An incident involving the U18 Wawota Flyers has drawn public scrutiny after photos surfaced on social media earlier this month showing players in a dressing room with alcohol. One of the images included a caption deemed extremely offensive, leading to multiple suspensions at both the league and provincial levels.
The incident occurred on March 11th following a playoff game between the Wawota Flyers and the Radville Nationals in the Moose Mountain Minor Hockey League. The league quickly issued suspensions to four players—three of them receiving 13-game suspensions and one receiving a 10-game suspension.
Hockey Saskatchewan later issued its own disciplinary measures. In an interview with Discover Weyburn, Kelly McClintock, General Manager of Hockey Saskatchewan, explained that the organization focused on the social media aspect of the incident, which violated their policies.
“There is certainly an inappropriate caption to one of the photos posted that was very offensive,” said McClintock. “The caption that one of the players on the team included on the posting was very offensive, and that’s why we investigated… and issued a 20-game suspension to the player who is responsible for creating the caption and then posting everything.”
Additionally, the head coach of the Wawota Flyers has been suspended until the end of November 2025 for failing to follow Hockey Canada’s dressing room policies, including rules prohibiting cell phones and alcohol, and requiring adequate adult supervision.
“The coach not adhering to Hockey Canada dress room policies… that's the responsibility of the coach,” said McClintock. “So we suspended the head coach until the end of November.”
Since the story became public, there has been a backlash online, with many questioning why it appears the emphasis has been placed more on the social media violation than the presence of alcohol—especially considering the players involved are underage.
“We felt that, you know, one, there was definitely a social media violation… but we were holding the coach responsible,” McClintock explained. “The team officials are responsible for what goes on in a dressing room.”
McClintock noted that social media violations occur more frequently than incidents involving underage drinking. He estimated that Hockey Saskatchewan deals with between six to ten social media complaints a year.
“We don’t get very many reports of underage drinking in dressing rooms,” he said. “But we’re not naive enough to believe that it doesn’t happen.”
He added that the Wawota team had been using a senior team’s dressing room at the time, which had a separate entrance, possibly allowing players to bring in alcohol unnoticed.
The story was not made public until it was reported by another media outlet earlier today. Asked why there was no announcement until then, McClintock clarified that Hockey Saskatchewan typically does not release public statements regarding internal disciplinary actions.
“We have an internal structure where discipline is posted,” McClintock said. “It’s not public to the media… unless it’s something like a major match penalty.”
Despite the incident, McClintock said it has sparked important conversations.
“It’s a great learning opportunity,” he said. “We have some plans in the fall to do more for associations on social media training… It can impact you from a work perspective down the road.”
The Moose Mountain Minor Hockey League ultimately awarded the best-of-three semifinal series to Radville without playing game three.