What the Toronto Police dubbed “Jerseygate” hit the front pages in both hockey towns Wednesday in advance of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ trip to Ottawa for the rivals’ final game prior to the NHL all-star break.
The front page of the Ottawa Sun featured this gem of a headline:
In the paper’s lead story, Maple Leafs fan Alain Lind, who lives in Ottawa, said he is thinking about tossing his only Leafs sweater if the game becomes a blowout in the Senators’ favour.
“I’m considering throwing it at the Leafs bench actually,” said Lind, who only buys tickets to Canadian Tire Center for the Battle of Ontario. “It’s a buildup of emotions and disappointment. I almost burnt all my Leafs stuff two years ago when they lost against the Bruins in Game 7.”
The Senators told the Sun they are prepared to deal with jersey tossers, as Maple Leafs fans typically have a significant — and vocal — presence at Ottawa road games.
“The Canadian Tire Centre’s policy is that any patron who would throw items onto the ice would be ejected from the CTC,” Brian Morris, the Senators’ senior director of communications, told the Sun.
The Toronto Sun, too, made jersey-chucking its focus Wednesday.
The newspaper interviewed a jersey-throwing fan, Jerry Newton, who had snuck back in the Air Canada Center after being banned.
Newton threw his white Leafs sweater onto the ice at the end of Toronto’s Jan. 7 beatdown by the Washington Capitals. He was dinged with a $65 trespassing fine for his actions and instructed to not enter any Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment properties for at least a year — the same punishment faced by the three men who threw sweaters Monday night.
Newton says he attended the Carolina game and later entered MLSE’s Real Sports bar despite the ban.
“It’s tough to enforce,” Newton, 40, told the Sun. “They didn’t take my picture or anything. They must have some log, but they didn’t search any computer system while I was down there [dealing with the paperwork], I don’t know if they have a very good system for it, because how would they know if I wasn’t banned previously?
“If they kicked out every disgruntled fan from their properties, there would be no one.”
Jerseygate was the talk of Toronto Tuesday, after three sweaters were launched onto the ice during the Maple Leafs’ 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
CBC’s The National produced a segment on the shenanigans:
One fan started an Indiegogo page to raise money for the tossers’ fines (total raised at time of writing: $0), and even the Premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark, fired a chirp over Twitter:
