The decision of businessman Michael Andlauer to sell the Brantford Bulldogs to the father of Edmonton Oilers forward Zach Hyman has brought to the surface a very particular case identified in Ontario junior hockey around twenty years ago of years.
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As CBC columnist Martin Leclerc recalled Friday evening, Stuart Hyman seems very comfortable when it comes to trading hockey clubs. The one who got his hands on the Bulldogs of the Ontario Junior League – as reported Friday by the daily Ottawa Sun and confirmed Monday by the approval of the circuit’s board of governors – , made waves in the 2000s when he acquired numerous non-profit teams in Toronto.
Thus, Stuart Hyman paid a substantial sum to purchase more than 90 training courses of various levels, including AAA and junior A, as the newspaper indicated at the time Toronto Star. Consequently, the real estate agent at the time had more than 1,500 players under his control and took advantage of his power to increase registration costs for minor hockey.
However, the local organization overseeing the activities, the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL), opened an investigation in 2007 into Hyman who allegedly transferred a lot of money to two teams in which his sons played. It was only 11 years later that he opted to end his dominance by demolishing the minor club organization chart he had created, seeing that Hockey Canada wanted to hold him to account through a financial audit .
For his part, Andlauer, owner of the Ottawa Senators and former minority stakeholder in the Montreal Canadiens, had owned the Bulldogs since 2015.
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