Hockey team leaves ice after racial slur

A minor hockey coach in Peterborough, Ont., remains suspended after he pulled his team off the ice mid-game because an opponent directed a racial slur at one of his players.

On Nov. 15, one of coach Greg Walsh’s players on the NAPA Auto Parts team, 16-year-old Andrew McCullum, was sent to the penalty box along with a rival from the Austin Trophies.

While they were in the Kinsmen Arena penalty box, the boys heckled one another, and the opposing player called McCullum the N-word.

"I knew as soon as I saw the look on his face," Walsh told CBC Radio's As It Happens.

"I said, 'Did it happen again?' He said, 'yes.' "

The referee sat both players out for the rest of the period, but when the offending player came out to start the third period, Walsh and his team left the ice — something that's against the rules of Hockey Canada, the sport's national governing body.

"As a team we decided, in order to support the morals that we have, that we wouldn't play under those circumstances and we walked off," Walsh said.

"I knew I would be suspended. … I was prepared to accept that responsibility."

Walsh said his squad has played together for five years. Two years ago, the same thing happened to McCullum, one of two black players on the team. Since then, Walsh said, "we've basically just said as a team that we're not going to tolerate this kind of behaviour from anyone."

The other team's coach suspended himself for three games, Walsh said, and the Peterborough Minor Hockey Association suspended the player who used the slur for the same amount of time.

Walsh has been suspended indefinitely, pending a review by the Ontario Minor Hockey Association, and could be barred from coaching for up to a year. Walsh said he doesn’t mind.

"It was the right thing to do, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."