Flyers

Veteran NHL Referee Canned After Hot Mic Incident

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 24th, 2021 · 10:18 AM EDT

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Huge story out of the NHL today.

The league fired referee Tim Peel because of comments he made on a hot mic Tuesday night in Nashville, essentially saying that he was looking for a make-up call in the Predators/Red Wings game.

Here’s the league statement:

Referee Tim Peel no longer will be working NHL games now or in the future. https://t.co/mrnDc61W5P pic.twitter.com/tKsg2SwGh8

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) March 24, 2021

What happened here is that Preds forward Viktor Arvidsson was whistled for a tripping penalty in the game’s second period. Peel was then heard on the broadcast saying, quote, “it wasn’t much, but I wanted to get a fucking penalty against Nashville early in the – ” That’s when the audio cut out.

Here’s the clip so you can listen for yourself:

Hot mic alert. Tim Peel will no longer be reffing NHL games… pic.twitter.com/C1R9GubdoS

— Tony Cordasco (@TonyDasco) March 24, 2021

He’s pretty much saying that he was looking for a make-up call. Every ref thinks this. Every fan knows it happens in every sport, though it seems to be especially pervasive in the NHL. Of course, when it’s audible and uttered on a hot mic, it’s an issue of compromising the fairness of the game and opening the door to bias or, even worse, match-fixing.

That’s not to say Peel was thinking any of those latter thoughts, and the fan and media reaction online, from a brief sampling, seems to think this was a somewhat harsh decision. Peel is 53 years old and expected to retire on April 24th, so this is a rough way to go out.

But what else can the NHL really do here? If you go easy on the guy, it gives the impression that you don’t take the integrity of the game seriously. And if you fire Peel, it seems like you’re going too far. Beyond that, you have tens of thousands of fans who think the league has been officiated horribly for years now, with issues of fairness and balance sort of swept under the rug. There’s a thought that the league is complicit in allowing make-up calls to stink up the NHL, and only fired Peel because they had to.