WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes name Bill Peters head coach

After a swirl of speculation Tuesday night, the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes made the controversial announcement official Wednesday: Bill Peters is their new head coach.

The Hurricanes, coming off a second-place finish in the WHL’s Central Division last season, said goodbye to coach Brent Kisio earlier this summer after he accepted a pro coaching position as an assistant with the AHL’s Henderson Silver Knights. The Hurricanes scheduled a press conference for Wednesday morning, during which they announced the Peters hire, which was reported by Gregg Drinnan earlier this week.

Peters, 57, has not coached in North America since midway through the 2019-20 NHL season, when he resigned from the Flames in the wake of disturbing allegations from a former player of his. Akim Aliu claimed that Peters, his AHL coach in the Chicago Blackhawks system during the 2009-10 season, used racist language toward him while claiming he didn’t like his taste in music.

Aliu’s coming forward was the first step toward him becoming a prominent voice for the fight against racism in the sport. He worked with the NHL to develop a Code of Conduct in late 2019 and founded the Hockey Diversity Alliance along with Evander Kane in 2020. Peters, meanwhile, resurfaced in the KHL with Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg in 2020-21 and was fired as their head coach partway through the 2021-22 season.

According to a report from Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli Tuesday night, Aliu told him that Peters has still not apologized for the alleged racist incident 13 years later. ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski later reported that Peters only attempted to apologize to Aliu last week through a third party, “apparently in anticipation of his job opportunity.”

Aliu released a statement Wednesday sharing his verbatim response to the third-party apology, in which he questioned “why he wants to apologize now” and claimed, “instead of apologizing he did everything in his power to blackball me in the game for over a decade.”

The WHL released a statement Wednesday regarding the hire. It claimed that, “following extensive consultation with Shades of Humanity Consulting, a national diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting agency, WHL Commissioner Ron Robison is satisfied Peters has undertaken the necessary redemptive steps to return to coaching in the WHL.

“After a thorough review, speaking with representatives from Shades of Humanity, and receiving a commitment from Bill to continue on his path of anti-racism, self-growth and redemption, the WHL is satisfied Bill is ready to return to coaching in the WHL,” Robison said in the statement. “The journey towards individual and systemic equity learning should be viewed as an ongoing process. Bill has demonstrated that through this process and the WHL remains committed to systemic change through continued education.”