Well, for comparative purposes, consider the situation of baseball pitcher Trevor Bauer. He was not even criminally charged, let alone convicted, and the only civil case brought against him went in his favor. However, he was suspended from baseball for 2 years (reduced to 194 games) and the Dodgers got off the hook for paying most of his salary. He was then released and forced to go play in Japan, where he pitched well, but nobody in MLB is interested in him, even though he is now a free agent. This is even though he is a Cy Young Award winner and still has really good stuff, and despite the fact that most MLB teams badly needing starting pitching help. In modern MLB, you need 8-9 quality starting pitchers to start a season, either on your roster or ready to come up from AAA. And the vast majority of MLB teams just don't have that, so that when 2 or 3 starters go down and they have to start calling guys up, it's untested kids who get eaten alive because they have no command of their fastballs, and even if they can throw strikes, they don't have the ability to consistently hit the corners and bottom of the zone.I’m hearing that it could take up to 2 years for the trial to begin & that it could last up to 2-3 years. Not sure if the players will be tried separately or together. NHL teams will likely try to void their contracts or suspend the players but the question hockey experts are asking what happens if the accusations end up being dropped or if they’re found innocent by a jury? Considering the players could be barred from playing professional hockey for up to 5 years teams (and the NHL) could be setting themselves up for an expensive lawsuit from the accused players. No wonder the Senators chose not to re-sign Alex Formenton this offseason. It’s one of the rare good offseason moves Pierre Dorion made!
So if these guys have character clauses in their contracts that enable voiding based on felony charges, they are basically fucked, and they can't sue anyone for anything. But it would depend on their contracts. They will probably end up, in a best case scenario, like Bauer did, playing hockey in some B league in Europe.
Regarding Bauer, I think the guy is only guilty of like rough consensual sex, which he may have taken too far in some cases. I would be inclined to sign him for peanuts on a one year "prove yourself deal", and a contract that says no hookers or rough sex complaints or any of a laundry list of naught acts, masturbation only, zero tolerance on anything else, or it gets voided. But MLB GMs lack the guts to stand up to the backlash from signing such a hot potato character, so he will have to go back and pitch in Japan, or maybe Korea.
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