"I didn't sleep much," the New Jersey Devils defenseman said following a 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Prudential Center on Sunday. "I think I got to bed at like maybe 5 a.m. Obviously I had a conversation with my family ... sheer disappointment. It's distasteful. There's no room for it in our game. I'm embarrassed because our game is better than this. What I think about is all the great people and the great things about our game that I love.
"The unfortunate thing isn't just the incident; the unfortunate thing is how many kids deal with this every day and it doesn't come to light. A lot of people talk about me on social media and what I do in my time, but I've done a lot of work in the community. I've done a lot of things to build a following where people want to follow me and see what I do. And in this case, without that following, without that platform, am I standing here right now? Is ESPN talking about it? Is everyone outside of the hockey world talking about it? Probably not, so that's the unfortunate thing. I think about all the other kids and people that deal with this every day and it doesn't get talked about."
The ECHL has indefinitely suspended Jacksonville defenseman Jacob Panetta, pending a hearing for what Jordan Subban, the youngest of three siblings and a defenseman with South Carolina, said was a racist taunt Saturday.
Jacksonville later announced Panetta was being released. He denied it was a racist gesture on Sunday.
The game was in overtime when South Carolina's Andrew Cherniwchan collided with Jacksonville goalie Justin Kapelmaster. Subban said he then tried to engage Panetta in a fight, and Panetta responded by allegedly taunting Subban, who is Black.
"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," Subban tweeted.
The NHL issued this statement Sunday: "Incidents of racism, whether they occur in hockey or anywhere else, are abhorrent. The NHL will continue to make its resources available to the hockey ecosystem to educate and inform, with the goal of making the game welcoming and safe for all players and fans."
P.K. Subban, 32, was asked how his youngest brother was doing. Jordan is 26 years old.
"I think that the biggest thing that I want to say on behalf of my family is that we don't need pity from anyone," P.K. Subban said. "No one felt sorry for us when we went through our experiences through our life, so we don't expect anybody to feel sorry and we don't expect anybody to really understand that isn't Black. If you're not Black, you're not going to understand, and that's OK with us. You can debate on whether it's racism. For us, you know, this is life for us and that's what's sad.
"This is life for people that look like me, who have gone through the game of hockey. And that's part of the history, whether we like it or not, and we're trying to change that. I'm an advocate to change that. But to do that, we've got to bring people together. And hopefully this is another step in doing that.
"You know, for me, I get annoyed by the questions. I'd rather just people focus on how we can change it and make it better so that the next kid that looks like P.K. Subban or Jordan Subban doesn't have to go through this."
