Peter Worrell

Peter Worrell ( born August 18, 1977 in Pierrefonds, Quebec ) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey player and current coach, who played between 1997 and 2004 for the Florida Panthers and Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League for the position of left winger. During this time, he was considered one of the most feared enforcers in the league. He is currently the coach of the Hockey Teams Florida Atlantic University.

Career

Peter Worrell played as a teenager three seasons for the Hull Olympiques in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. During this time he was in 1995 and 1997 to win the championship. For this he won the 1997 together with his team to the Memorial Cup. His 464 penalty minutes from the 1995/96 season are the fifth most in the history of the QMJHL.

NHL Entry Draft 1995, he was selected in the seventh round in a total of 166 out of the Florida Panthers, his professional debut was at the beginning of the 1997/98 season for their farm team, the Beast of New Haven of the American Hockey League. Later in the season the winger was ordered to Florida and completed until end of season 19 games for the Panthers, where he achieved but no point was able to collect 153 penalty minutes. His first goal in the National Hockey League, he scored in the following season on 8 February 1999 in a game against the St. Louis Blues.

In the season 1999/2000 he was involved in an incident with defender Scott Niedermayer of the New Jersey Devils. After a collision with Niedermayer in which the defender Worrells got elbow in the face, hit Niedermayer Worrell with his stick on the head, whereupon a scuffle between the two teams came and Worrell made ​​a gesture towards Niedermayer when he would cut his throat. The award-winning All-Star Scott Niedermayer was then closed because of hitting with the bat from the NHL for ten games. Worrell missed the Panthers game because of a headache, dizziness and nausea.

On 18 July 2003, the striker was transferred together with a second-round draft pick for the NHL Entry Draft in 2004 to Denver for the Colorado Avalanche, Florida received in return Éric Messier and Vaclav Nedorost. Due to a knee injury he missed the first 27 games of the Colorado season 2003/04. The season with the Avalanche finished the player with only four points in 49 games but for the first and only time in his career with a positive plus / minus rating.

During the lockout in the 2004/ 05 NHL season he looked for no team, but considered himself retired from the sport. After the end of the lockout, he signed a contract yet with the New York Rangers, who in their farm team, the Hartford Wolf Pack of the AHL, sent him. For the Wolfpack, however, he never played, but was sent another league deeper into the ECHL with the Charlotte Checkers. The Checkers he ran in 37 games and finished his career then.

Awards and achievements

Career Stats

( Key to Career statistics: Sp or GP = Games Played, T or G = goals scored, V or A = achieved assists; Pts or Pts = scored points scorer, SM or PIM = received penalty minutes, / - = Plus / Minus balance sheet; PP = scored majority gates; SH = scored shorthanded goals, GW = achieved victory gates; Play-downs/Relegation 1 )

Racism

Throughout his career of African Canadians faced racist comments, actions or gestures exposed by both fans and players. In his youth flying objects in the box, when he sat in the penalty box, onlookers chanted racist slogans, others held signs with xenophobic texts high.

In a game against the Washington Capitals in 1997 designated opponent Craig Berube him as " monkeys ," Berube subsequently received from the NHL a lock of a game. In a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1998 Darcy Tucker and Sandy McCarthy made ​​according to statements by officials of the Florida Panthers during the game ape-like gestures towards Worrell, as all three players were sitting on their respective penalty box. Tucker should Worrell also have referred to as a " great apes ". The NHL investigated the incident, the players were acquitted due to lack of evidence of all the allegations.

In the same year was accused by a newspaper reporter to have denigrated Worrell Chris Gratton of the Philadelphia Flyers. Peter Worrell later testified that he had heard nothing were left after which all charges against Gratton fall.