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The ****ing Pre-Season/Training Camp Thread (2019/20)

SIMMONS: Will Matthews' stupidity and entitlement cost him Leafs captaincy?

An apparently drunken Auston Matthews was caught with his pants down in Arizona and, in doing so, probably cost himself the captaincy of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The announcement was expected to come early next week, just before the NHL regular season is to begin.

But how do they do that now?

How do they do that when Matthews is facing a disorderly conduct and disruptive behaviour charge stemming from an incident last May, according to the Scottsdale Police Department?

How do they do that in this changing world of MeToo and anti-harassment, with a hockey team run by the politically correct general manager Kyle Dubas? How do they look the other way?

And how do the Leafs, in the wake of the Matthews news breaking late on Tuesday afternoon, reward idiocy?

They can’t look away when a position that’s all about leadership and maturity — and, even more than that, that’s historically symbolic for a signature franchise — is trampled on by immature hijinks, and a lack of judgment
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torontosun.com

SIMMONS: Will Matthews' stupidity and entitlement cost him Leafs captaincy?

An apparently drunken Auston Matthews was caught with his pants down in Arizona and, in doing so, probably cost himself the captaincy of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
torontosun.com torontosun.com

Impossible to argue with anything Simmons wrote there. Of course, the fact that Matthews actually victimized someone makes his actions even more egregious.
 
No67 said:
The response here to Matthews' actions is disturbing, especially in 2019.
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The year has nothing to do with it, that's the point.

Is there no empathy for the victim?
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Didn't see one person disagree with him being charged.

Matthews intentionally made her feel unsafe
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It would be better if he made a male security guard feel unsafe?


and then did something bordering on sexual harassment.
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No, just no. He walked a distance away and then showed his ass through boxer shorts. There's nothing sexual about that.

To dismiss his behaviour as "nothing" after the victim was shaken enough to file a police report is shameful.
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Nobody did this. What we're complaining about is exactly what you're doing right now, this horseshit outrage machine. If we all felt like Auston had done "nothing" we would be arguing that he shouldn't have been charged. Every single person here accepts that he was drunk and dumb.

I seriously think the captaincy should be given to Tavares or Rielly after this incident.
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Because a hockey player got drunk during the off season and did something mildly stupid?
 
It's stupid for sure. And he should be charged.

But as the legend Elton John once remarked, "It's a little bit funny".
 
Deckie007 said:
It's stupid for sure. And he should be charged.

But as the legend Elton John once remarked, "It's a little bit funny".
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Yeah, that's more or less how I feel about it.

- He got drunk
- He approached a security guard's car (there's no indication that he knew the gender of the guard beforehand)
- He thought it would be funny to try to prank a security guard that is really super likely to have been armed (Arizona is a non permit carry state....everyone over 21 can carry a strap without permit)
- She rightfully was angry (who wants to be scared shitless at 2 am?)
- She challenged the group of them (and brought up the issue of gender)
- Auston walked away and left his friend (more sober?) to deal with her. She indicated that the shit was on camera and would be reported, nobody argued with her or challenged her and left it at that. After having walked away, Auston did more drunk shit and dropped his shorts but not his boxers

Drunk did some dumb shit. This isn't about her gender, or Auston feeling white privilege or entitled over a woman or any of that. He would have done the same dumb shit to a male security guard. If scaring the guard like that and dropping his boxers like that is a crime, so be it, let a judge set a fitting punishment and keep it moving. This culture war outrage bullshit is exhausting.

Looked at through another lens (endemic gun violence in the US), we're kind of fucking lucky he didn't get shot regardless of the gender of the guard.
 
Unsurprising that a shit-disturbing muckraker like Simmons is the one leading the charge to get this story out there and demand that Matthews be hanged, drawn & quartered.

It’s not the best look for Matthews, to be sure. But he didn’t lay his hands on anyone and there was nothing sexual or violent about this. He just got drunk and behaved like an ass to someone (pun somewhat intended). So let’s hold back on the histrionics.

Also agreed that one of the most worrisome aspects of this is that Auston easily could have got his head blown off if he’d run into a security guard with an itchier trigger finger. And there are plenty of those in a red state like Arizona.
 
Deckie007 said:
It's stupid for sure. And he should be charged.

But as the legend Elton John once remarked, "It's a little bit funny".
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I’m okay with this take. Stupid and worth a disorderly conduct charge. Hopefully he’ll figure out that this is Toronto he’s going to be the captain of and avoid any more distractions.
 
BeLeafer said:
I would prefer to know nothing about athletes lives away from the arena where they perform, other than when it's relevant to their athletic performance (e.g., training, diet, struggles to get to where they are, etc.). The reason for this is that athletes are generally meatheads. I often find their personal actions/views distasteful or worse. But it has little to nothing to do with why I like to watch them. I'd rather not know that Connor Brown is a big fan of Doug Ford or that Mitch Marner will pimp himself for just about any brand or that Joe Carter thinks of Jesus as his personal saviour.

Trying to startle a woman alone in a car in the middle of the night is nothing myself or any of my friends would have ever thought would be funny when I was that age. It suggests an attitude towards women that wasn't cool in the 80s and still isn't today. It should not require an explanation. It's nothing surprising or shocking, nor is the proclivity for a recently made multimillionaire to shit on people beneath him. It would be nice if they were better than this but why anyone would expect differently or care about it is a tad perplexing.
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This take also seems fair. Most pro hockey players are pretty douchey.
 
Ah, decided to delete that post -- didn't think anyone would have seen it this early.

Expectations should be pretty low when you consider how all consuming physical training, etc. is to professional athletes. Not a lot of time to spend on refining yourself.
 
Its understandable that the women sitting alone in her car at 2 am would view that incident completely differently than Matthews. But that's because the actions of men who are not Matthews. This is not a me too incident. You cannot blame Matthews for the acts of others, only for what he actually did.

... which was really stupid, and he'll have to face the consequences. He has to learns from it and grow up.
 
For any "normal" person this is standard 21 year old drunk kid shit. No big deal. He should get a talking to by management, pay a fine and move on. He just better not make a habit of these shenanigans.
 
Bobo is speculating the Leafs were blindsided by it yesterday which will likely land him in some hot water with management

The right thing to do would have been to come clean to let them get out in front of it. This would have blown over by now. Unfortunately its going to be the talking point of the week right now with the season starting and a captain being named
 
Artnes said:
Bobo is speculating the Leafs were blindsided by it yesterday which will likely land him in some hot water with management

The right thing to do would have been to come clean to let them get out in front of it. This would have blown over by now. Unfortunately its going to be the talking point of the week right now with the season starting and a captain being named
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Hopefully that's not true, but if it is that'd make me more willing to reconsider giving him the captaincy than the actual incident itself.

Due to the public nature of their jobs, anyone on the team owes it to management to give them a heads-up about any legal trouble they've landed in, let alone a guy who's the face of the franchise, their highest-paid player and the guy they're about to give the captaincy to.

It's not like the organization wouldn't have had his back on this either.
 
yeah, agreed.

apparently this incident happened back in May.

if Matthews hid this from the team, even if it was because he figured she wouldn't press charges for whatever reason, that's not a good look. A more egregious offence that the quasi-mooning or whatever you want to call it.
 
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