‘Embarrassing’ downtown Toronto traffic forces Utah NHL team to walk to game versus Maple Leafs

Absolutely nobody — aside from Taylor Swift — is safe from gridlock in Toronto.

The NHL’s Utah Hockey Club, in town to play the Maple Leafs on Nov. 24, got to experience all the awfulness Canada’s largest city had to offer when players were forced to walk to Scotiabank Arena for the game because of traffic.

In a video captioned “Gotta get our steps in” posted to the team’s Instagram account, players were shown abandoning the team bus before strolling under the Gardiner Expressway and past the CN Tower and Union Station toward the rink.

“Walking pregame to get to the rink because there’s way too much traffic,” said Utah defenceman Maveric Lamoureux during the team’s stroll. “The bus is not moving at all, so it’s just pretty much the whole team walking the street.”

Lamoureux laughed, adding that they were all about to be late for a team meeting which was supposed to start in one minute.

“So I think that’s a first for everyone. Never saw that before.”

Fans, as you’d expected had some fun with the situation on social media.

“Some gamesmanship, eh? I SEE YOU, CANADA,” wrote one user on X.

“This is the hockey gods punishing you for injuring Ovechkin,” quipped another.

One reply read, “You think that’s the end of it? Wait till you get back to Pearson.” While another user wrote:

“Trust me there’s no conspiracy, Toronto/GTA has some of the worst traffic in the world. Worst transit system for a major city in the world. Just be happier it wasn’t colder out when yall had to walk lol, sry eh!” One reply read.

“You should brought some bikes and you could use all of our empty bike lanes!” Read another.

The latter commenter was absolutely spot on with their analysis as, less than 12 hours after X user “Randy Steffan” predicted Doug Ford would blame the traffic on Toronto’s bike lanes, the Ontario Premier did exactly that.

“When Toronto traffic is so bad that NHL teams have to walk to their games, we’ve got a serious problem,” Ford wrote.

“That’s why it’s so important that we deliver on our plan to fight gridlock by bringing sanity back to bike lane decisions, building highways and public transit, and speeding up construction on the Gardiner,” he added.

X users weren’t going to let Ford off that easy, however, as many were quick to remind the Premier that the annual Santa Clause Parade, which occupied many streets in Toronto’s downtown core on Sunday afternoon, was probably to blame for the traffic situation.

“Folks, I’m cancelling the Santa Clause parade because people need to commute on Sunday,” quipped one user on X.

“You might as well ban The Santa Claus Parade. That’s what caused grid lock on Sunday,” wrote another.

“Doug it was because of the Santa Clause parade, how do you not know what’s going on in the city that you’re the premayor of?” One commenter wrote, while another quipped: “Just ban reindeer from using bike lanes. Easy peasy.”

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow also confirmed that the Santa Claus parade was to blame, joking that “Santa didn’t conspire together with the Leafs.”

Ford, whose war on bike lanes in Ontario cities has been picking up steam over the past few weeks, added more fuel to the fire during an unrelated press conference on Nov. 25.

“It was embarrassing that the Utah Hockey Team had to get out of the bus and start walking to the hockey arena. It is just unacceptable, people are avoiding downtown,” Ford said.

“[Traffic in] Toronto is an absolute nightmare right now, around the world and North America.”

Whatever you think about Ford and how he plans to tackle road congestion in growing Ontario cities, there’s one thing we can all agree: Toronto traffic is absolutely next level.

It also doesn’t discriminate, as everyone from actors to singers to pro-athletes and beyond have been affected in some way or another by the brutal traffic conditions plaguing Toronto’s streets.

Back in July of 2024, former One Direction singer Niall Horan had to walk to his own show because traffic was at a standstill. Race car driver Lochie Hughes experienced something similar later that month en route to the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy in Toronto — ditching his vehicle and renting a bike before finishing the journey to Toronto’s Exhibition Place on foot.

As far as the game goes, Utah’s night started out on the wrong foot and ended much the same, as the team’s commuting misfortunes foreshadowed a 3-2 loss to the Maple Leafs — who leaned on a two-goal showing from Mitch Marner.

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