Racial epithets screamed at opposing players, vicious hits to the head, blatant attempts to injure and coaches threatening officials with violence.

Welcome to minor hockey night in the GTA.

Never-before-published records on critical violations in the Greater Toronto Hockey League reveal troubling undercurrents in youth hockey.

During the league's 2008-09 season, players as young as 13 were assessed a dramatically increasing number of penalties for "discriminatory slurs" from insults about sexual orientation to players calling their opponents offensive racist terms.

League records also reveal startling cases of violence on the ice committed by repeat offenders.

Some teenage players have drawn dozens of major penalties over their minor hockey careers, including repeated offences for spearing, checking to the head, checking from behind, physical abuse of an official and spitting on opponents.

In most cases, they serve short suspensions before returning to the ice.

Experts say anti-social on-ice behaviour in minor hockey is rooted in deeper social problems – from stresses at school or at home to overly aggressive coaches and imitating National Hockey League heroes.

"This is about the way society is going," says John Gardner, president of the GTHL, the largest and most competitive minor hockey organization in the world, with about 500 teams and 8,000 players.

"We don't tolerate it in minor hockey. ... It's still a damn good game. The benefits still outweigh the problems."

Still, those problems are a growing concern among league officials, parents and coaches.

"The level of intensity has turned the arena into an unusual place," says Pat Flatley, a 14-year NHL veteran who played in the GTHL in the early '70s and now coaches the league's Toronto Young Nationals minor peewee AAA team.

"There is gossip, innuendo, backstabbing and a place for taunts."

The Toronto Star examined league data on 6,500 major penalties last season as well as 122 investigations by the GTHL into its most serious incidents, in which officials filed formal reports that led to suspensions.

The investigation found:

There were more than 475 penalties last year for checks to the head in the GTHL – a third more than a year earlier.

Players as young as 11 are suffering concussions serious enough to have lasting health effects and end their hockey careers.

Coaches and players lashing out at officials with verbal and physical abuse, including head-butting and death threats.

A tenfold increase in discriminatory slurs over the past three seasons.

The GTHL's own internal research into on-ice incidents, obtained by the Star, shows many of these problems are getting worse.

Consulting firm Justplay Sport Services Inc., hired by the league to poll officials after each game between 2005 and 2008, found the conduct of players, coaches and spectators had "worsened" and officials' dissatisfaction with the state of the game had increased.

League on-ice officials have assessed about 6,500 major penalties over about 10,000 games during each of the past two seasons.

Some of the most serious penalty categories have risen.

In the 2006-07 season there were only nine penalties called all season for discriminatory slurs. Two years ago there were 47. Last year, 96.

Complaints about racial taunting suddenly took a leap about two years ago, says Scott Oakman, the league's executive director.

In response, the league issued a directive to officials and clubs to be "on notice" about racial comments.

"Socially, this is unacceptable," he says. "With the nature of our demographics, we have an obligation to address it."

League investigation reports into discriminatory slur incidents read, at times, like racist pamphlets.

In a January game of Midget A 16-year-olds, a Toronto Avalanche player lined up for a faceoff in the offensive end when the game official heard him call the opposing goaltender a "dumb f--- Jew," says a league investigation report on the incident.

It was the aggressor's 14th major penalty between 2005 and 2008 including five for disputing officials' calls (one with added verbal abuse of an official), checking to the head, checking from behind and two for inciting.

He received a three-game suspension – the league's standard response to the offence.

In another case, last November, a 14-year-old AAA member of the Mississauga Reps disparaged an opposing player this way: "Shouldn't you be out blowing up buildings or something?"

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The verbal aggressor had 15 major penalties since 2003 and was suspended for three games.

Referee Carl Friday, a 27-year veteran of the GTHL, remembers when he heard a youngster direct the n-word at him in 1997, and it reverberated like an echo.

Only a week earlier, NHL player Chris Simon of the Washington Capitals had called then-Edmonton Oiler Mike Grier a "nigger" during an emotionally charged exchange on the ice. (Simon was suspended for three games and later made an abject apology to Grier.)

While public debate over the Simon-Grier incident was still raging in the media, a 16-year-old hurled the identical epithet at Friday before threatening the black referee's life. As with all such cases, the league handed out the standard three-game minimum suspension.

It's hardly a sufficient deterrent, Friday says.

"I would like to see a five-game suspension," Friday said. "With a three-game suspension, it is like, `So I get a weekend off. Big deal.'"

The Ontario Hockey League imposes an automatic five-game suspension for racial slurs.

Kevin Weekes says the GTHL should go even further.

An NHL goalie for 11 years, the former Toronto Red Wing in the GTHL says the racial harassment he suffered in tournaments as a black youngster was never appropriately penalized.

He recalls parents of opposing players at one tournament yelling the n-word at him as he stood on the ice. In some cases, a chorus would grow as young players joined their parents in the chants.

A three-game suspension is no remedy, says Weekes, who now works as a television commentator.

"It should be 10 or 15 (games)," he says. "We pride ourselves for being a multicultural city but we ... still tolerate this behaviour."

The GTHL's Oakman says the league does issue longer suspensions in some cases.

But increasing the mandatory minimum beyond three games would be unfair, he says.

"There are degrees of discriminatory language. When you increase (the minimum suspension), the lowest common denominator moves up."

The fact that a penalty for discriminatory slurs even exists speaks to an "insidious moral fibre within the social fabric that extends to the sport environment," says Dr. Bill Montelpare, a sports researcher at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. "This behaviour is intolerable in society; the hockey arena is not exempt."

Of the GTHL's approximately 300 officials, fewer than a dozen are visible minorities, say league officials.

Racist language in minor hockey doesn't always come from players on the ice.

A non-Italian linesman claimed a parent called him a "f---ing wop" and a black referee who disallowed a couple of goals said the parent told him to go back to basketball and football.

rcribb@thestar.ca