A wild brawl broke out in hockey's East Coast League on Saturday after racist comments from a player were directed at Jordan Subban. The ECHL matchup between the Jacksonville Icemen and South Carolina Stingrays turned ugly after Jacksonville defenseman Jacob Panetta was alleged to have made racist remarks to Subban, brother of longtime NHL star and New Jersey Devils defender P.K. Subban. In the aftermath of Saturday's incident, P.K. Subban took to Twitter to call out the ECHL and Panetta in a fiery tweet.
They don’t call the east coast league the jungle because my brother and the other black players are the monkeys! Hey @jacobpanetta you shouldn’t be so quick delete your Twitter or your Instagram account you will probably be able to play again… that’s what history says but things pic.twitter.com/8zOJ9q47pk
— P.K. Subban (@PKSubban1) January 23, 2022
are changing. now not just the hockey world knows your true colours… your hometown of Belleville knows, your family, and friends know you’re a fraud ..with everything that has gone on in the past couple years in the world I’ll say with all due respect to everyone who has an
— P.K. Subban (@PKSubban1) January 23, 2022
opinion, this isn’t a mistake. We all know what’s ok and what’s not. Even your own teammates wanted to see you get your clock cleaned. This happens a lot and it never gets exposed in the lower leagues. One thing that I love about this is Jordan’s teammates standing in there and
— P.K. Subban (@PKSubban1) January 23, 2022
The NHL star blasted the ECHL in a series of tweets before directly calling out Panetta, who Subban alleges deleted all of his social media accounts. Subban called Panetta a fraud and claimed that the actions of the defender were not a mistake.
Jordan Subban also took to Twitter in the aftermath, responding to the Icemen's statement regarding the fight and also calling out Panetta for his racist and intolerable gestures. Subban accused Panetta of making monkey gestures at him, prompting the Stingrays defender to retaliate.
More like @JPanetta12 was too much of a coward to fight me and as soon as I began to turn my back he started making monkey gestures at me so I punched him in the face multiple times and he turtled like the coward he is. There fixed it 👍🏾 https://t.co/JtPqpN9wwE
— Jordan Subban (@jordansubban) January 23, 2022
Subban's fiery response to the Icemen has since gone viral, as has the video of the brawl. In response to the widespread backlash surrounding Panetta's actions, Icemen CEO Andy Kauffman revealed that the team would be releasing “the player involved” effective immediately. Additionally, the ECHL announced its decision to suspend Panetta indefinitely, pending a hearing, as a result of the racist gestures he made on Saturday.
The incident between Subban and Panetta occurred at the start of overtime between the Stingrays and Icemen. The Icemen went on to win the game 1-0.
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