Logan Mailloux has renounced himself from the NHL Draft due to criminal charge in Sweden
As the 2021 NHL Entry Draft nears along, multiple teams have been placing prospect Logan Mailloux on their ‘Do Not Draft’ list, after he was charged in Sweden for taking and distributing an offensive photo without consent during a consensual sexual encounter last November.
Mailloux was scouted and ranked as a first-round talent, ranging anywhere from as high as top 15 to 33rd on a random sampling of team draft boards.
The incident occurred on Nov. 7 in Skelleftea, Sweden, where Mailloux was playing on loan with SK Lejon in Sweden’s third division while the Ontario Hockey League was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mailloux, now 18, was 17 and a minor at the time of the incident. Though he was not publicly identified until now, Mailloux’s offense did make news in Sweden. He says he was interviewed by 26 NHL teams in the lead up to the Draft and each one of them asked him about the incident.
The victim, then an 18-year-old female, was not a minor at the time of the incident.
According to a 48-page investigation report from Sweden’s North Region Polisen, Mailloux secretly photographed the victim without her consent or knowledge while engaging in oral sex.
The next day, Mailloux shared the photo in the SK Lejon team group chat on SnapChat during a bus ride to a road game. According to the investigation, the victim was not identified in the photo. A witness interviewed said in the investigation that the photo only made visible “the hair of the girl … you saw that it was a girl, and you glimpsed bra straps,” according to the report.
But when Mailloux shared the photo to SK Lejon teammates, according to the report, he also sent a screenshot of the victim’s online profile, which identified her to teammates by displaying her photo, first name and age.
— Logan Mailloux (@loganmailloux_) July 20, 2021
As word quickly spread. The victim soon confronted Mailloux and his teammates, who claimed to delete the photo, according to the investigation. The offense was reported to police and the victim’s attorney filed a claim asking the Swedish prosecutor to order Mailloux to pay 7,000 Swedish krona (~$800 U.S. Dollars) for “offensive photography” and 30,000 Swedish krona (~$3,500 U.S. Dollars) for defamation. In Sweden, part of the fine for a crime such as this one is payable to the victim.
Mailloux was not arrested by Swedish Polisen. Mailloux was ultimately charged with both defamation and “Kränkande fotografering,” or offensive photography, and ordered to pay 14,300 Swedish krona, approximately $1,650 U.S. Dollars, by way of a criminal injunction that relieved the matter from the court system. Offensive photography became illegal in Sweden in 2013, banning secretly photographing or filming someone in a private place. The penalty is a fine or a maximum of up to two years in Sweden.
According to the investigation report, Mailloux did not dispute the facts laid out in the case. The Belle River, Ont., native also confessed to the facts in a series of text messages with the victim, which were included in the report as evidence. The photo itself was not reproduced in evidence.
According to the report, the victim claimed Mailloux told her he sent the photo to his teammates as “a trophy” and that he did it because of “pressure from the guys.”
The victim also said in the investigation that the photo was damaging because she was “no longer anonymous,” and that even if players on SK Lejon deleted the image as they said, the incident would not “stay” within the team as Mailloux and his teammates suggested to her. She said it damaged her reputation as gossip filtered out to others in town.
“What happened affected [me] much more than he thinks,” the victim expressed to investigators.
However, Mailloux also told investigators in the report: “Logan said he had met [the victim] after this [incident] and that she told him that she wanted to ruin his career. Logan explained that the NHL Draft is [on the] way and that she knows this and that it is sensitive.”
The response from several NHL teams has been clear. At minimum, the Arizona Coyotes, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs are believed to be among the teams with no plans to select Mailloux under any circumstance. The list is likely longer than four teams, as six teams did not interview Mailloux at all, which would seemingly indicate their lack of interest in him.
“We’re trying to put a team on the ice people can be proud of and support,” one NHL team front office member said, when asked about Mailloux. “We’ll build a less efficient roster, if need be, to make sure that is the case in our community.”
Igor Burdetskiy
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