Toronto Maple Leafs Suspend Garret Sparks Indefinitely

Toronto Maple Leafs With a Knee-Jerk Reaction to Garret Sparks Incident. The AHL Goaltender is Now Suspended Indefinitely and Canadian Media Has Done Nothing to Show Support for the Elmhurst, Illinois-Born Netminder, Despite Clearly Doing the Right Thing.

Toronto Maple Leafs suspended goaltender Garret Sparks indefinitely as a result of something said in a small private Facebook group recently.

Let me paint a picture for you as I’m sure many of us have come across similar behavior. You’re on social media (maybe twitter or facebook), and someone says something so disturbing or disgusting that you can only shake your head. These keyboard warriors hide in a virtual world with a false sense of security that whatever they do or say hidden behind a computer screen goes without consequences.

Well, Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Garret Sparks found himself in a similar scenario recently. As an administrator for a small private Facebook group for goalies, Sparks came to the aid of a fellow member. This particular person was disabled and was being verbally abused for exactly that. It apparently struck a chord with Garret, as it should for any person with a conscience.

Sparks following response seems to be what ultimately got him in hot water with the organization:

"“Tyler where do you live? I want to go to open hockey with you, drag you out to center ice and beat you into a [expletive] pulp until you can’t run that [expletive] little mouth of yours. God you sound like a 13 year old girl”"

It seems some folks took offense to the violent nature and latter part of his comment, and it didn’t take long for the screen-grab to surface across social media. It’s worth noting that Sparks did apologize shortly after. The female involved actually gave a response explaining the situation. She said she was not offended, was proud of Sparks for sticking up for this individual who had become a target of repeated attacks. She even explained that Garret has been trying to help this young man attain his dream of being a goalie, and is even donating a mask.

There are numerous angles I’d like to touch on here, so please bear with me.

Emotionless Media

Whatever happened to journalistic integrity? Several Canadian media outlets hit on this story over the weekend, but none of them actually wanted to talk about it, or investigate it for that matter. Now, most would probably tell you the details are too sketchy right now to comment, but its pretty clear what happened. Garret was simply doing a public service sticking up for someone who should have never been placed in that position in the first place.

Instead of supporting the Leafs/Marlies netminder. Some sources decided to present screenshots on twitter without any context to the situation, proclaiming it a bad look. Another outlet uses the same twitter post in their article, at least offering context as to what led up to the comment. Sportsnet similarly offers context into the situation but apparently no one had the courage to speak up to give their opinion.

Social media is a cesspool of repellent, cowardice, keyboard warriors with no regard to human life or emotion. The digital world is seemingly lawless and it’s the one place where people can say just about anything they want without concern for consequence. People say things hidden behind a computer screen that they’d never say in a real-life (without causing an ugly reaction).

We need to change that attitude, start making examples of people. Their identities should be exploited and they should be publicly shamed.

Sensitivity to turn of phrase

Now, it’s sad that none of the media outlets showed any support for Garret Sparks. What’s worse is the sensitivity in which seems to have led to the suspension. I’ve got two major problems with this:

1) Why are we punishing someone for an emotional response, that whether you like or not, was in defense of a person who deals with daily struggles that most of us could never imagine. These trolls don’t know the emotional state of the people they’re targeting. What if these nasty comments led to a tragedy of someone in a vulnerable state-of-mind? We should be encouraging more people to speak up, especially louder, more influential voices.

2) It’s 2016 right? We’ve come a long way with things like equality, racism, etc. over the last century. So, why does this turn-of-phrase to refer to someone as “acting like a 13-year-old girl” still so offensive in this day and age? Am I missing something? I’ve never met someone who used the phrase with any malicious intent towards females, nor does it cause any harm whatsoever as a generalized term.

Apparently it’s okay to joke with new father’s about the agony of those teenage years that he’ll have to deal with, or poke fun at the couple with two young daughters about the handful they’ll be during that vital development stage. Yet, it’s offensive to say someone is acting like that? This is a classic overreaction to a phrase that should be a non-issue.

C’mon folks, we need to better focus our efforts to the actual cyber bullies.

We Shouldn’t Punish Influential Voices for Speaking Up

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Ask any writer or person of influence, there’s always a comment or two from time to time on social media which makes maintaining your professionalism extremely difficult. We’ve generally been taught to ignore, block, or mute and in most cases this is the best scenario. But even the best of us struggle to bite our tongues at times. These are typically remarks that take things to a new level and our conscience kicks in. It’s a purely emotional reaction and that’s exactly what Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Garret Sparks experienced.

We shouldn’t be punishing those in the spotlight who actually have a voice. Athletes in particular can be highly influential figures for a younger generation. Wouldn’t we rather set an example that we should stand up and speak out against those who threaten to harm others?

This world needs more people like Garret Sparks. These trolls can get away with anything without concern for consequence, yet we force our loudest voices to walk on egg-shells and then punish them for absurd reasons.

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Final Take

Hockey fans have a less than stellar reputation on social media. In fact, they’re regarded as one of the nastiest groups within the twitter community. Now, of course, it’s just a handful of bad apples that make the majority look bad, but it’s long been an issue. It might seem like a nothing story, but this is a growing problem that continues to drive many away from using these applications altogether. Surely, this can’t be the solution folks.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll be supporting the #FreeSparks hashtag because there’s no place in this world for spewing hatred.