A former NHL player will spend more than two minutes in the penalty box for crimes he committed off the ice. Robbing banks in Quebec isn’t the first time Patrick Cote, 39, has had an encounter with law enforcement.
Cote will spend 30 months behind bars as he was convicted for bank robberies in Brossard and Saint Constant, Quebec. According to CJAD Radio, he was caught by the police in May when the car he was driving broke down. The police became suspicious because the car had been reported stolen in Ontario and they took Cote in for questioning.
That’s when he admitted to investigators that he’d robbed a CIBC branch in Brossard in May and then a days later he held up a Laurentian Bank in Saint Constant. His rap sheet includes, assault and a 2002 arrest in Malone, N.Y., for being in possession of 30 pounds of marijuana.
He played in the NHL for 105 games with Dallas, Nashville, and Edmonton. He only scored one goal, but the 6-foot-3, 220-pound player was used largely in an enforcer role, earning 242 penalty minutes in Nashville’s inaugural season in 1998-99. He last played in the NHL for Edmonton in 2000-01 before bouncing around numerous minor league teams.