Disgraced referee Tim Peel opens up about hot mic incident that got him fired from the NHL!

Back in March, the National Hockey League announced that referee Tim Peel will no longer work NHL games “now or in the future” after his comments about a Nashville penalty were heard on a hot mic during Tuesday’s  Red Wings - Predators  game. Comments made were caught on a hot mic and it was determined that it was Peel. After Viktor Arvidsson was called for tripping Jon Merrill, Peel was heard on the FOX broadcast saying, “It wasn’t much, but I wanted to get a fuckin’ penalty against Nashville early in the …” before the audio cut out.

While fans commanded the NHL for sticking its grounds, Peel was set to retire and officiate his last game on April 24. He did not miss out on a whole lot though he did not get the goodbye he was expecting. 

On Tuesday, Peel opened up to Daily Face-Off about the incident that got him fired from the NHL and shared his perspective on what took place that night that quickly went viral on social media. This is the breakdown from what he told Daily Face-Off: 

“For people to understand as a referee, normally if you’ve called five or six penalties against one team, I think everybody knows ‘if you can find one against the other team to keep them happy then that’s what we do,” Peel told DFO Rundown hosts Jason Gregor and Frank Seravalli.
“But in this case, there had only been one penalty called in the game and it was against Detroit. When I called that penalty, I think it was Arvidsson that tripped the Detroit player and when I threw my arm up, I was in the neutral zone and I honestly thought Arvidsson tripped him. But as soon as I throw my arm up, I’m like ‘jeez, I didn’t think he pushed him down.’ I didn’t see it the way I thought that I saw it.

“I was working with a veteran referee in Kelly Sutherland, who is one of the best in the NHL, and I think it was more my defence mechanism when I went over to the box. We take a lot of pride in the penalties that we call to make sure we call good NHL penalties and there’s nothing worse than calling a weak penalty against a team and the other team scores on the power-play.

“So I think it was my defence mechanism kicking in, more of an embarrassment thing to a guy that I really respected a lot in Kelly Sutherland and I said ‘yeah it wasn’t much, I wanted to get a penalty — which wasn’t the case at all. I didn’t want to get a penalty against Nashville, and I just made a mistake. I made a tremendous error in judgement by choosing the words that I did.”

Clearly, while it still sounds hard for Peel to admit, he regrets the mistake he made. Several players were shocked to see him get fired, seeing that he was known to be a tough but good referee around the league. But he did get the boot and recalled on the show how it happened when his boss phoned him. 

“So I hear my phone vibrating on the corner and I go pick it up and it’s my boss, Steven… the first thing I thought was ‘did we miss a goal?’ And he said ‘we’ve got a big problem’ and he tells me. I didn’t even remember it until I watched it. I turned to the (other refs) in the dressing room and I went ‘I may get fired tonight.”
And later, Peel had to confront the Predators franchise about what had happened.

“[Predators GM] Mr. [David} Poile had already left the building, so (I was on phone) with him and I explained to him that was not my intent. My intent was not to get Nashville. I said to him ‘I made a terrible mistake, my words came out wrong’,” Peel told Poile. “And John Hynes, who is a tremendous human being and a coach, he came out and he goes ‘Timmy I know you didn’t mean that,’ and I go ‘John I didn’t… you know I was always fair and tried to make it a fair and safe environment for hte players, and a fair game for the players’ and I go ‘I’m so sorry’ and I could tell he felt bad because he could see how upset I was and how terrible I felt.”

Since he left the NHL, Peel has recently gotten back social media, which you can imagine got fans going, but also keeps thinking about the incident. 

That’s one mistake he might regret forever…