Peters still on staff as NHL, Flames investigate allegations coach used racial slurs

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Calgary Flames general manager Brad Treliving says coach Bill Peters remains on the staff, but wasn’t certain whether he’d be behind the bench for the next game.

The team and the NHL are both investigating an allegation the Peters directed racial slurs at a player 10 years ago when the two were in the minors. Akim Aliu, a Nigerian-born player, says Peters “dropped the N bomb several times” in a dressing room during his rookie year.

Peters has not commented on the allegation. Treliving apologized for not having many definitive answers at practice in Buffalo on Tuesday, a day before the Flames play the Sabres.

“I haven’t had the chance to sit down with Bill or our people internally to talk about this and get to the bottom of it,” Treliving said. “We take these matters very, very seriously.”

Peters was not at the arena while his players were on the ice. The GM says he had stayed at the team’s hotel. Flames associate coach Geoff Ward oversaw practice, which included a brief huddle with the players at centre ice.

Treliving understands the seriousness of the allegations and called them “repugnant” if true, while adding it’s his responsibility to find out exactly what happened.

The NHL called the alleged behaviour “repugnant and unacceptable.” The league added it will have no further comment until it looks into what happened more thoroughly.

Aliu, who is black, tweeted Monday that during his time with the American Hockey League’s Rockford IceHogs, Peters “dropped the N bomb several times towards me in the dressing room in my rookie year because he didn’t like my choice of music.” Aliu said he “rebelled against him,” and Peters responded by asking Chicago Blackhawks executives John McDonough and Stan Bowman to send Aliu to a lower minor league level.

The tweet did not name Peters specifically, but referred to a “protege” of fired Toronto coach Mike Babcock’s who is now in Calgary. Babcock has been a mentor to Peters since Babcock coached him in college.

The Blackhawks issued a statement saying nothing had previously been brought to their attention regarding Peters and Aliu before Monday. The team added it had no affect on any player personnel decisions involving Aliu.

Email and voice messages left with Aliu have not been returned to The Associated Press.

The timing of the allegations come with the Flames slumping. They’re 1-5-2 in their past eight a year after Calgary won a franchise-record 50 games in Peters’ first season as coach.

Peters was hired by Calgary after spending four seasons coaching the Carolina Hurricanes. The 54-year-old made the jump to Rockford after leading the Western Hockey League Spokane Chiefs to a Memorial Cup championship in 2008.

Aliu played under Peters during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons. He was demoted to the Toledo Walleye of the ECHL during the 2009-10 season. Aliu, who was born in Africa but raised in Ukraine and Canada, later played seven NHL games over two seasons with Calgary. The 30-year-old Aliu has had a transient career since being selected by Chicago in the second round of the 2007 draft.

He’s not playing this season after appearing in 14 games with Orlando of the ECHL last year. The Solar Bears were Aliu’s 11th team over a six-year span, which included stops in Russia, Sweden and Slovakia.

Aliu’s tweets were prompted after reports surfaced of how poorly Babcock dealt with his players in Toronto. Forward Mitch Marner confirmed that during his rookie season Babcock asked him to rank Maple Leafs players in order of hardest to least-hardest working. Babcock then shared Marner’s list with numerous players.

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John Wawrow, The Associated Press