No Excuses for Andrew Peters’ Coaching Style by @bfloblog

On Saturday night the Buffalo Junior Sabres 15u team was involved in an ugly incident that was essentially a line brawl. In the video below, pay close attention to the coach in the upper-left section of the Sabres team bench. There are three active brawls occurring simultaneously on the ice, and it can be noted that at the 12-second-mark the coach sees one of his players not engaged and motions for him to get involved in a situation to the far right of your view. The next big moment comes when an opponent attempts to engage a player on the Junior Sabres bench at the :15 mark. The coach wades into that conflict, and when he sees another conflict to his right the coach takes two or three steps and hauls off with a left. Looks like a punch to me, but if people want to interpret that as a hard shove I can entertain it.

Let’s be honest, if this takes place at Leisure Rinks with any team other than the Junior Sabres, it’s not much more than a “hey, kid sports amiright” kind of thing. Heck, this could happen with a couple other levels of Junior Sabre teams and the general public would probably not care much. But this team is coached by Andrew Peters, as in the former NHL player and Buffalo Sabre. In addition, Andrew Peters is employed by Pegula Sports and Entertainment as being the host of a daily, two hour, Sabres-run radio program on local AM radio station WGR550. Now this becomes a fairly large local story, and one the national hockey media has picked up on as well.

In response to the incident the Buffalo Sabres issued the following statement:

“We are very disappointed in the series of events that unfolded during the 15U Buffalo Jr. Sabres game on Saturday. We are currently reviewing the situation and in the meantime have suspended Head Coach Andrew Peters indefinitely until the matter is resolved.”

Seems reasonable enough, and Peters was not, in fact, at the Junior Sabres 15u game on Sunday, which they won to advance to the State Championships.

I listened to a fair number of people on social media try to justify why it was perfectly ok for a grown man to have a physical altercation with a 15-year-old. While I probably can’t change any of those folks’ minds, I can tell you that as a coach of youth sports of 26 years, a youth sports parent for 12 years, and someone who serves on multiple Boards of Directors for youth sports organizations it is not acceptable to me.

It seems to me that a coach’s primary responsibility in any situation like that is to de-escalate.  In fact, a coach should never allow a situation to get to that point, although getting to that point probably requires a lot of things to take place. You have to have the opposing coach willing to take a similar view, and you have to have officials who missed some escalating events up to that point and failed to control the game. But in the end, the responsibility of a line brawl falls on the coach.

But I suppose that’s not the first line-brawl to break out at a 15u game, and it certainly won’t be the last. It’s the physical engagement with a young man that has me most disturbed. If you watch, an opposing player attempts to engage the Sabres bench, and as described above Peters is not putting himself between the players, or grabbing his guys and pulling them back, but instead he physically engages a 15-year-old with a blow to his head or chest (the video is inconclusive there).

There is no excuse for this. NONE. You are the adult, you set the standard, and you act to remove your players from the situation. And honestly, if it has to be explained why a 40-year-old former NHL enforcer should not be having a physical confrontation with a child you probably have some issues you need to sort out. But I did have a couple thoughts to add:

In my years of coaching, there is one truism I have found time and time again, and that is youth sports teams take on the personality of their coach. If the coach is a whiner, you tend to get a team full of kids who complain about umpiring or officiating. If the coach is an “old-school” type, the players probably have a nasty streak to them that can get out of hand if not watched (yes, I once saw a youth coach tell a 10-year-old pitcher to throw at a kids head.) And if the coach is a meathead, well, you have a bunch of impressionable young men being told “this is how you play the game” and guess what? That’s how they are going to play the game as well. You are the head coach, and you serve as an example. Your players are looking to you for clues on how to react, and that’s a pretty big clue you just gave them.

In this case, Andrew Peters is not just representing himself, but the BUFFALO Junior Sabres. The team is affiliated with the Buffalo Sabres, the team that represents my town to the world, and I can tell you it is not how I want my team represented.

The question now becomes, what will happen to Peters? A quick look at the Junior Sabres website does show that participants have to sign a Code of Conduct, which looks pretty flimsy and is provided by USA Hockey. It contains seven bullet points:

Fighting will not be tolerated. Fighting will result in an appearance before a disciplinary committee. Not exactly shock-and-awe there.

Thanks to being pointed in the right direction by a few friendly and knowledgeable locals, I found the USA Hockey Safesport Handbook, which discusses physical abuse:

It is the policy of USA Hockey that there shall be no physical abuse of any participant involved in any of its Member Programs by any employee, volunteer, independent contractor or other participant. Physical abuse means physical contact with a participant that intentionally causes or has the potential to cause the participant to sustain bodily harm or personal injury. Physical abuse also includes physical contact with a participant that intentionally creates a threat of immediate bodily harm or personal injury. Physical abuse may also include intentionally hitting or threatening to hit an athlete with objects or sports equipment.

Any USA Hockey member who engages in any act of physical abuse is subject to appropriate disciplinary action including but not limited to suspension, permanent suspension, and/or referral to law enforcement authorities.

What I have been told, after talking to a couple local coaches, is that Peters is subject to discipline from the local chapter of USA Hockey and could face additional discipline from the Junior Sabres organization if they choose to do so.

This is where it gets interesting. The Sabres organization is tied very closely to USA Hockey. And the Buffalo Junior Sabres 15u team, currently ranked fifth overall, is scheduled to play in the State Championships on Saturday with Nationals to follow. Certainly, this is bad timing to have your head coach under scrutiny from its governing body.

I know that in the organizations in which I serve, a coach that made physical contact with a child would receive a one calendar year suspension at a minimum.

As for Peters’ other job, the one where Pegula Sports and Entertainment pays him to host a radio show on WGR, he was on the air at 10:00 Monday morning, and did issue a brief statement before saying he was not able to discuss the matter further. But I suppose that is commentary for another time.