We Breed Lions - by Rick Westhead (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A hard-hitting and powerful look at hockey's moment of reckoning in Canada, and the ways in which a game that is so universally loved has been rocked in recent years by court cases involving sexual assault and startling incidents of hazing and abuse throughout junior hockey.

The allegations read like a scene out of a horror movie.

Five National Hockey League players, all of them 18 to 20-year-old Canada World Juniors at the time, are alleged to have sexually assaulted a young woman in a London, Ontario hotel room in June 2018 over several hours. When the players learned that the alleged victim had reported the incident to the police, they allegedly coerced her to drop the complaint and colluded to make sure their stories lined up with each other. Hockey Canada kept the details of the case out of the spotlight and came to a confidential financial settlement with the plaintiff, paid out of a secret slush fund worth millions of dollars that the organization kept on hand to settle such complaints quietly.

On May 26, 2022, TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead broke the story surrounding the Team Canada junior players and Hockey Canada's handling of the case, immediately sending shock waves throughout all levels of the hockey world. Charges of sexual assault were made against the players; all of whom denied any wrongdoing. Once the story went live on the TSN website, Westhead's inbox on X filled with messages from people who wanted to share their personal stories on how they had been impacted by hockey's toxic culture.

In We Breed Lions, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Rick Westhead does a deep-dive into the state of hockey in Canada today. He gives voice to those who have been sexually assaulted by hockey players, revealing the struggles they've had with local police officials in their efforts to seek justice. He also goes inside the dressing room to find out how attitudes of misogyny and homophobia continue to flourish, and speaks to former players who were forced to perform degrading acts of initiation in order to "be one of the guys."

Looming large in Westhead's extraordinary reporting are the gatekeepers of the game--league officials, team owners and members of the sport's governing bodies--who are reluctant to impose change from the outside and willing to sacrifice the well-being of their players and the community for profit.

Westhead offers hope for hockey's future, profiling those individuals and organizations who are committed to educating players around issues of consent, putting an end to hazing and redefining what it means to be a man on and off the ice. Featuring a Foreword by bestselling author Stephen Brunt, We Breed Lions will surely generate an enormous amount of debate and discussion among parents, players and all of those who love the game of hockey and want to see it get to a better place.

About the Author

RICK WESTHEAD is TSN's Senior Correspondent and a two-time winner of Canadian sports writer of the year, presented by Sport Media Canada. Canadian Journalists for Freedom of Expression recognized him in 2023 with the Arnold Amber Award for Investigative Journalism. Westhead breaks news of consequence and has won five Canadian Screen Awards for his original features for various TSN properties. In 2025, he was recognized for his "fearless reporting" by The Hockey News in its list of 100 People of Power and Influence in hockey. Prior to joining TSN, Westhead served as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, where he reported on the ground in countries that included Afghanistan, China, India and Saudi Arabia.