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Calgary Flames head coach Bill Peters.Azin Ghaffari/Postmedia/File

If the Calgary Flames had fired head coach Bill Peters on Monday afternoon, few would have rushed to his defence. His team with playoff aspirations has just 11 wins on the season, and was recently mired in a losing streak that culminated in a thorough pantsing at the hands of the St. Louis Blues. Coaches of struggling teams are tossed aside, the earth is round, et cetera.

But now that Peters is almost certainly about to be fired, possibly by the time you are reading this, he is bound to have his vocal defenders. The last mash-up of hockey and the culture wars has barely finished, and the next is about to begin.

Akim AliuMorris Lamont/Postmedia/File

Peters seemingly inevitable dismissal comes after Akim Aliu, who played under him a decade ago for the Rockford IceHogs of the American Hockey League, said that he repeatedly used racial slurs while criticizing his choice of music. Aliu, 30, who was born in Nigeria and moved to Toronto as a child, first made the allegations on Twitter on Monday night, while reacting to a story about Mike Babcock, the recently fired coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Peters is a former assistant to Babcock.

On Tuesday, Aliu provided more detail to TSNs Frank Seravalli. Aliu said he was playing hip-hop music in the dressing room, and Peters walked in and said, Hey Akim, Im sick of you playing that n-r st. Aliu told TSN Peters said, Im sick of hearing this ns f other ns in the ass stuff. Then the coach walked out.

Seravalli also spoke with two of Alius former Rockford teammates, who confirmed his account of the alleged events. Aliu told TSN that Peters never apologized, and simply insisted that he needed to play different music. No more of that hip-hoppery, as it were.

Calgary Flames general manager Brad Treliving, speaking to reporters in Buffalo, said the team was investigating the matter and that no decision has been made on Peters future. He also called the alleged incident repulsive. Not a great sign for ones job prospects when your boss is speaking this way. The NHL went with repugnant in its statement on the incident. Not much better.

And so, two weeks after Don Cherry lost his job over offensive comments, there are bound to be some who will insist that Peters, if he loses his, will be a martyr to leftist mobs, and cancel culture and other such nonsense. What about his freedom of speech?, some will cry. It will also be said that if its OK for rappers to use the N-word, then why cant a hockey coach use it, too?

Calgary Flames head coach Bill Peters, foreground, during a game on Nov. 7, 2019.Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

To which I say: Sigh. First, the obvious: there is no context in which it is anything other than wildly inappropriate for a white coach to upbraid a black player over his preference for n-r st. That would be a fireable offence in most workplaces, especially in the case of a leadership position. And free speech rights dont extend to being able to say whatever you want in a professional setting without consequences from your employer. As for why there is a double standard with who gets to use the N-word, the answer is that black artists long ago co-opted the slur for themselves, as a way of taking back a term that was so often used against them. It feels silly to be pointing any of this out, but its worth pre-empting a few of the bad-faith arguments soon to be made about all this.

The thing that should be closely examined in light of the Peters story is the culture that allows coaches to act with impunity around their players, like a bunch of banana-republic dictators on skates. Aliu told TSN that he didnt make a thing out of what happened 10 years ago because he was 20 years old and playing his first professional season. He had taken a stand against hazing in his junior days with the Windsor Spitfires, and felt that had already hurt his career. Players who push back against authoritarian coaches especially young players are not complimented for being assertive, they are criticized for not respecting their leader, or ripped for thinking they are bigger than the team.

Aliu told TSN that his relationship with Peters soured after the incident, and he was demoted to the ECHL and traded following that season. Aliu would play for more than 20 pro teams in seven leagues, but just seven games in the National Hockey League. Peters went from Rockford to Babcocks NHL staff in Detroit, and was the head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes for four seasons before joining the Flames two years ago. Of the two principals in this story, it is evident which one emerged from their interactions unscathed and on an upward career trajectory.

Hockey does a lot of good for a lot of people in this country. It also has, at the elite levels, issues that have long been a problem. The hazing, the coach worship, the racial insensitivity, it has all been exposed before. Akim Aliu seems to have been at the nexus of all of it, for the simple reason that he wasnt like so many of his teammates. He finally spoke up. We should listen to what he is saying.

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Scott Stinson: Bill Peters, racial slurs, and the inevitable next front in hockey's culture wars - Calgary Herald