"What this does is for all the teams, it puts them on notice that this type of behavior, these types of actions will not be tolerated," he said.

Not everyone accepts USA Hockey's decision.

The suspended assistant coach, Chris Reinhardt, told The Buffalo News on Tuesday he had problems with how the March 30 hearing was conducted. He said feels he is being forced to take the blame when he says it was the league and higher-ups who sat on the issue for nearly two months.

"I feel as if they had their mind made up," Reinhardt said of the hearing panel, who he said told him he should have sent the offending player to the locker room after he made the racist taunts.

But Reinhardt, who is in his third year of coaching, said he couldn't send the offending player to the locker room because it would have been a place where he would have been unsupervised. So he said he sat him on the bench for the rest of the game.

"I disciplined my players. I addressed my players. I think I handled it," he said.

Reinhardt, who said he grew up in the Cheektowaga Warriors program, said he plans to appeal his suspension. He said he plans to continue coaching "even after all this."