For anyone drawn to the folklore of Canadian hockey—where the boundaries between myth, recollection, and reality blur—a courtroom in London, Ontario is offering a tale with all the hallmarks of a modern drama: fractured memories, legal maneuvering, and the ghost of team loyalty. This week, during the sexual assault trial of five former world junior hockey players, the spotlight veered away from the accused and settled, somewhat awkwardly, on the recall abilities of witness Brett Howden.

The Crown’s Challenge: Selective Amnesia or Team Spirit?

Prosecutors believe they’ve spotted more than just stick-handling skills in play. Global News reports that the Crown accuses Howden—a former teammate now with the Vegas Golden Knights—of feigning forgetfulness about details that could damage the defense. Specifically, prosecutor Meaghan Cunningham told the court that Howden’s “loss of memory on these points is ‘not sincere,’” highlighting how he recalls portions of the night in June 2018 that cast the complainant as flirtatious or instigating, but claims not to remember her weeping or comments the players allegedly made as the woman dressed to leave (“oh no, baby, don’t leave”).

Cunningham summarized this inconsistency by stating: “This is not a complete memory loss. He remembers some details, but he doesn’t remember the details that are particularly damning to his friends and teammates.” The Canadian Press, as cited in both Global News and The Albertan, provides a consistent account of these claims.

Defense’s View: An Unreliable Messenger

On the flip side, defense lawyer Megan Savard offered a different diagnosis, as described by The Albertan. She portrayed Howden as “unsophisticated,” “inarticulate,” and “careless with words,” emphasizing a memory apparently prone to drifting within the same narrative. According to Savard’s submission, Howden’s lack of recall reflects his ordinary difficulties with communication, not a strategic omission. She also argued it is premature to discredit his credibility on this basis.

The defense’s central point: If Howden’s memory is genuinely faulty and inconsistent, perhaps it mirrors the messiness of human recollection rather than a calculated effort to protect former teammates. But it does prompt the question—how often does one forget the most incriminating specifics, while vividly recalling just enough to be helpful?

The Night in Question: Competing Stories

As Global News documents, the charges arise from the early hours of June 19, 2018, during which five players—Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, and Callan Foote—allegedly assaulted a woman in a London, Ontario hotel room. Each of the players has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault; McLeod faces an additional charge of being a party to the offense.

According to court records cited in both Global News and The Albertan, prosecutors allege McLeod, Hart, and Dube coerced the complainant into oral sex without her consent, with Dube also accused of slapping her buttocks during a sex act. Foote stands accused of performing the splits over her face and grazing her with his genitals, while Formenton allegedly had non-consensual sex with her in the bathroom.

The woman, whose identity remains protected, testified—per Global News—that she was “naked, drunk and scared” when multiple men entered the hotel room following her initial sexual encounter with McLeod (an event not included in the trial’s scope). She stated she felt the men expected a “porn scene” and, running on “autopilot,” felt she had no choice but to go along with their demands.

Multiple days of cross-examination have ensued. As Global News highlights, lawyers for the defense put forward the theory that the woman “wanted the men’s attention and repeatedly urged them to engage in sexual activity with her, even taunting them at times.”

Howden’s Account: Gaps, Contrasts, and Callbacks

Howden, on the stand, testified that he entered McLeod’s hotel room expecting to order food and socialize, but was surprised by the woman’s presence. He remembered her “begging” for sex and performing oral sex on Hart and McLeod, according to The Albertan’s reporting. He also referenced hearing about Dube spanking the woman—but, critically, did not remember observing it firsthand.

Further differences emerged regarding what Howden recalled being said as Formenton purportedly prepared to go to the bathroom with the woman. While he testified he couldn’t remember the response to Formenton’s question (“should I be doing this?”), the Crown, referencing his 2018 statement, noted he had told investigators Formenton had asked, “Will I get in trouble for this? Like, am I OK to do this?” and that Howden had responded, albeit with considerable uncertainty.

A particularly sharp inconsistency surfaced in relation to Dube’s alleged “spanking.” Global News cites Crown arguments that, although Howden claimed in court to have not seen this, his 2018 text to Taylor Raddysh painted the scene vividly: “When I was leaving, Duber (Dube) was smacking this girl’s a– so hard, like it looked like it hurt so bad.” The Crown pointed out these details as yet another strand of Howden’s selectively frayed memory.

The Fog of Testimony: Flaws, Patterns, and the Team Effect

Are these simply honest memory lapses, or a not-so-subtle nod to the code of team solidarity? The differences between Howden’s present testimony and contemporaneous statements—from texts to police interviews—present more rhetorical puck-handling than a highlight reel. When the Crown asks to cross-examine Howden on 18 points of inconsistency, as reported by both The Albertan and Global News, the implication is clear: the pattern is as suspicious as any tape-delayed replay.

This all raises awkward questions about the persistent tug-of-war between athletic brotherhoods, personal morality, and the relentlessness of the legal process. Is Howden’s purported fragility with words and memory an existential shield—or a practical one, constructed from necessity?

Final Thoughts

The trial’s heart isn’t just in the facts of what happened, but in the shifting narratives, loyalties, and the unreliability of memory—especially when memories are so heavily filtered through personal risk. As the record stands, we’re left with the uneasy friction between memory as archive and memory as artifact, shaped under duress.

In the end, one wonders if the broader institution of hockey culture inadvertently encourages this kind of recall—partial, selective, perhaps even willed. On the ice, of course, quick forgetfulness of setbacks is a virtue. In court, though, the stakes for amnesia are considerably higher. So, whose story are we hearing? And when nothing lines up, do we trust what’s said, or what’s only admitted in private texts and pre-trial statements? For the moment, the truth seems to be caught somewhere between the penalty box and a selectively hazy memory.