Six players from U14 Ontario hockey team placed on probation amid investigation into bullying and sexual misconduct

Two hockey players' skates are seen in this undated file image. (Tony Schnagl via Pexels)

Warning: The following article contains sexual content and references to sexual assault

Six players from an under-14 AA hockey team in Stoney Creek, Ont., have been placed on probation for two years and warned that any further misconduct could lead to permanent bans, after an investigation found they engaged in repeated bullying and sexual misconduct throughout the 2023–24 season.

The inquiry also determined that head coach Dave Mercanti failed to protect players, showed “contempt for the process” during an investigation, and refused to accept responsibility for what happened within his team’s change room. In addition to the players’ sanctions, Mercanti was suspended for six months from Hockey Canada-sanctioned games, practices, and events.

Mercanti did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is the latest to highlight concerns about transparency and accountability in Canadian amateur sports, where investigations and sanctions are often kept secret, giving an opportunity to those who are disciplined to quietly resurface with other teams or in other sports or jurisdictions.

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According to a 70-page report detailing the allegations involving the Stoney Creek team that has been published by the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), bullying and assaults on the Stoney Creek team were frequent, co-ordinated, and, at times, recorded.

Hockey Canada’s independent third party (ITP) receives and investigates misconduct allegations and conducted the initial investigation after the parent of a player filed a complaint in April 2024. Participants are bound by confidentiality agreements and are typically barred from discussing cases, even after they are concluded. While ITP adjudicators have the power to make sanction decisions public, there is no evidence that has ever happened.

The report detailing the misconduct would likely have remained confidential if the case had not been appealed to the SDRCC, where arbitration decisions are made public.

According to the SDRCC report about the Stoney Creek AA team, the team’s Snapchat account was a “cesspool.” Their Snapchat group chat contained jokes about rape, sexualized videos and degrading memes, comments calling players “Mexicans” or “lesbians,” and homophobic and racist slurs including the “N-word” that targeted their teammates.

One video on the team’s Snapchat showed a boy pinning a teammate to the floor and pretending to “hump” him while another voice made a comment about sodomizing the player, the report said.

Photos also documented more than 20 instances during the 2023-24 season in which players held down teammates and forcibly removed their clothes, the report said.

The misconduct occurred before and after games and practices, typically after the dressing-room door was closed and sometimes blocked. According to testimony cited in the ruling, teammates who wanted to leave during assaults were prevented from doing so. Four players stood by the team’s locker room door to ensure that no coaches or other adults entered the room during the assaults, the report said.

According to the report, an adjudicator expressed “significant concern” that parents and players were corresponding and co-ordinating their responses to an investigator commissioned by Hockey Canada’s ITP, noting that some responses were identical or substantially similar.

The adjudicator originally ordered suspensions of between one to seven games for the sanctioned players. The head coach, Mercanti, was assessed a five-game suspension and assistant coaches Greg Williams and Bill Whalen were given written reprimands.

Three weeks after the ITP released its initial sanctions on Nov. 1, 2024, the complainant was “violently assaulted” by one of his teammates at a local rink, according to a March 21, 2025, statement from adjudicator Sean Bawden. (Bawden had no involvement with the original complaint to the ITP about locker room behaviour.)

The alleged assault was recorded on the rink’s closed-circuit video and, following a separate complaint to the ITP, the assailant was suspended by Hockey Canada for a year.

The complainant, who is identified in the report as “Party X,” appealed to the SDRCC, arguing the penalties levied against his teammates and coaches were too lenient.

“We were in disbelief,” the complainant’s mother said. “Seven games was less than a slap on the wrist. We started our appeal process because we wanted our son to know that there are consequences for your actions. It’s easier to walk away than to do something about it but along the way we realized that nobody speaks out because the processes that are in place prevent them from being able to… We want other families experiencing maltreatment to know that they aren’t alone.”

Arbitrator Carol Roberts agreed that the original sanctions in the case were flawed, the SDRCC report said.

While the Stoney Creek coaches denied knowing anything about their players’ behaviour and contended there was always at least one coach and one adult in the dressing room or outside with the door ajar, Roberts rejected those claims, writing in her SDRCC decision that the supervision was “entirely inadequate” and that the abuse “was enabled by the coaching staff’s failure.” Roberts noted that after at least one parent raised concerns during the 2023-24 season, the misconduct continued.

“I find that, without an effective sanction, Mercanti, in particular, poses an ongoing potential threat to the safety of others,” Roberts wrote.

Following Mercanti’s suspension, he faces probation for one year, according to the report. Whalen and Williams face a one-year probation, beginning at the start of the 2025-26 season.

Stoney Creek Minor Hockey Association President Steve Johnson wrote in an email to TSN on Tuesday that the individuals involved in the case are no longer players, coaches or volunteers with the association.

“The association has not been provided any details of this case since its onset due to confidentiality invoked at the ITP level and any information that has been received has been second hand,” Johnson wrote. “Stoney Creek Minor Hockey during the evaluation period in the spring made a decision to not move forward with a team in this age category. We felt this was in the best interest of the program moving forward.”

Hockey Canada has said for more than a year that it is “studying and evaluating” the possibility of making sanctions public. Several sources close to the federation’s board have said that while there is mounting pressure as other sports organizations adopt public registries, Hockey Canada’s lawyers are concerned the organization could face lawsuits from people who are named publicly for bad behaviour.

Safe sport experts say a lack of openness regarding sanction decisions assessed to adults undermines public confidence and prevents families and athletes from understanding how complaints are addressed and whether meaningful safeguards are in place.

“These decisions should be more public,” said Hilary Findlay, a retired sport management professor at Brock University who still publishes research on safe sport issues. “Some people aren’t sure about coming forward with a complaint. It’s good for sport organizations to let the public know how they will treat serious breaches. People would have more trust in what happens in these situations if there was more transparency.”

At the same time, Findlay said the only way many sport organizations will become more open about discipline for misconduct is if provincial and territorial governments force them to do so.

“Sports isn’t an area where organizations tend to be well resourced, and creating public sanctions registries takes money and people,” Findlay said. “Change for sports organizations is hard and expensive and scary and many of them have to be pushed into it.”

While neither Hockey Canada nor any of the provincial and territorial hockey federations in Canada have public sanctions registries, a modest but growing number of national and provincial sport organizations across Canada either currently have a registry or have committed to one.

Swim Canada, and Skate Canada all maintain public registries and Athletics Canada has published discipline decisions, in addition to a registry. Basketball Canada and Canada Soccer have said they are in the process of setting up registries. The Ontario Volleyball Association, Athletics Ontario, Gymnastics Ontario, Field Hockey Ontario, and Swim Ontario are among the provincial associations that maintain public sanction lists.

Hockey Canada’s ITP said in December 2024 that it received 2,073 complaints during its second full year of operation, including 780 complaints that alleged bullying and harassment, 529 involving allegations of verbal discrimination that contravened Hockey Canada’s Rule 11.4, 189 regarding alleged sexual misconduct, and 164 alleging physical abuse.