Appeals to Hockey P.E.I. suspensions filed by all 5 players at heart of racism incident

CBC News has confirmed that all five minor hockey players from western P.E.I. who received suspensions from Hockey P.E.I. last month are appealing the decision.

The players were suspended in the Mark Connors case. He's the teenage goalie from Halifax who says the P.E.I. players directed repeated racial slurs at him during a game in Charlottetown at a tournament in November. 

A report from Hockey P.E.I.'s discipline and ethics committee chronicles how the five players were seated in the stands at the Simmons Sports Centre watching the Halifax Hawks take on members of a different Island team. 

Connors, who is Black, was in net for the Hawks. 

He told his coach during the game, and a Hockey P.E.I. investigator in the weeks to follow, that the five people repeatedly called out to him using the N-word.

A disciplinary hearing by Hockey P.E.I.'s discipline and ethics committee Feb. 11 agreed with Connors.

The five players were each suspended for 25 games. They acknowledging "chirping" Connors while he was tending goal — but they and their parents insist there is no supporting evidence that anything of a racist nature was said that day. 

One mother who spoke during the virtual hearing disputed Connors' account this way, according to the committee's report: "She noted that no official heard them, no parent heard them, and no witness in the rink heard them," calling the complaint about the slurs "implausible."

The parents also said the distance from the net to the stands in that area of the arena is too great for a goalie to hear much of what spectators say.

The disciplinary committee rejected those arguments.

"The committee found M to be credible… his evidence made sense and fit together with information from sources other than