To emphasize the point of the long post above: the actual scandal here is that the NHL knew they had a player who was gambling illegally, and severely compromised by debts to both teammates and foreign entities.
They claimed to have done an investigation and been unable to corroborate the claim, but there is a mountain of credible evidence against him, and even the most basic facts of the case (gambling out of California, which is illegal, and gambling with an illegal foreign entity) are damning by their very nature.
Now there are very credible witnesses spilling provable details in the press, and the people named as being involved include his agent, his GM, the league office, and numerous teammates including a star like Doughty.
Unless this lady just pulled off one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of sport (and Arthur will have his day in court to prove that) this is a massive scandal for the NHL as a whole. We’re talking about hundreds of games which are potentially compromised by direct influence of gambling interests.
Two high profile NBA figures just went to jail for fixing games. Within days, we now have an NHL case where it is extremely hard to imagine that games were somehow not influenced by a guy who was desperately in debt and sitting on all sorts of inside information, ability to point shave, etc. Now the league has to explain why they looked the other way when they had every opportunity to intervene, remove the player from competition, and report this to the FBI. That in turn is going to be a test of whether the government is serious about preventing systemic corruption in pro sports.
We knew this day would come, and here it is.
nypost.com
