Boys Will Be Boys (Season 1, Episode 8)
Premise: A junior hockey captain suspended over a hazing scandal is found beaten to death at his arena, and the detectives uncover the adults who used the team’s young players for their own ends.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 8
- Starring
- DS Henry Graff (Aden Young), DS Frankie Bateman (Kathleen Munroe), Insp. Vivienne Holness (Karen Robinson), DCA Theo Forrester (K.C. Collins), Mark Yohannes (Araya Mengesha), Dr. Lucy Da Silva (Nicola Correia-Damude)
- Guest stars
- Kristen Thomson as Gemma Dubicki, Hugh Thompson as Coach McAllister, Stephen Kalyn as Rory Findley, Gage Munroe as Kai Powell, Augustus Rivers as Fedor Makarov
- Director
- David Straiton
- Writers
- Noelle Carbone & Annmarie Morais
Summary
The Case
“Boys Will Be Boys” opens with captain Rory Findley’s overtime goal sending the junior Scarborough City Scorpions to Game 7. Teammate Kai Powell sneaks out from the home of his billet mother, Gemma Dubicki, to a hotel hazing where rookies are forced to drink and are beaten, and Oscar is zipped into a hockey bag and thrown down a stairwell. When photos leak, Coach McAllister suspends six senior players, Rory and Kai among them. Rory is then found dead at the arena, knocked onto the ice and beaten with his own stick.
Oscar’s billet father, Elmore Collins, was at his hospital bedside, and every suspended player was grounded. Mark Yohannes finds the photos came from a smartwatch, which leads to Fedor Makarov, an injured former forward now handing out towels, who admits leaking them. The autopsy finds amphetamines and years of healed fractures. Rory’s former agent, Rizzo, who paid a doctor to keep him playing, admits slashing his tire after being fired but has an alibi. A tracking app installed by Rory’s billet parents, who profited from an online channel about him, leads to a server who saw McAllister give Rory a hotel key card.
Footage then puts the coach and Fedor near the arena that night. Fedor says McAllister chose which six players to photograph and got him a scouting job, and the coach admits he owes dangerous people money and meant to blackmail his starters into sitting out Game 7. He adds that Rory confronted him, that he set a 10:30 meeting at the arena and skipped it, and that Kai heard.
The Interrogation
Because Kai is 17, Forrester says an adult must sit in, so Gemma is present when Kai says he stayed in his room. A worn No. 9 Dubicki jersey in her home leads the detectives to her estranged son, Nathaniel. Finding Gemma at the arena after hours, where Kai secretly trains, they draw her out: she begged Rory to take the blame and free Kai, she says, and pushed him in self-defence when he came at her with his stick. The detectives answer that she then took the stick and kept hitting him until he died.
Bateman confronts her with Nathaniel’s own hazing as a Scorpion, when teammates poured vodka into him and shut him in a freezer, and she told him to keep playing. After the detectives reveal that McAllister, not Rory, set up the hazing over his gambling debts, Graff tells her she killed Rory for the coach’s crime. Gemma breaks down and apologizes to Kai.
The ending
Spoiler: Uniformed officers lead Gemma away down the arena corridor. Kai is left with a Family Services worker, and Bateman is told to go home to her daughter.
Suspect’s fate: Gemma Dubicki, arrested.
Why it stands out
- Forrester cites section 146(2)(c) of Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act on the conditions for questioning a young person.
- The story turns on junior hockey’s billet system, in which families take in young players for a monthly payment, $500 in the episode.