Man Accused Of Selling Painkillers To Boogaard Admits To Misdemeanor Charge

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A former minor league hockey player accused of selling prescription painkillers to an ex-hockey player who died of an accidental overdose has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge.

Jordan Hart entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Thursday. The Huntington, Long Island, resident was arrested in September 2014 after the accidental overdose death of Derek Boogaard of the New York Rangers and Minnesota Wild.

Prosecutors said he sold illegally obtained Percocet pills to the former hockey player before his death in 2011.

There was no mention of Boogaard when Hart admitted obtaining prescription painkillers illegally in late 2010 and early 2011. He said he obtained them to satisfy an addiction that developed after he was prescribed the drugs for a severe shoulder injury that occurred in 2009.

Boogaard has played his last hockey game in December 2010 when he suffered a severe concussion during an on-ice fight.

At the time of his death, Boogaard had been taking a break from a rehab facility in California to visit family in Minneapolis. There, he took the oxycodone he'd bought in New York and died of the overdose. He was 28.

In May 2013, Boogaard's family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the NHL, blaming it for brain damage he suffered as an enforcer and for his addiction to prescription painkillers.

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