Stoney Creek family calls for change after hockey misconduct investigation

The parents of a young Stoney Creek hockey player are calling on Hockey Canada to make some changes.

It comes after an investigation concluded that repeated bullying and sexual misconduct took place a few years ago on a local competitive team.

The investigation left six players on probation, and temporarily suspended the coach, but the family doesn’t think the penalty was serious enough.

A ruling from Hockey Canada’s independent adjudicator finds six members of an under-14 team in Stoney Creek, in the 2023-24 season, engaged in “persistent bullying, sexual misconduct and sexual harassment” of teammates.

The father of the young complainant told CHCH News Friday, “I never realized things could be that harsh. It was eye opening: it’s led us to change a lot of the ways that we interact with our kids in sports, we’re certainly more protective of what happens in dressing rooms.”

Both the father and player cannot be named, due to the teen’s age.

The ruling details at least 20 instances of “pantsing” in the dressing room, where in many cases players were filmed while being held down and their clothes were forcibly removed.

The videos were often posted in a team Snapchat group. The ruling calls that Snapchat group “a cesspool.”

The adjudicator originally handed down suspensions of between one and seven games for players.

Head coach Dave Mercanti was suspended for five games after the ruling found he neglected his duty to supervise the dressing room, and the two assistant coaches were given written reprimands.

But the complainant’s family says they “didn’t feel the sanctions reflected the seriousness of it.”

After their son was assaulted outside of an arena, they decided to move forward on an appeal for harsher sanctions, saying it was clear to them that “nobody learned anything” from the initial ruling.

WATCH MORE: TSN’s investigative reporter Rick Westhead examines hockey’s troubled culture in new book

A ruling from the appeal adds an additional two-year probation for the six players, and suspends Mercanti for six months, followed by a one-year probation.

Mercanti declined to speak with CHCH News. He previously told the adjudicator that he never saw any of the actions in question.

The Stoney Creek Minor Hockey Association declined a request by CHCH News for an interview or to comment on the matter.

This latest incident with Hockey Canada has led experts to call for all disciplinary decisions to be made public — they wouldn’t be the only organization to do so.

Swim Canada and Skate Canada are among the governing bodies that maintain public registries of this sort of information.

“Had they not appealed, we’d never know about it, because Hockey Canada decided to keep the sanction against the coach in this case a secret,” said Rick Westhead, a sports journalist with TSN and author, on CHCH News’ Morning Live this week. “That’s another example of where the public should be asking ‘why isn’t this being made public’, when sanction decisions across sports are being made public more and more.”

Hockey Canada says it continues to review the “implications and concerns” associated with having a public sanction registry.

In the meantime, they say it’s up to the independent third party who assesses the complaints to decide whether the ruling should be made public.

The young player’s parent says there’s a weight lifted from his family’s shoulders, now that the case is out there.

He added, “We can’t change what happened to (our son). We’ve got to try and pick up the pieces and help him move on with that. What we can do, now that there’s a public document, is help raise awareness to things that can happen that are not being talked about.”

Though there’s still a lot of anxiety for the young player heading into arenas and dressing rooms, his father says he loves the game and wants to continue playing.

WATCH MORE: Brantford hockey mom says son faced death threats in group chat