There are only 31 head coaching positions, and to fill them, they do not need Peters and this baggage.
Having said that, I am not a fan of the immediate and complete broad brush painting approach. Hockey News is running a series of articles and Graeme Townshend describes encountering and forgiving racist utterances and in fact has a history with Peters
https://thehockeynews.com/news/artic...gave-his-coach
Quote:
That TheHockeyNews.com is publishing his story is neither to indict nor support Peters, but an attempt to identify the complexities of this thorny issue.
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Townshend believes the same about Peters as he does his college coach. In a fateful twist, Townshend worked with Peters in the mid-1990s when he was winding up his playing career. Townshend was playing in the now-defunct International League for the Houston Aeros and was also running hockey schools in Texas. Peters was operating a youth hockey program in San Antonio and hired him in to work with some of the students.
“He brought me in. A black guy,” Townshend said. “He could have picked a hundred different people and he picked the one black person who ran hockey schools. If he was a racist, why would he do that? He could have picked 50 white guys and he picked me.”
Townshend said not everyone who utters a slur is necessarily a racist. Addesa made a bad choice, but Townshend said the coach’s usual conduct was more telling about his makeup. Addesa not only heavily recruited him, Townshend said, he also made him a captain and had his back on other occasions.
“If you were a racist, why would you name a black guy your captain? Does that make any sense?” Townshend said. “If he hates black people so much, why would he put me in a position to lead his hockey team? He slipped up one time, one error, one mistake. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, too. In fact, I’ve made mistakes at school that should have gotten me kicked off the team and that guy, Mike Addesa, he helped me. He could have gotten rid of me so many times and he didn’t. I cut classes and things like that. I should have been kicked off the team for cutting classes. And he could have taken my scholarship away, too. I had seen him do that to other guys who broke team rules. He didn’t do that to me, though. If he wanted to get rid of me and he was a racist, he had three other opportunities to do that and he never did.”
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