Hockey Canada suspensions upheld for 4 players from 2018 world junior team
Hockey Canada said Wednesday that four of the five players from Canada’s 2018 world junior team who were acquitted last year of sexual assault will remain suspended following an independent appeal process.
The appeal board ruled that all five players breached Hockey Canada’s code of conduct. However, one of those players, Alex Formenton, will be reinstated “immediately” and be allowed to participate in Hockey Canada-sanctioned programs, the organization said in a statement.
Get breaking National news
Get breaking Canada news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you won’t miss a trending story.
It said Cal Foote will remain suspended until Nov. 10 of this year, Carter Hart until that same date in 2027, and Dillon Dube until Nov. 10, 2028.
Michael McLeod will face the longest suspension, lasting until Nov. 10, 2030.
All five players were cleared to play in the NHL last year after their league suspensions were lifted following their acquittal by a London, Ont., jury.
More to come…
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
