Since Mike Babcock’s firing, it’s been a week of reckoning of sorts for some NHL coaches.
The wild story of Babcock asking Marner for his “list” has been making its rounds, and other current and former NHLers have taken this as an opportunity to speak out on some of the abuse they’ve endured from coaches in the past, and to highlight some of the shady trash they had to put up with as young players skating under egomaniacal bench bosses.
On Monday night, former highly-touted prospect Akim Aliu tweeted the story of an extremely unpleasant experience he had with Flames bench boss Bill Peters, who coached Aliu early in his professional career with the Chicago Blackhawks’ AHL affiliate in Rockford.
Aliu elaborated on the encounter with Peters and provided details of the particular incident he was referring to in an interview with TSN’s Frank Seravalli, and it’s pretty grim stuff.
Peters reportedly doubled down after calling Aliu into his office to talk about the incident, with Aliu claiming that instead of Peters apologizing, he again expressed his displeasure with the dressing room music Aliu was in charge of.
“You know, I’m just sick of this n----- s---. It’s every day. From now on, we need to play different music,” Peters said, according to Aliu.
The other bombshell that Seravalli reports here is that at least two of Aliu’s former teammates who were in the dressing at the time of this alleged incident — Simon Pepin and Peter MacArthur — confirmed Aliu’s claims.
"I think everyone should be held accountable for their actions or words spoken," said Pepin.
Aliu also told Seravalli that Rockford’s team captain at the time, Jake Dowell, confronted Peters in his office about the incident. Dowell wasn’t immediately available for comment.
As of the time of this writing, Peters is still employed by the Flames as the organization and the NHL investigate the situation.
More NHL coverage from Yahoo Sports
