Senators head coach D.J. Smith recalls a junior hockey hazing incident involving Akim Aliu as “unfortunate” and “unacceptable.”
Smith was an assistant coach on the OHL Windsor Spitfires team Aliu played for as a rookie in 2005-06. In what became known as one of the most infamous hazing examples in junior hockey, four Spitfires rookies, including Aliu, were stripped naked and jammed into the tiny bathroom at the back of the bus during a trip home from a pre-season game.
Aliu is front and centre in hockey circles this week after he alleged a racially-charged incident involving current Calgary Flames head coach Bill Peters while Peters was coach of the AHL Rockford Ice Hogs during the 2009-10 season. The incident is being investigated by the Flames and Peters is not going to be behind the bench for their game in Buffalo Wednesday.
Peters has not been made available to comment on the allegations.
As to the earlier fiasco in Windsor, Senators coach Smith said the situation reaffirmed his belief that hockey culture needed to change.
“It was an unfortunate incident with Akim, all the way,” Smith said. “But it’s just not acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable then, it’s not acceptable now.”
Mo Mantha was head coach and GM of the Spitfires at the time.
Smith says he knew he wanted to create a different atmosphere when he became an OHL head coach with the Oshawa Generals in 2012.
“I made sure there were no rookies even doing (cleaning) the bus anymore,” Smith said. “My thought behind it was, if the kids don’t feel comfortable coming to the rink, you’re not going to get anything out of them and your team’s going to have no success.
“I tried to break the cycle there and there would be no rookie anything. So that by the time the kids were 19 years old, and I had Cole Cassels and Hunter Smith and these guys that were in their third year, that they would take care of the young guys and that would break the cycle.
“And I believe that is still going on in Oshawa.”
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According to Smith, the age of yelling at players has passed. Smith said he grew up in that era, and would hear it from his coaches and his own father.
“So I think what I got in my mind when I wanted to coach, I knew I wanted to be motivated different . . . I liked to talk to the players every day.
“I still think you can be hard on guys but you’ve got to make sure their mental well-being is the utmost,” Smith said. “I’ve said it all along, I don’t think you’re going to get anything out of a player unless he feels he’s mentally all in with you.”
The culture has changed for the better, Smith says. Players today are smarter, he says, and recognize they have to take care of their well-being, physically and mentally, to stay in a game that is suddenly flush with riches.
“Very few players I see anymore get motivated by yelling and screaming,” Smith said.
“I look at my own son, who’s 15 years old. When you yell at him to cut the grass — he just doesn’t do it.
“It’s the same with players. You have to show some general interest in their career.”
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SMITH ON BABCOCK/MARNER
Smith was an assistant coach to the recently-fired Mike Babcock, when the then-Toronto Maple Leafs head coach had young Mitch Marner compile a ratings list of the hardest working players on the team. Babcock then shared that list with some of his veteran players. Smith was asked if he had any objections to that incident at the time.
“I didn’t know anything about it, to be honest,” Smith said. “I heard about it later. What I remember of it I just thought, and I’m not a hundred per cent sure, that he was trying to motivate Naz (Nazim Kadri) at the time to work harder in practice. And I really don’t recall the whole situation to be honest.”
