One of the most frustrating things about the Toronto Maple Leafs organization is their fierce injury secrecy. The team goes a long way towards hiding what’s ailing the team’s players. It’s very reminiscent of the hermeticism that Lou Lamoriello maintained throughout his career, including his time in Toronto.
But now we get some more insight into why secrecy is so strong in Toronto. Insider Elliotte Friedman, in his November 26 32 Thoughts blog, dropped an interesting tidbit into why the Maple Leafs guard injury information more closely than the government takes care of national security files.
Friedman wrote:
“Once again, there was debate about injury clarity, and I was asked about it on a couple of my regular interview spots. It’s something I’ve been thinking about, especially with the number of gambling scandals in different sports.”
In particular, Friedman was referring to the Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies injuries from earlier this month. The Maple Leafs never really said what was ailing Knies other than it was a lower-body issue. Meanwhile, Matthews’ injury was unrelated to anything else he’d been previously dealing with.
Now, Friedman does go on to make a highly valid point. He states that injury targeting is something real in the NHL. Unlike other sports, hockey lends itself to targeting specific injuries during games.
But it goes beyond that. Injury targeting is par for the course in hockey. It’s as old as the game itself. But gambling, that’s something relatively new.
Maple Leafs, other teams, and NHL want to avoid gambling scandals at all costs
North American pro sports have been rocked by gambling scandals. The most recent was an operation involving several individuals linked to an NBA scheme.
Perhaps the most famous was Pete Rose’s 1989 lifetime ban for betting on games while he was a player-manager for the Cincinnati Reds.
Those situations have fueled the NHL’s paranoia of a gambling scandal that could derail NHL-related betting. So, keeping injury information under wraps is one way the league is looking to protect itself from tampering.
You would have to think that if information on X, Y, or Z players gets out, that could fuel prop bets. It’s much like insider trading in the stock market. Executives can go to jail for funneling information to brokers ahead of major corporate announcements.
That’s the sort of thing the NHL wants to avoid. And it starts with teams cooperating to safeguard player information. Yes, there is also a privacy component that everyone must respect.
But regardless of that privacy component, the NHL is taking every preemptive measure it can to prevent getting caught up in a grotesque gambling incident that could leave the league with much more than a black eye.