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Due to a Traffic Jam Hurricane players walk to the Arena in Toronto

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tarheelhockey said:
These organizations spend every single day of their professional lives dealing with the logistics of events in the most congested cities on the continent. They don’t need to be told simple things like “leave early”.

As noted upthread and elsewhere on the internet, NHL teams in Toronto stay at one of several hotels (Ritz, Fairmont, Marriott, Westin) which are all <15 minutes walking distance from the arena. They do stay close and leave early. In the event that the city is at a standstill, which seems to be increasingly common in Toronto, they will do exactly what you see in that video — go to Plan B, a short walk like teams and performers do routinely in Manhattan.

It seems that, for whatever reason, Toronto has built itself into unusually chaotic traffic issues which are leading to multiple events being impacted — not just NHL games but concerts as well. Blaming that on the visitors is an odd deflection. It’s up to the city to manage its business. Visitors can and do figure out how to work around those issues, but naturally it puts the city in a bad light when these things are necessary on a regular basis.
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It's not a regular basis. It's happened twice this year. Both small market teams. So far, no NBA team has done it yet despite playing in the same stadium.

Toronto is hosting the FIFA World Cup next year, not sure if you've heard about it, but it's a pretty big event. Traffic is worse than normal as a result of the construction and infrastructure upgrades as a result of the expected traffic of the event but I would assume NHL teams have logistics people to be aware of these issues. When players decide it's easier to walk to the arena, I think the failure is on the logistic people and not the city when it's a rare occurance and the other team isn't impacted. The Toronto players are going to the same games without issue. The same with the Raptors players, the visiting NBA players, the numerous concerts held, etc.

Something that happens less than 1% of the time, to blame on the city, seems a pretty big reach to me. Is traffic bad? Yeah. It's also bad in NYC, Chicago, and LA. It happens when you have a city with millions of people.
 
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Divine said:
It's not a regular basis. It's happened twice this year. Both small market teams. So far, no NBA team has done it yet despite playing in the same stadium.

Toronto is hosting the FIFA World Cup next year, not sure if you've heard about it, but it's a pretty big event. Traffic is worse than normal as a result of the construction and infrastructure upgrades as a result of the expected traffic of the event but I would assume NHL teams have logistics people to be aware of these issues. When players decide it's easier to walk to the arena, I think the failure is on the logistic people and not the city when it's a rare occurance and the other team isn't impacted. The Toronto players are going to the same games without issue. The same with the Raptors players, the visiting NBA players, the numerous concerts held, etc.

Something that happens less than 1% of the time, to blame on the city, seems a pretty big reach to me. Is traffic bad? Yeah. It's also bad in NYC, Chicago, and LA. It happens when you have a city with millions of people.
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There are 16 host cities for the world cup, between Mexico , US and Canada, with the US getting the majority of the games.
 
Divine said:
It's not a regular basis. It's happened twice this year. Both small market teams. So far, no NBA team has done it yet despite playing in the same stadium.

Toronto is hosting the FIFA World Cup next year, not sure if you've heard about it, but it's a pretty big event. Traffic is worse than normal as a result of the construction and infrastructure upgrades as a result of the expected traffic of the event but I would assume NHL teams have logistics people to be aware of these issues. When players decide it's easier to walk to the arena, I think the failure is on the logistic people and not the city when it's a rare occurance and the other team isn't impacted. The Toronto players are going to the same games without issue. The same with the Raptors players, the visiting NBA players, the numerous concerts held, etc.

Something that happens less than 1% of the time, to blame on the city, seems a pretty big reach to me. Is traffic bad? Yeah. It's also bad in NYC, Chicago, and LA. It happens when you have a city with millions of people.
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To be fair it is a very popular city. Look how a nothing story of a team crossing the street drives 5 pages of attention.
 
Golden_Jet said:
Thanks tips, I was just clarifying Toronto isn’t the only one, and that the US has the most matches, nothing more
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Was a little confused by your comment. I said Toronto is hosting the event and you commented with a bunch of irrelevant information. I never said Toronto was the only city hosting the World Cup - that never happens in any World Cup for those familiar with the event.

Glad you clarified Toronto is still hosting the event. Thought I might have missed a cancellation with your update.
 
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Divine said:
It's not a regular basis. It's happened twice this year. Both small market teams. So far, no NBA team has done it yet despite playing in the same stadium.

Toronto is hosting the FIFA World Cup next year, not sure if you've heard about it, but it's a pretty big event. Traffic is worse than normal as a result of the construction and infrastructure upgrades as a result of the expected traffic of the event but I would assume NHL teams have logistics people to be aware of these issues. When players decide it's easier to walk to the arena, I think the failure is on the logistic people and not the city when it's a rare occurance and the other team isn't impacted. The Toronto players are going to the same games without issue. The same with the Raptors players, the visiting NBA players, the numerous concerts held, etc.

Something that happens less than 1% of the time, to blame on the city, seems a pretty big reach to me. Is traffic bad? Yeah. It's also bad in NYC, Chicago, and LA. It happens when you have a city with millions of people.
Click to expand...

Again this isn’t just impacting NHL teams.



Trying to make Toronto’s traffic problems about “small market” visitors is provincial in its own way. As you say, these are the same people who routinely deal with traffic in much larger cities than Toronto. There’s a whole litany of reasons why Toronto’s traffic crisis in particular stands out from the crowd, of which World Cup preparations are only one contributing factor, but the bottom line is that both locals and visitors are struggling with it.

For players staying ~3-5 blocks from the arena, it would be idiotic to sit in gridlock for an hour rather than just walk 10 minutes to the arena. I’m sorry that you seem to find this publicity embarrassing to the city, but it’s exactly what celebs do in New York or Chicago when the roads become impassable. Stop blaming the people who take common-sense measures to get around the problem, and spend that energy demanding better of your city.
 
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tarheelhockey said:
Again this isn’t just impacting NHL teams.



Trying to make Toronto’s traffic problems about “small market” visitors is provincial in its own way. As you say, these are the same people who routinely deal with traffic in much larger cities than Toronto. There’s a whole litany of reasons why Toronto’s traffic crisis in particular stands out from the crowd, of which World Cup preparations are only one contributing factor, but the bottom line is that both locals and visitors are struggling with it.

For players staying ~3-5 blocks from the arena, it would be idiotic to sit in gridlock for an hour rather than just walk 10 minutes to the arena. I’m sorry that you seem to find this publicity embarrassing to the city, but it’s exactly what celebs do in New York or Chicago when the roads become impassable. Stop blaming the people who take common-sense measures to get around the problem, and spend that energy demanding better of your city.
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I think some people choose to walk, that's their choice. Not all NHL teams stay in the same hotels either. Arizona (now Utah) was rumored to stay in cheaper hotels. That's the reason I bring up the markets.

thehockeynews.com

Coyotes Reportedly Stayed at ‘Lesser’ Hotels to Save Money

Here is a look at some of the financial struggles Alex Meruelo and the Coyotes dealt with.
thehockeynews.com thehockeynews.com
 
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Tom cruise was at some premier for mission impossible in Toronto

He said he’s been to every major city in the world

Nothing comes close to traffic in toronto
Said it’s an amazing city

But the traffic is the worst by a substantial margin
 
There's a difference between visiting players in big cities CHOOSING to take the subway to the arena - like Dallas did over the weekend playing in New Jersey and Long Island - and a team charter getting bogged down in predictably shitty traffic in Toronto en route to the arena.

Yes, the traffic here is even worse than usual and I still give all the credit to anyone who dares drive around a charter bus through the city. Must take tremendous skill - and patience, especially this time of year.
 
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Divine said:
I think some people choose to walk, that's their choice. Not all NHL teams stay in the same hotels either. Arizona (now Utah) was rumored to stay in cheaper hotels. That's the reason I bring up the markets.

thehockeynews.com

Coyotes Reportedly Stayed at ‘Lesser’ Hotels to Save Money

Here is a look at some of the financial struggles Alex Meruelo and the Coyotes dealt with.
thehockeynews.com thehockeynews.com
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In Utah’s case, there was a Christmas parade which closed the streets around the arena.

In that video, the players mentioned that it was 5:15 around the time they pass under CN Tower, so

a) they were probably staying at the Marriott which was mentioned above as a common visiting team hotel, not some “cheap hotel”

b) clearly they left with plenty of margin to easily make a 7:00 game, the only disruption being a few minutes’ delay to their pregame team meetings

c) the gridlock issue was outside of their control and would have impacted any visiting team. It’s just random chance that it was Utah rather than Vancouver or Boston or LA visiting that night.

Ultimately the issue is simply that Toronto has a traffic issue which prevents predictable ingress to the area surrounding the arena. It’s not that big of a deal, lots of cities have it. For the most part they just own it. You don’t hear New Yorkers or Angelenos acting like they’re unaffected by their cities’ transit issues, or that professional sports teams are just failing to understand the issue.
 
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The Podium said:
Tom Cruise and yourself may want to travel more. Bangkok traffic was 10x worse than anything I’ve ever seen in all my years living just outside Toronto and commuting in daily. I bet that’s not even the worst city for traffic.
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Literally Toronto is ahead of any Asian city in one of the larger studies from 2024 from TomTom and IBM

But go off I guess
 
Everyone that lives or works in the city knows that it's usually faster to walk downtown rather than trying to drive, particularly for short trips. This isn't some big surprise lol.
 
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