Ken Holland made it clear that he isn’t going to let the court of public opinion overrule a court of law.
In explaining his rationale for inviting Jake Virtanen to training camp, the Edmonton Oilers general manager said it simply boils down to trusting the legal system.
If a 12-person jury in British Columbia heard all the evidence and found Virtanen not guilty of sexual assault, Holland doesn’t see why the 26-year-old former Vancouver Canuck shouldn’t be free to pursue his career.
“The most important thing is that he went to a court of law and a judge and jury found him not guilty,” said Holland, who had two sit-down sessions with Virtanen in the last few weeks before offering him a tryout.
“The biggest thing for me is to have faith in the legal system. If we lose faith in the legal system, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
Virtanen was charged in January with sexual assault in connection with an incident in a downtown Vancouver hotel room in September 2017 when he was 21 and the accuser was 18. He said the encounter was consensual.
After a week of testimony, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in Virtanen’s favour.
There is still a civil case pending.
If the criminal case hadn’t been heard and resolved, Holland says we aren’t having this conversation.
“If it had never gone before the courts, he wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t go there,” he said. “It went before the legal system. A judge and jury heard both sides of the case and made the decision that he’s not guilty.
“The legal system, in my mind, guided me to offer him a pro tryout.”
Evander Kane came to Edmonton under similar circumstances last season — shrouded in rumours and allegations and fighting to stay in the NHL — and now he’s a core member of the team on a freshly-signed four-year contract.
“Every situation is different,” he said. “I don’t know too much about his. I know he prevailed in court.”
Kane’s only advice for everyone is to stay quiet until you know all the facts.
“When you’re dealing with tough situations, there are a lot of things that people like to speculate about, things that people like to pretend they know about and things people like to pretend they have insight about,” said Kane. “A lot of that is B.S. But it’s funny how time and letting things play out changes attitudes and views. I can speak to that with my own situation.”
Kane has won over a lot of fans in Edmonton, but not everyone is happy he’s here, either.
“Everybody has their opinion and not 100 per cent of the people are going to like you. I could donate $5 million to charity today and somebody will find something wrong with it. That’s just the way social media specifically is.
“With regards to Jake, he knows what he did and he knows what he didn’t do. That’s left for him to deal with.”
The discussion is academic at this point because Virtanen is not an Oiler yet. In fact, he’s a long way from it. He had a brutal season in Vancouver two years ago (five points in 38 games) and followed it up with mediocre numbers in Russia last year (16 points in 36 games) when he couldn’t find any takers in the NHL.
Unless he’s found another gear in the last few months he’s a long shot to make the team.
“I brought him in to watch him play and see where his game is at,” said Holland. “I haven’t seen him play live other than a couple of times two years ago in Vancouver. He’s got a short window to try to impress.”
The Oilers need Virtanen to be a physical, defensively sound third or fourth liner who can provide a little secondary scoring. Expect to see him a lot in Edmonton’s eight pre-season games while management studies his game.
“If he comes in here and he can’t check and he doesn’t provide any physicality and he doesn’t score, if he’s not good enough to offer a contract to, we’ll release him,” said Holland.
“But if he comes in and can provide one or two of those dimensions …”
That’s when the larger discussion takes place about whether or not to bring him onto the team and into the community. It’s an uncomfortable situation on all fronts. While it’s not fair for people to disregard a legal verdict and declare a person guilty, especially when they haven’t heard the evidence, it’s naive to think that not guilty always means innocent.
“Over the next two weeks I’m going to evaluate from a hockey perspective whether he’s somebody we would have interest in signing,” said Holland.
“If we think he’s somebody who can make us better, deeper, then I’m going to have weigh (the moral question) in much more depth. This is one step along the way.
“I would talk to lots of people about it. This is an NHL team, it’s a brand. I would talk to the leadership group. I would talk to Jay (head coach Woodcroft). I would talk to other people in our organization. We’ll decide over the next two or three weeks whether we’ll offer him a contract or not.”
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