The Athletic – Article Published – Former junior hockey player who joined lawsuit claims CHL treats teens as ‘disposable’
https://theathletic.com/5329581/2024/03/15/junior-hockey-lawsuit-chl-isaiah-dilaura/
Former junior hockey player who joined lawsuit claims CHL treats teens as ‘disposable’
By Ian Mendes
Isaiah DiLaura is not a household name in the hockey world by any stretch of the imagination.
The goaltender played in only 54 games across three seasons in the Western Hockey League with Prince George, Portland and Swift Current. His career wrapped up with a three-game stint with the Maryland Black Bears of the North American Hockey League during the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season.
But DiLaura is one of two former junior hockey players named as plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking to win increased rights and compensation for players in the Canadian Hockey League.
And for the 23-year-old, the decision to publicly attach his name to the lawsuit is not about trying to gain attention for himself. Instead, DiLaura and his family want to help shed light on what they believe is an unfair system that exploits teenaged hockey players in North America.
“For me, I tend to see it as making a positive change in junior hockey. From what I know and what I had to go through, teenagers should not be used as disposable objects,” DiLaura said in an interview with The Athletic. “I want to make a change for the younger generation because they’re just taking advantage of teenage kids.”
“As a parent, how do you support your child when you don’t even understand the process?” said DiLaura’s mother, Stephanie. “We learned that it’s strictly a business.”
The lawsuit — filed on Feb. 14 in New York federal court — argues that North America’s largest junior hockey system violates U.S. antitrust laws. The suit alleges the current junior system deprives junior aged players of “freedom of choice, freedom of movement, and freedom to play for the club of their choice, i.e., the hallmarks of a competitive labor market.”
In a statement to The Athletic this week, the Canadian Hockey League wrote, “We have hired counsel and we are not going to be commenting on this ongoing litigation.”
In DiLaura’s situation, he first drew the attention of WHL scouts at 13 while playing minor hockey in Lakeville, Minn. As a 15-year-old, he was selected in the eighth round of the 2015 WHL bantam draft by the Prince George Cougars.
His family eventually realized the massive logistical hurdle they needed to overcome in order to send DiLaura off to chase his dream. And because his parents were working full time and had other family commitments, they did not have the ability to drop everything and accompany their son — who was by then 17 and entering 12th grade — to his new home in Canada for the start of training camp.
“We got a phone call saying, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been drafted by the Prince George Cougars.’ The magnitude of how far away it was didn’t really hit until you looked it up on a map. This is up near Alaska,” said Stephanie. “He was 17 and navigating this by himself. How does he get through customs by himself? He had never been on an airplane by himself before.”
For DiLaura, it was a 1,700-mile trek from his hometown in Minnesota to Prince George, B.C., which required a 25-hour drive in each direction if travelling by car. He was granted only one visit to see his family — at Christmas time — per season.
“It was tough,” said DiLaura. “Definitely a lot of struggles of missing home and getting homesick, as any teenager would have being away from home for the first time.”
Even though it would have been more convenient for DiLaura to play for the Brandon Wheat Kings — who were located less than a nine-hour drive from his hometown — DiLaura was forced to play for the Prince George team that drafted him. And playing for Flint in the Ontario Hockey League — which was also a nine-hour drive from his hometown — was not an option because players from Minnesota were only eligible to be drafted into the Western Hockey League.
The lawsuit argues the Canadian Hockey League serves as a “cartel” that controls junior-aged players and distributes them to the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League based solely on geography. Players are then subjected to an “involuntary draft” in which their CHL rights are held in perpetuity.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking to recalibrate the system by allowing the players to be represented with something resembling a collective-bargaining agreement that would protect their individual rights. Recent court decisions have ruled in favor of NCAA student athletes receiving more power and control over compensation and the use of their image and likeness.
“These are kids and they need to be protected. They need rules that will protect them and will arm them with information. The best way to accomplish that is somebody representing them,” said Jeffrey Shinder, attorney for DiLaura. “Somebody needs to protect the kids in a comprehensive and systematic way.”
The lawsuit states that NCAA student-athletes have the ability to choose their school, without being restricted to geography or an involuntary draft. And once they have selected the school, they cannot be traded. If their situation deteriorates, they can opt to transfer to a new school — without requiring the permission of their university.
“By comparison, Major Junior Players are traded — often with little to no notice and always with no real choice in the matter — across the vast geographic reaches of each League and often across borders, including before a player turns 18 and without parental consent,” the lawsuit states.
When DiLaura was traded from Prince George to Portland, he says he was given no warning about a transaction that would uproot his life.
“It was definitely a shock. It was out of nowhere,” said DiLaura. “Where am I going to be? How am I getting there? Does my billet family know? Disbelief almost.”
According to the lawsuit, this runs in direct contrast to a promise from junior hockey clubs that they will seek consent when trading their teenaged players to another team.
“The Clubs that traded DiLaura did not even bother to pay lip service to the rule that bars the trading of Major Junior Players without their consent,” the lawsuit alleges.
And after just eight games with his new team in Portland, Oregon, DiLaura was traded yet again during the 2019-20 season — this time to Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
“The second time was actually more shocking,” said DiLaura. “We had a game that night and I got traded right after the game. I was putting my gear away in the locker and the coach called me in. He said to me, ‘Hey. You got traded.’ That was more of a shock because I was about to go home for the night. So I was shocked and scared. I had to call my parents both times.”
“My mom said to me, ‘Are you sure you want to keep doing this, just bouncing around from town to town?’” DiLaura said.
“The reality is that you’re just pawns in this business. You have no input,” said Stephanie. “If you want to play, you have to play their game. But if you don’t, you don’t play at all. And there are no other options.”
According to the lawsuit, the rules of each league stipulate that “underage Major Junior Players must consent to be traded because trades can be very disruptive to a teenager who may already be living far from home, at the home of a billet family, and attempting to finish high school while providing full-time hockey services for his Club.”
Stephanie claims there was no direction given about her son’s high school graduation process in 12th grade. When his season in Prince George ended in April, the family wasn’t sure how to proceed. Would DiLaura stay in Canada to finish off his last year of high school? Would he come back to Minnesota and try and graduate? Would his credits from Canada transfer back to the United States? In the end, the family says they had to navigate the entire process themselves with no assistance from anybody involved with the hockey team or the WHL.
“We didn’t even know if graduation was feasible,” said Stephanie. “After his season, we re-enrolled him back in his old high school. It was tons of coordination. Getting his transcript from Prince George. I never saw his grades at any point in Prince George.”
DiLaura says his post-secondary education was also thrown into disarray when he was traded from Portland to Swift Current in the middle of the 2019-20 season.
“I was going to college in Portland and taking classes there. But as soon as I got traded, that was all off the table,” said DiLaura. “It was all in-person classes, so I couldn’t even do Zoom. I didn’t get a chance to finish it.”
DiLaura does concede the WHL fulfilled its educational promise by paying for his schooling to complete a program to become a certified heating and air conditioning technician at a trade school after he finished his playing career.
But DiLaura contends that the promise of being treated like a professional athlete with “glitz and glamour” never materialized during his three stops in the WHL. Instead, he was subjected to excruciatingly long bus rides. When he played in Prince George, the shortest bus trip for a road game was seven and a half hours away. Road trips to Saskatchewan would be 20-hour ordeals spread over three days.
“It’s tough both physically and mentally. If you’re trapped in a bus with 20-some-odd guys for 20-odd hours, there is not a lot of room,” said DiLaura. “Physically, you can’t stand up and stretch out. You try to use the bathroom at the end of the trip. Kind of gets gross towards the end, too.”
As a goaltender who relied on flexibility, DiLaura says the extended bus trips were taxing. Stephanie says she heard about her son trying to get some sleep on the floor of the bus.
“I used to have a cramping thing where I would get bad cramping in my arms and legs, so it was definitely tough to try and stretch out,” said DiLaura. “You just want to get your leg as straight as possible. And it’s almost impossible to do that on a bus.”
The lawsuit also claims that “player compensation in the WHL is fixed at $250.00 per month.” But Stephanie says that paltry stipend certainly wasn’t enough to cover the expenses of a growing teenager — especially because their son had no ability to take on a part-time job with the rigors of a demanding junior hockey schedule.
“They present it as if you’re living for free, but that’s not the reality. If he wanted something to eat when the team wasn’t playing or his billet family wasn’t making him a meal, he was on his own,” said Stephanie. “So I would send him care packages. Gift cards for local restaurants in Prince George. VISA gift cards he could use anywhere.”
DiLaura says the topic of how he and his teammates were being treated was rarely broached inside the dressing room, because the players felt like they had no recourse.
“No. We just got told what we had to do,” he said flatly. “There was not really much changing.”
Stephanie is happy this lawsuit is moving forward because she wishes her family had been armed with more information before making the decision to send their son away to the WHL to pursue a dream of playing professional hockey. If she had known about all the potential obstacles they would face, she believes they would have chosen an alternate route. She says the family would not entertain the idea of allowing Isaiah’s younger brother to play in the WHL.
“Just looking back at all that transpired, I regret it. I regret every moment of it,” said Stephanie. “There are different avenues to reach that dream. I look at all the time I lost with my child. I truly feel bad for everything he went through. If I had an inkling of half of it, we would have made a different decision.”
