We Breed Lions - by Rick Westhead (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD

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, were 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. 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 entered pleas of not guilty. 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.

For over three years the story ignited an enormous amount of debate and discussion across the country. Even after the players were acquitted of all charges in July, 2025, the conversation about how broken the national game had become only intensified.

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 is must-reading for parents, players and all of those who love the game of hockey and want to see it get to a better place.

Review Quotes

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE 2026 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD

"We Breed Lions is a thorough, thoughtful, illuminating and necessary view into hockey's darker corners. . . . The stories are specific, and haunting. . . . We Breed Lions might make you view hockey a little differently, but it should leave you thinking one thing, above all: for all the medals, all the Cups, all the legends of the game we love, Canada, and hockey, could do so much better." --Toronto Star

"Westhead makes a careful case that the organized version of the sport is irreparably flawed. . . . He does the victims of hockey's endless cycles of violence the honour of being unsparing, and the result is a necessarily difficult book."  --Literary Review of Canada

"Perhaps no one understands the dark underbelly of a sport so deeply woven into the national fabric like Westhead. That knowledge and drive culminate beautifully in his newest book, We Breed Lions, which promises and delivers an unsparing look at the institutional failures that keep that darkness hidden. . . . Essential reading." --Winnipeg Free Press

"This book is obviously a heavy read but extremely important if you're going to have a conversation about hockey culture. I think the only reason a lot of people would have difficulty with that book is if they're afraid to have their views of hockey culture challenged." --Steve "Dangle" Glynn, via CBC Books

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.