RALEIGH, N.C. _ Nobody ever really liked Bill Peters during his four seasons with the Carolina Hurricanes, which in itself is neither surprising nor notable. Coaches have successfully motivated teams to championships through fear instead of love in all sports. Hockey just happens to have a particularly strong vein of it, bubbling up from the wild, wild west of junior hockey, the best and worst of hockey alike. A coach doesn't have to be popular to be a winner.
But Peters was more than merely a mean-spirited martinet during his four seasons as coach of the Carolina Hurricanes. He has now been exposed, in this moment of new awakening in the hockey world, as a physically abusive bully, and while the regime in charge of the Hurricanes has changed since Peters departed in 2018, there still has to be a reckoning for those who enabled and even encouraged him.
Add another page to Ron Francis' dubious legacy as the Hurricanes' general manager. Francis _ now the general manager of the as-yet-unnamed Seattle expansion team _ never made a player-for-player trade in his four seasons in charge, had a mixed draft record and whiffed on two No. 1 goalies.
And none of that even rises to the level of his kid-gloves handling of Peters, empowering an abusive coach now exposed as an embarrassing disgrace. Peters resigned under pressure from the Calgary Flames on Friday after Akim Aliu, one of his former minor league players, accused him of using a racial slur and the incidents with the Hurricanes came to light.
After Peters' physical abuse of Michal Jordan and another player was brought to Francis by a group of coaches and players, Francis forced Peters to apologize to the team. Whether he told owner Peter Karmanos is a matter of some uncertainty _ Karmanos, who via text message Saturday said he was unavailable to comment, told the Seattle Times on Wednesday he was never told and would have fired Peters "in a nanosecond," while Francis issued a statement on NHL letterhead Saturday that he "briefed ownership" _ but Francis' ensuing actions are not.
Jordan's last season with the Hurricanes was 2015-16. In the summer of 2016, Francis proceeded to give Peters a contract extension, not only retaining a coach who Francis knew had neither the trust nor the respect of his players but offering the tacit approval of his methods.
The same dynamic was in action when Francis refused to overrule Peters before the 2017-18 season, when Peters refused to name the newly returned Justin Williams captain as expected and instead named Jordan Staal and Justin Faulk as co-captains.
This was classic Peters bullying: Rather than empower a strong, veteran voice that could (and would) have challenged him, one Francis specifically signed as a free agent to address the leadership deficit, Peters put two players in impossible positions they did not want, weakening the player leaders and strengthening the coach's own hold over the dressing room.
A year later, with Peters gone, Staal and Faulk were both visibly grateful to have been relieved of that burden and Williams captained the Hurricanes to the end of their playoff drought and all the way to the conference finals.
Peters' motives were obvious. Petty and sinister, but obvious. There's no mystery there. His team would have only one voice: His. Even to its own detriment.
The mystery is why Francis didn't stop him. Why on earth did Francis go along with Peters' sabotage of the dressing room, neutralizing the impact of Francis' own marquee free agent in the process?
That inexplicable decision was the harbinger of doom for both Francis and Peters here, both run off in a matter of months when Tom Dundon bought the team from Karmanos _ for performance rather than any of this, to be sure.
But both landed quickly on their feet, Peters as coach of the Calgary Flames, Francis with the Seattle expansion team. Peters is out of the NHL over this and other abuses, not a moment too soon. Seattle's ownership group now has to ask itself if Francis is the right person to set the moral foundation, from scratch, for that entire franchise.
Clearly he was not here.
