Toronto journalist gives the Canadiens flack over French answers during their press conference.

Simmons once again ruggles some feathers.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 2 years ago
Toronto journalist gives the Canadiens flack over French answers during their press conference.

This may have been some well meaning advice or it may have been a deliberate attempt to ruffle some feathers with the Montreal media, but either way there's no question that it provoked quite the angry reaction.

On Sunday the Montreal Canadiens held a large press conference ahead of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final and as you would expect for a team based out of Quebec, Canada many of the questions that were directed at the Habs came in French. There's nothing unusual about that at all, a huge number of Canadiens fans speak French as their first language, but for whatever reason on this particular occasion the way it was handled by the Habs was enough to draw criticism from the Toronto media.

That criticism came courtesy of controversial Toronto columnist Steve Simmons who argued that every question answered in French should have been translated to English for the non French speaking fans tuning in.

"Marc Bergevin is doing his Stanley Cup media day conference right now and non of the French questions or answers are being translated to English," said Simmons. "That’s an error by the NHL and the Canadiens."

To be perfectly honest if this had come from anyone else I would believe it was meant in good faith, but with someone who likes to stir the pot like Simmons you can never be sure. That being said I do think he actually has an argument here given that the majority of the league's audience is English speaking, something that Simmons himself would later argue.

Unfortunately the initial comments from Simmons drowned out the reasoning and the response to his comments was almost universally negative, ranging from fans openly mocking the journalist for his checkered past while others argued that Simmons should advocate for translations to be done both ways.

Even if I don't believe that Simmons had the best intentions when he made the comment I must say once again that I do agree the Canadiens are doing themselves a disservice by not having the questions answered in both languages at all times. Cutting out any portion of your fan base, especially those whose interest in your team could have come as a result of your current run in the playoffs, seems like a losing strategy.

Source: