Judge denies Carcillo’s appeal in class-action lawsuit against Canadian Hockey League

TORONTO — An Ontario Court of Appeal judge has denied former NHL player Daniel Carcillo’s attempt to certify a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian Hockey League, its three major junior leagues and their teams over disturbing allegations of sexual assault and abuse of teenage players.

The suit, initially filed in 2020 with Carcillo, Garrett Taylor and Stephen Quirk as the leading plaintiffs, covers events in the Ontario Hockey League, Western Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League going back to 1975.

In his decision Monday, Chief Justice Michael H. Tulloch called the plaintiffs’ objectives admirable, but said the proposed case was of “an unprecedented scale and complexity.”

Tulloch upheld an earlier ruling by Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell, who in February 2023 concluded the courts would face an “unmanageable” proceeding involving 78 defendants across 13 jurisdictions, hundreds of potential third-party claims and diverse allegations spanning nearly 50 years.

Perell’s 103-page ruling quoted from sworn statements by unidentified players describing what they experienced when some were as young as 15.

One player, identified only as FF, said he was sodomized with a hockey stick as part of a rookie initiation — an assault at least one other player said also happened to him.

“I have lived with the abuse I suffered,” the player said. “Coming out with my story has been extremely difficult but (I) am telling it because I do not want any other child to go through what I did.”

Perell wrote in his decision the evidence established that players were “tortured, forcibly confined, shaved, stripped, drugged, intoxicated, physically and sexually assaulted; raped, gang raped, forced to physically and sexually assault other teammates.”

He accepted the former players’ evidence and described the main plaintiffs as “genuine heroes,” but the judge found they had not presented a workable plan for litigating the case as a class action.

On appeal, Tulloch wrote that because the plaintiffs did not suggest a narrower or more targeted class action at the certification stage, “they cannot now seek to fundamentally recast their case.”

He added in the 35-page document that the ruling does not rule out the possibility of more limited class actions — focusing on individual teams, leagues or smaller groups — being certified in the future.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 22, 2025.