Team Canada 2018: NHL “kept teams in the dark.”

The National Hockey League did not disclose the details of their investigations into the players linked to the 2018 Hockey Canada scandal according to stunning comments made by one of the league's top insiders on Monday.

In a conversation with fellow NHL reporter Jeff Marek on the most recent episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman revealed his belief that teams around the league had been left completely in the dark about what the league had uncovered about players within those very same teams.

"Bettman did confirm that, which is that they kept the teams in the dark about what they learned," revealed Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast.

As you might imagine the teams that this concerned were not pleased.

"I know that bothered teams, it bothered some of the teams a great deal," admitted Friedman.

In fact it sounds like the Calgary Flames may have been the team most negatively impacted by that decision. Last week the Flames were heavily criticized by their own fans when they allowed Dillon Dube to take a leave of absence for mental health reasons, but it now appears that those criticizing the Flames may have been misguided.

"They allowed Dube a mental leave and then two days later Carter Hart goes on mental leave and we start to realize what's happening," began Friedman. "The Flames took a lot of criticism for it but based on what Bettman said, it's pretty obvious here that the Calgary Flames did not know how close, or how even more serious, this situation had become."

The obvious question here would be to ask why the league felt the need to keep the results of their investigation from their own teams, and Friedman provided the answers there as well.

"One of the rumors going around about the NHL report and the Hockey Canada report is that the NHL and Hockey Canada were both worried that, if they released their reports prior to the conclusion of the legal process, that they were worried about significant lawsuits," said Friedman. "And everything that Bettman said in that media conference made me believe that is 100% true, that there is no way they could bring anything out until they knew what the legal process said."

"I know that's not gonna make a lot of people happy or satisfy them, but I'm not surprised in the least bit," added Friedman, "You're not going to expose yourself to any legal damage... so that's why I believe these reports are still under lock and key"