Longtime Elk River High School boys hockey coach Tony Sarsland says that the incident preceding his removal from the team involved him "a little more aggressively" confronting his leading scorer about a repeated serious penalty.
Sarsland resigned as coach this week just as the school board was to take up an investigation into what the school district described as "complaints that we have received against Coach Sarsland."
While Sarsland has rejected numerous requests from the Star Tribune for an interview, in Thursday's release of the Let's Play Hockey periodical he details for the first time his side of what happened.
"One of our leading scorers received a checking from behind penalty . . ." in a late-season game, Sarsland said. "I pulled him aside and told him he was done for the night. . . . A few games later, the same player received another checking from behind penalty. It was his second in three games. Again I pulled him over to the side, this time a little more aggressively and told him, 'This can't happen again.' "
Based on Sarsland's account, the second game would have been on Feb. 4 vs. Champlin Park, the final game he coached.
"A few days later at work, I was pulled into the principal's office and told there were allegations against me, saying I was physically abusive to the players. This came as a huge shock to me. I have never shaken a player or hurt them."
The player involved was sophomore Andrew Zerban, according to his father.
Jim Zerban, who didn't make it to the game until after his son's major penalty, recounted that Andrew said "he got a questionable checking-from-behind penalty. He was devastated, because if you get two in the whole season, you were out for the whole season."
