and without parental consent,” the lawsuit states.
When DiLaura was traded from Prince George to Portland, he says he was given no warning about a transaction that would uproot his life.
“It was definitely a shock. It was out of nowhere,” said DiLaura. “Where am I going to be? How am I getting there? Does my billet family know? Disbelief almost.”
According to the lawsuit, this runs in direct contrast to a promise from junior hockey clubs that they will seek consent when trading their teenaged players to another team.
“The Clubs that traded DiLaura did not even bother to pay lip service to the rule that bars the trading of Major Junior Players without their consent,” the lawsuit alleges.
And after just eight games with his new team in Portland, Oregon, DiLaura was traded yet again during the 2019-20 season — this time to Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
“The second time was actually more shocking,” said DiLaura. “We had a game that night and I got traded right after the game. I was putting my gear away in the locker and the coach called me in. He said to me, ‘Hey. You got traded.’ That was more of a shock because I was about to go home for the night. So I was shocked and scared. I had to call my parents both times.”
“My mom said to me, ‘Are you sure you want to keep doing this, just bouncing around from town to town?'” DiLaura said.
“The reality is that you’re just pawns in this business. You have no input,” said Stephanie. “If you want to play, you have to play their game. But if you don’t, you don’t play at all. And there are no other options.”
According to the lawsuit, the rules of each league stipulate that “underage Major Junior Players must consent to be traded because trades can be very disruptive to a teenager who may already be living far from home, at the home of a billet family, and attempting to finish high school while providing full-time hockey services for his Club.”
Stephanie claims there was no direction given about her son’s high school graduation process in 12th grade. When his season in Prince George ended in April, the family wasn’t sure how to proceed. Would DiLaura stay in Canada to finish off his last year of high school? Would he come back to Minnesota and try and graduate? Would his credits from Canada transfer back to the United States? In the end, the family says they had to navigate the entire process themselves with no assistance from anybody involved with the hockey team or the WHL.
“We didn’t even know if graduation was feasible,” said Stephanie. “After his season, we re-enrolled him back in his old high school. It was tons of coordination. Getting his transcript from Prince George. I never saw his grades at any point in Prince George.”
DiLaura says his post-secondary education was also thrown into disarray when he was traded from Portland to Swift Current in the middle of the 2019-20 season.
“I was going to college in Portland and taking classes there. But as soon as I got traded, that was all off the table,” said DiLaura. “It was all in-person classes, so I couldn’t even do Zoom. I didn’t get a chance to finish it.”
DiLaura does concede the WHL fulfilled its educational promise by paying for his schooling to complete a program to become a certified heating and air conditioning technician at a trade school after he finished his playing career.
But DiLaura contends that the promise of being treated like a professional athlete with “glitz and glamour” never materialized during his three stops in the WHL. Instead, he was subjected to excruciatingly long bus rides. When he played in Prince George, the shortest bus trip for a road game was seven and a half hours away. Road trips to Saskatchewan would be 20-hour ordeals spread over three days.
“It’s tough both physically and mentally. If you’re trapped in a bus with 20-some-odd guys for 20-odd hours, there is not a lot of room,” said DiLaura. “Physically, you can’t stand up and stretch out. You try to use the bathroom at the end of the trip. Kind of gets gross towards the end, too.”
As a goaltender who relied on flexibility, DiLaura says the extended bus trips were taxing. Stephanie says she heard about her son trying to get some sleep on the floor of the bus.
“I used to have a cramping thing where I would get bad cramping in my arms and legs, so it was definitely tough to try and stretch out,” said DiLaura. “You just want to get your leg as straight as possible. And it’s almost impossible to do that on a bus.”
The lawsuit also claims that “player compensation in the WHL is fixed at $250.00 per month.” But Stephanie says that paltry stipend certainly wasn’t enough to cover the expenses of a growing teenager — especially because their son had no ability to take on a part-time job with the rigors of a demanding junior hockey schedule.
“They present it as if you’re living for free, but that’s not the reality. If he wanted something to eat when the team wasn’t playing or his billet family wasn’t making him a meal, he was on his own,” said Stephanie. “So I would send him care packages. Gift cards for local restaurants in Prince George. VISA gift cards he could use anywhere.”
DiLaura says the topic of how he and his teammates were being treated was rarely broached inside the dressing room, because the players felt like they had no recourse.
“No. We just got told what we had to do,” he said flatly. “There was not really much changing.”
Stephanie is happy this lawsuit is moving forward because she wishes her family had been armed with more information before making the decision to send their son away to the WHL to pursue a dream of playing professional hockey. If she had known about all the potential obstacles they would face, she believes they would have chosen an alternate route. She says the family would not entertain the idea of allowing Isaiah’s younger brother to play in the WHL.
“Just looking back at all that transpired, I regret it. I regret every moment of it,” said Stephanie. “There are different avenues to reach that dream. I look at all the time I lost with my child. I truly feel bad for everything he went through. If I had an inkling of half of it, we would have made a different decision.”
Opinion: Want To Change the Culture of Junior Hockey? Change the Business Model
The Globe and Mail
Tony Keller
February 19, 2024
[Link]
News Item: The NHL and Canada’s major-junior hockey leagues were hit Wednesday with a class-action lawsuit alleging they operate a cartel that violates U.S. antitrust law, suppresses competition and keeps players locked in an exploitative system that pays them poverty wages in exchange for a dream of playing in the pros. – The Globe and Mail, Feb. 14.
This is a uniquely Canadian story.
Like the other boys in the neighbourhood, Billy always dreamed of becoming a money manager. He’d learned double-entry bookkeeping before he could ride a bike. He was doing net present value calculations before most kids could read. In elementary school, he would spend the long winter nights outside under the lights, practising modern portfolio theory and playing Monte Carlo simulations for hours, until Mom called him home for bedtime.
Billy was one of the top performers in the bantam asset management league, so when the Western Junior Asset Manager draft was held, a few weeks before he graduated from Grade 9, he was chosen in the second round by the Prince Albert Municipal Employees Pension and Benefit Fund.
Prince Albert was now his employer, or rather his owner. He would have to leave Mom and Dad, and be billeted with a family in Northern Saskatchewan. He’d also get a salary of just $250 a month. Like everything else, it was non-negotiable.
Billy and his parents believed that if he wanted to become one of the 700 or so players in the National Pension League – the stars of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, or Billy’s hometown favourites, the Alberta Investment Management Corporation – then this is what he had to accept. Don’t question. Don’t complain. Don’t get marked as a difficult employee.
Not long after arriving in Prince Albert, Billy and the other rookie analysts were subjected to a ritual hazing by the second-year and third-year associates. He was ordered to down shots until he puked. Then he was stripped naked, urinated on and beaten with a hardcover copy of the CFA Level One textbook. He did not question or complain.
Early in his second season, Billy was traded to Kamloops. He had just a few hours to pack up and catch the next bus out of town. His new boss soon told Billy that he wasn’t talented enough at securities analysis, so if he wanted to stick around, he’d better learn a different game.
Trying to do as he was told, Billy started a fight with a finance guy playing for Kelowna, B.C. He injured his wrist and was out of action for the rest of the season.
Before his third year, he was traded to Brandon. His career seemed to have reached a dead end. He still wasn’t old enough to buy a drink.
The above tale is both fact and fiction.
It is, of course, not how it goes if you want to work in money management. Or engineering. Or marketing, construction or I.T. – or any other job in Canada.
But it’s the way of the world in Canadian hockey. Or more specifically, major-junior hockey in the Canadian Hockey League – the 60 teams of the Western Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. The CHL used to be the only route into the NHL, and it is still the most common.
The allegations contained in the lawsuit brought last week in New York by the World Association of Icehockey Players Unions have yet to be proven in court. At issue is whether the way the CHL’s leagues do business is illegal under American competition law, which may apply because several CHL teams are located in the U.S., as is the NHL.
The law is unsettled. The facts mostly aren’t.
Major-junior hockey’s labour practices would be shocking and unacceptable anywhere else. It starts with the draft.
The draft means that CHL employees – who are children when drafted – lose their autonomy, agency and bargaining power. Unless they want to walk away from major-junior, they have to play for the team that drafted them. Their employer sells hundreds of thousands of tickets thanks to their labour, and earns revenues from television and product sales based on their labour, yet they have no ability to bargain for pay or working conditions.
And though they cannot sell their labour to a CHL team other than the one that drafted them, their employers can trade them – any time. Imagine if the Tim Hortons in Calgary could sell its teenage employees to the McDonald’s in Winnipeg, and order them to report to the new job site the next morning.
Or imagine if an aspiring student from Vancouver was told that she has been drafted by the University of Lethbridge – and as a result, her application to McGill would be automatically rejected.
The draft is what underpins major-junior hockey’s often abusive culture. End the draft, and at a stroke of a pen, players and parents will suddenly regain autonomy and bargaining power.
To change the culture, change the business model. To change the business model, change the rules.
Chronic | A turning point in the history of Canadian junior hockey?
Posted at 5:00 a.m. EST
The Canadian major junior hockey leagues would do well not to take lightly the class action lawsuit that was filed against them in the United States last Tuesday. The matter is so serious that we are probably witnessing a turning point in the history of Canadian hockey, believe two lawyers.
The North American division of the World Association of Ice Hockey Players Unions (WAIPU) along with two former Western Junior League players, Tanner Gould and Isaiah Di Laura, filed this class action in New York Federal Court .
The plaintiffs allege that the three Canadian leagues as well as the NHL violate US anti-monopoly laws because they benefit from several agreements that have the effect of removing the ability of players aged 16 to 20 to freely determine their career trajectory and monetize their talent.
And these agreements ensure, according to the plaintiffs, that junior hockey players receive $70 per week, even though they are the driving force behind an industry that generates revenues of several hundred million per year.
***
In recent years, Canadian leagues have been the subject of several class action claims before Canadian courts.
Former players notably demanded the status of employees, and others attacked what they considered to be anti-competitive practices of leagues and junior teams. There was also this class action request denouncing horrific physical and sexual abuse suffered by recruits.
Two of these three appeals are still progressing before the Canadian courts. And so far, the leagues have managed to limit the damage from a financial point of view.
However, the action filed in recent days in New York is completely different, believe two lawyers interviewed by Radio-Canada Sports.
"It is very serious. This is not a frivolous pursuit. This is definitely a turning point in the history of Canadian hockey", believes Me Daniel Martin Bellemare. Member of the Quebec bar and the Vermont bar.
He is particularly recognized for his practice in the field of American antimonopoly law.
Professor and vice-dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Montreal, Me Pierre Larouche agrees.
"There is a lot of case law in the United States on professional sports (in relation to anti-monopoly laws). It is even a favorite area of American law. The plaintiffs have done their homework. I am not sure that everything they are alleging will pass, but instead of hockey leagues, I would hurry up and organize myself because it is a serious matter", says Professor Larouche.
***
In the more than 100-page document they filed in New York Federal Court, the lawyers are not only raising a commercial dispute. They also refer to cases of physical and sexual abuse mentioned in the context of an action brought in Canada. They also refer to the report that the three leagues commissioned from an independent committee in 2020 and which affirmed that bad behavior had become a cultural norm in junior hockey .
"The complainants have made it very clear that it is not just a question of athletes who would like to have more money, says Professor Larouche, but that it is also athletes, some of whom are minors, who are in difficult conditions and who need help."
"The first thing I saw is that we have contextualized the matter well and that it will be difficult for the Canadian junior leagues to argue that, on the contrary, the system is advantageous for the players", adds Professor Larouche.
With regard to the crux of this dispute, that is to say the barriers to limit the players' remuneration to a few hundred dollars per month, Me Daniel Martin Bellemare believes that the alleged facts of the plaintiffs are very well presented in regarding American competition law.
"This is a huge conspiracy or agreement to limit competition. There are an incredibly large number of stakeholders in all of this. The plaintiffs even claim in the suit that the proof of what they allege is found in written documents. This is extraordinary because, generally, the people and companies involved in this type of agreement do not put it in writing. These are usually agreements that are concluded in secret, on the sly", analyzes Me Bellemare.
***
In the United States, we don't mess around with anti-monopoly law, known as the Sherman Act . Those who violate it face fines of up to $100 million.
And that's not all: if defendants are ordered to pay damages, the amount is automatically tripled because it is a violation of antimonopoly law.
"The plaintiffs are seeking damages equivalent to what the players would have earned if they had not been caught in a system forcing them to earn $70 a week. When you take that difference and multiply it by thousands of players, and then multiply that sum by three because of the requirements of the law, that means there's a lot of money at stake."
"If this judgment were successful, Canadian major junior hockey would probably go bankrupt immediately and the business model would completely change", believes Professor Pierre Larouche.
The latter emphasizes that in addition, this class action is brought at a time when there is a resurgence of interest in the United States to break agreements between employers which aim to restrict employee mobility.
"This context works in favor of junior hockey players", specifies Me Larouche.
In short, the situation is extremely serious. To the point where the two lawyers interviewed do not hide their curiosity about the defense that the leagues will adopt to counter this lawsuit.
"Perhaps they will try to split the lawsuit so that it only applies to American players and not Canadians. This is one of the means of defense that I see emerging on the horizon", says Me Bellemare.
Between the lines, we understand that the plaintiffs argue that the only remedy that would allow Canadian leagues to maintain their business model would be to negotiate a collective agreement as required by American law.
"I would take the chance to do that, if I were in the Canadian junior leagues, because it would avoid problems for the future. That would mean that there would be a kind of players' association that would negotiate a collective agreement, but you can immediately imagine that the players would no longer receive just $70 per week", concludes Professor Larouche.
Absolutely interesting from both a sporting and legal point of view, this affair will probably progress for several years before we know the outcome.
On both sides, the legal costs promise to be astronomical. We're talking about millions of dollars.
In the meantime, unless they ask the court for a delay, the NHL and the three Canadian major junior leagues have 21 days to respond to the class action brought by the plaintiffs.
Lawsuit accuses Canadian major-junior hockey leagues of violating U.S. antitrust laws
The NHL and Canada’s major-junior hockey leagues were hit Wednesday with a class-action lawsuit alleging they operate a cartel that violates U.S. antitrust law, suppresses competition and keeps players locked in an exploitative system that pays them poverty wages in exchange for a dream of playing in the pros.
The suit, filed in U.S. federal court in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the OHL, WHL, QMJHL and their respective teams and owners, which together comprise the CHL, restrict competition for 16-to 20-year-old players and treat them as property to be traded without their meaningful consent. The NHL is named as a co-conspirator.
The suit was filed by the World Association of Icehockey Players Unions and its North American division, along with two former major-junior players, Calgary-born forward Tanner Gould, 19, and Lakeville, Minn.-born goalie Isaiah DiLaura, 23. The plaintiffs are seeking class-action certification.
The OHL, WHL, and QMJHL allocate exclusive, non-overlapping territories in North America from which they can source and recruit players. The suit alleges the program gives prospective players only a single league through which they can pursue a path to the pros, creating a culture of “abuse – economic, physical, psychological, and sexual – that is the foreseeable consequence of a system that deprives these Players of freedom of choice, freedom of movement, and freedom to play for the club of their choice, i.e., the hallmarks of a competitive labor market.”
The suit alleges that the players are paid a pittance, “exacerbating their exploitation by depriving them of fair compensation for their labor.” According to the complaint, standard player contracts in the WHL set compensation at $250 a month, while OHL players are paid $470 a month. “Player compensation in the QMJHL is similarly fixed at non-competitive levels,” the complaint alleges, despite the fact that the major-junior hockey leagues and teams earn, “at least hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”
The allegations, which have not been tested in court, also say that the NHL oversees and helps to finance the system through payments made to the feeder leagues and teams, which, it argues are “contingent on Major Junior Defendants maintaining many of the rules and policies that cement the illegal agreements set forth herein.”
“It’s time for change within major-junior hockey,” Gould said in a news release issued by Constantine Cannon LLP, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs. “I’m proud to be a part of this case because I want to make sure that the players coming up after me are protected in a way that I was not.”
“Teenage players continue to be treated like disposable objects, just like I was,” DiLaura said in the same news release. “I am hoping this lawsuit will put an end to that.”
The NHL did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement provided by spokesperson Chris Seguin, the CHL said, “We have just been made aware of the complaint, filed by WAIPU, an organization that has not been certified to represent any CHL players. Until we can thoroughly review the document, we are unable to provide comment as to the legitimacy of its contents.” Spokespeople for the WHL and QMJHL deferred to the CHL. A spokesperson for the OHL did not respond to a request for comment.
The suit says major-junior players have never had a collective agreement, and attempts to unionize CHL players “have been unsuccessful to date because Major Junior Players fear retribution (and have, in fact, been retaliated against) by Defendants.”
In unsparing language, the suit outlines the extraordinary economic imbalance faced by players who hope to pursue a professional career, noting that the defendants include “more than 146 clubs – virtually the entire North American ice hockey industry.” It adds that “each player – in some cases children as young as 14 years old – faces that unified economic power wholly on his own.”
Contract terms “are little short of indentured servitude” which force players “to choose between their dreams of playing in the NHL and their education. Defendants’ exploitation and abuse of boys during their formative mid-to-late-teen years is systemic, pervasive, and likely to inflict scars that will affect these boys throughout their lives.”
The suit alleges a host of ways in which the players lack control over their fate, including trades.
Though the major-junior leagues have rules in place forbidding trades without players’ consent – the suit notes “trades can be very disruptive to a teenager who may already be living far from home, at the home of a billet family, and attempting to finish high school while providing full-time hockey services for his Club” – the suit alleges that teams routinely circumvent the restrictions.
Gould was drafted at age 15 by the Tri-City Americans and, after one season with the Kennewick, Wash.-based team, he was informed that he was being traded to the Prince Albert Raiders in Saskatchewan. The suit alleges that he was told that, if he didn’t consent to the trade, he would be “sent home,” and prevented from playing for any other team in the league.
DiLaura, meanwhile, alleges that he wasn’t even asked for his consent on the two occasions he was traded: He was simply told the news by his club’s general manager and given 24 hours to pack up his life, catch a flight, and report to his new club – in each case, on the other side of the U.S.-Canada border.
In a statement on the WAIPU USA website, the organization’s president, Sandra Slater, said the lawsuit, “will serve as a catalyst for sweeping reforms across major-junior hockey and underscores the urgent need for a new governance model that values athlete welfare above profits. This is a defining moment in the fight to create a hockey ecosystem that is fair, safe, and respectful to all athletes.”
Antitrust Lawsuit: will serve as a catalyst for sweeping reforms
"This lawsuit will serve as a catalyst for sweeping reforms across major junior hockey and underscores the urgent need for a new governance model that values athlete welfare above profits," said Sandra Slater, President of WAIPU USA. "This is a defining moment in the fight to create a hockey ecosystem that is fair, safe, and respectful to all athletes."
The case is World Association of Icehockey Players Unions North American Division, et al. v. National Hockey League, et al. in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Visit www.HockeyAntitrustLitigation.com for more information about this lawsuit.