‘Embarrassing’ midtown Toronto net visitors pressures Utah NHL group to walk to online game versus Maple Leafs

Absolutely nobody– aside from Taylor Swift — is safe from gridlock in Toronto.

The NHL’s Utah Hockey Club, round to play the Maple Leafs onNov 24, reached expertise all of the awfulness Canada’s greatest metropolis wanted to produce when avid gamers had been required to walk to Scotiabank Arena for the online game resulting from net visitors.

In a video clip captioned “Gotta get our steps in” printed to the group’s Instagram account, avid gamers had been revealed deserting the group bus previous to strolling below the Gardiner Expressway and previous the CN Tower and Union Station in direction of the rink.

“Walking pregame to get to the rink because there’s way too much traffic,” mentioned Utah defenceman Maveric Lamoureux in the course of the group’s stroll. “The bus is not moving at all, so it’s just pretty much the whole team walking the street.”

Lamoureux laughed, including that they had been all about to be late for a group assembly which was supposed to begin in a single minute.

“So I think that’s a first for everyone. Never saw that before.”

Fans, as you’d anticipated had some enjoyable with the state of affairs on social media.

“Some gamesmanship, eh? I SEE YOU, CANADA,” wrote one person on X.

“This is the hockey gods punishing you for injuring Ovechkin,” quipped one other.

One reply learn, “You think that’s the end of it? Wait till you get back to Pearson.” While one other person wrote:

“Trust me there’s no conspiracy, Toronto/GTA has some of the worst traffic in the world. Worst transit system for a major city in the world. Just be happier it wasn’t colder out when yall had to walk lol, sry eh!” One reply learn.

“You should brought some bikes and you could use all of our empty bike lanes!” Read one other.

The latter commenter was completely spot on with their evaluation as, lower than 12 hours after X person “Randy Steffan” predicted Doug Ford would blame the visitors on Toronto’s bike lanes, the Ontario Premier did precisely that.

“When Toronto traffic is so bad that NHL teams have to walk to their games, we’ve got a serious problem,” Ford wrote.

“That’s why it’s so important that we deliver on our plan to fight gridlock by bringing sanity back to bike lane decisions, building highways and public transit, and speeding up construction on the Gardiner,” he added.

X customers weren’t going to let Ford off that straightforward, nonetheless, as many had been fast to remind the Premier that the annual Santa Clause Parade, which occupied many streets in Toronto’s downtown core on Sunday afternoon, was most likely responsible for the visitors state of affairs.

“Folks, I’m cancelling the Santa Clause parade because people need to commute on Sunday,” quipped one person on X.

“You might as well ban The Santa Claus Parade. That’s what caused grid lock on Sunday,” wrote one other.

“Doug it was because of the Santa Clause parade, how do you not know what’s going on in the city that you’re the premayor of?” One commenter wrote, whereas one other quipped: “Just ban reindeer from using bike lanes. Easy peasy.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow additionally confirmed that the Santa Claus parade was responsible, joking that “Santa didn’t conspire together with the Leafs.”

Ford, whose struggle on bike lanes in Ontario cities has been selecting up steam over the previous few weeks, added extra gas to the hearth throughout an unrelated press convention on Nov. 25.

“It was embarrassing that the Utah Hockey Team had to get out of the bus and start walking to the hockey arena. It is just unacceptable, people are avoiding downtown,” Ford said.

“[Traffic in] Toronto is an absolute nightmare right now, around the world and North America.”

Whatever you consider Ford and the way he plans to sort out street congestion in rising Ontario cities, there’s one factor we will all agree: Toronto visitors is completely subsequent degree.

It additionally doesn’t discriminate, as everybody from actors to singers to pro-athletes and past have been affected indirectly or one other by the brutal visitors situations plaguing Toronto’s streets.

Back in July of 2024, former One Direction singer Niall Horan needed to stroll to his personal present as a result of visitors was at a standstill. Race automobile driver Lochie Hughes skilled one thing comparable later that month en path to the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy in Toronto — ditching his automobile and renting a bike earlier than ending the journey to Toronto’s Exhibition Place on foot.

As far as the sport goes, Utah’s evening began out on the unsuitable foot and ended a lot the identical, because the group’s commuting misfortunes foreshadowed a 3-2 loss to the Maple Leafs — who leaned on a two-goal exhibiting from Mitch Marner.