Fifteen games... for THAT???

Three, at least, today.  The first two courtesy of Deadspin and my anonymous friend.

I'm all for throwing the hammer down on people and all that stuff, but the Ontario Hockey League, one of the if not the premiere junior-hockey leagues in Canada, has suspended two players for fifteen games apiece.

For what, you may ask, did these two players draw a suspension which is about a quarter of their sixty-eight game schedule?

These two players, in a league where the players are aged 15-20, were suspended for 15 games each when they got into a pissing match on the social site Tinder, with the following results:



OK, "Chad" (Heffernan) and "Greg"(Betzold), that was over the line.  The OHL suspended Betzold and Jake Marchment (who admitted to responsibility for the messages on Chad's side of the ledger, I guess) for violations of their sensitivity policy.

OK, then I have two more pieces of advice for the OHL, effective immediately.

1) BAN ALL PLAYERS FROM USING SOCIAL MEDIA.

These are 15-20 year old men.  If this is going to draw a fifteen-game suspension for violations of league inclusiveness and sensitivity, then the Ontario Hockey League needs to ban all their players from using social media.  I would bet real money that the vast majority of the players in your league are, at the least, this insensitive, if not far worse.

2) THE REFEREES NEED TO STEP UP ON-ICE CONDUCT HARDCORE.

Again, if this is a 15-20 game suspension, I can absolutely guarantee you there will be language and conduct far worse than this on the rinks of Ontario this weekend.