“It’s an awakening,” former player Anson Carter told The Associated Press by phone Friday. The players are speaking out, on social media and in lawsuits and beyond, finding the courage to crack and perhaps end the sport’s century-old engrained culture of silence. Already sidelined are Bill Peters, the coach of the Calgary Flames who resigned in 2019 after it emerged that he made racist remarks to a player while in the minors, and Don Cherry, the once-beloved face and voice of hockey in Canada who was fired for an inappropriate rant about immigrants.Īll of this and more has forced the NHL to confront coaching practices and matters of systemic racism and misbehavior in a sport where coaches have ruled with iron fists and conforming is the expectation.
