A cautionary Tinder tale for athletes

Brady Lang: Tinder-fessional./Brady Lang

Tinder and hockey players don’t mix well

Be careful what you Tinder, athletes.

Two players from the Ontario Hockey League were suspended 15 games by the OHL (Ontario Hockey League) after screen shots surfaced of vulgar and explicit conversations that the athletes were involved with.

Peterborough Petes forward Greg Betzold and Belleville Bulls captain Jake Marchment were handed down the bans earlier this week. The conversations were passed around social media, and the suspensions were an indicator that the OHL will not be standing for that type of behavior within the league.

Nowadays, many people between the ages of 17 and 25 are on and frequently use Tinder. Tinder, a dating app that works in the way that you swipe left or right depending on if you like what you see in the other person is pretty popular, even here in Regina.

After reading what was said, these guys deserve every game they were suspended for. I actively use Tinder, yet these guys took this to a whole new level. The egos of a lot of hockey players were definitely put to light with some of the comments that these players said. It’s pretty sickening that things like this fly around the Internet on a daily basis.

Because they play in a league that has some credibility and ultimately produces NHL starts, the egos of players are inflated to such an extent that they can say things like this to people on a regular basis. I’m not saying this happens a lot, but where there is smoke there is obviously fire. I can see this becoming an issue that escalates and we could be seeing more suspensions laid down by other leagues.

CHL (Canadian Hockey League) players are briefed in the social media field upon entering the league, yet the issue at hand is more then a social media problem. The app lets you speak directly to other users, so the privacy of your conversations are determined by yourself or by the other person in the chat.

Athletes need to be briefed on this as soon as possible. Stuff like this hurts the credibility of not only the OHL, the CHL but also hockey players in general. The players need to use their heads and not say something that’s going to come back to bite them later on in their careers.

These players are being groomed to get into the professional leagues in terms of skill and personality. They need to know their boundaries and stay within them. As the rest of the world is growing with social media, athletes seem lost in the fact in which is right or wrong. It’s a scary fact to realize, but that is the literal and honest truth.

Heading into the future, players need to know what to say, how to deliver it, and when you should just keep your mouth shut. These players are all focused on playing at the highest level possible and in doing so will be role models for the next generation of hockey players.

Let’s keep it clean from now on, and stay classy Tinder’ers!