The Nanaimo Clippers said it terminated a 2024 hire after learning RCMP was investigating him for sexual exploitation offences involving three underage junior players.
The Story
A junior hockey team in British Columbia says it was not aware that an executive it hired in 2024 was facing sexual exploitation allegations raised by another club in the same league.
In a statement Tuesday, the Nanaimo Clippers said Tyler King was hired as the club’s vice-president of business operations in the summer of 2024 and left months later before the hockey season started. The team said it terminated his employment when it found out the RCMP was investigating him.
The RCMP announced Monday that it began investigating King in 2024, around the time he left the Okotoks Oilers, a team in southern Alberta that plays in the British Columbia Hockey League.
The Clippers said the allegations do not relate to King’s time with the team. “We have not received, and are not aware of, any complaints or concerns regarding his conduct during his brief time with the Clippers,” the team said. “The safety and well-being of our players, billet families and young fans is our highest priority. We have contacted the RCMP to offer our full co-operation to the extent it is needed.”
The league confirmed that “upon learning of the accusations, his BCHL team immediately terminated his employment.” It said it did not immediately respond when asked whether it knew about the allegations when he left Okotoks and was hired in Nanaimo.
Mounties said the Okotoks Oilers reported to police in June 2024 that a former employee had allegedly solicited and compensated players for intimate images and sexual videos. A statement published on the Okotoks website at the time said King was leaving and that he oversaw all off-ice operations while serving as the team’s assistant GM and business operations and as the main play-by-play voice on The Eagle 100.9 FM in Okotoks and on online streaming platforms.
The RCMP said King, 39, was arrested last week at a U.S. border crossing in Ontario and charged with sexual exploitation offences involving three underage junior A hockey players. Police said the three complainants were under 18 at the time of the allegations and were junior A players from Saskatchewan and Alberta.
RCMP said King was working with the State University of New York campus at Oswego in New York state. The university said he joined the school in 2025 as a professor of practice in its communications studies department, and late Monday its student-run television station announced he had been removed as an adviser.
In southeastern Ontario, the Belleville Senators said King had been working with the team for the past two seasons as a public address announcer and that he would not be working with them while the investigation is ongoing. The Senators are the American Hockey League affiliate of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators.
Alberta RCMP Cpl. Gina Slaney said Tuesday that Mounties couldn’t warn the Nanaimo team about the allegations because King wasn’t officially facing charges when he was hired. “We cannot legally or lawfully do that if we don’t have evidence to support charges or if charges haven’t been pursued,” she said.
Court records cited in the report show King was also charged with choking in November 2025 at or near Calgary and charged in February with failing to appear in court and failing to comply with a release order. The RCMP said he is to return later this week to Alberta to face charges of luring, sexual exploitation and making child pornography.
← More stories