The Edmonton Oilers signed forward Alex Formenton to a one-year contract worth $850,000 on Sept. 9, the team announced, but he won’t be eligible to play for Edmonton until Dec. 1 under a leaguewide suspension tied to last year’s Hockey Canada trial.
Formenton, 26, hasn’t appeared in an NHL game since the 2021-22 season with the Ottawa Senators. He spent the past three seasons playing in Switzerland’s National League while facing a sexual assault charge connected to a June 2018 Hockey Canada gala in London, Ont. He was one of five former world junior players, alongside Carter Hart, Cal Foote, Dillon Dube and Michael McLeod, charged in January 2024 after a woman alleged she was sexually assaulted by multiple players in a hotel room following the event.
All five were acquitted in July 2025. Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia ruled the Crown had not met its burden of proof on any count, saying she did not find the complainant’s evidence credible or reliable. Despite the acquittal, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association jointly suspended all five players without pay through Dec. 1, a disciplinary period the league imposed independently of the criminal outcome.
Formenton is the third of the five acquitted players to sign an NHL contract since the verdict, following Dube (Washington) and McLeod (New Jersey), according to ESPN’s coverage of the case’s aftermath. Oilers associate coach D.J. Smith coached Formenton in Ottawa and is reported to have been an advocate for bringing him back into the league.
On the ice, Formenton was a regular in Ottawa’s bottom six before his NHL absence, a left-shot winger valued more for speed and penalty-killing than offence. What he looks like after three years in Switzerland and no NHL competition since 2022 is genuinely unknown, and the Oilers will get no on-ice look at him before training camp wraps and his suspension lifts partway through the regular season.
The signing adds organizational depth on a one-year, low-risk contract, the kind of deal that costs Edmonton little in cap space if it doesn’t work out. It also means the Oilers will be managing a story with attention well beyond the box score once Formenton is actually eligible to dress, given how closely the other two comeback signings were covered elsewhere in the league.
