Hockey Media's Biggest Hack Steve Simmons Gets Dragged By Wayne Simmonds For Being A Dipshit Yet Again
We've had more than our share of annoying and arrogant sports reporters in this town over the years. But thank the maker we never had Steve Simmons. If you're not familiar with his work, he's the guy who made up the story about Phil Kessel eating a hot dog "almost every afternoon" right after Toronto traded him and the reason Kessel still sees more weiners than a urologist. With that kind of bullshit smear job after a guy leaves town, he would've been perfect at the Globe (Sports or Metro columnist).
Brian Burke, one of the most-respected old-school guys in the NHL world, had a dream come true at his last presser in Toronto.
Oof. Having another man you know tell you "I probably don't ever have to talk to you ever again" can be a gut-punch regardless of the context. Work acquaintance, friend/relative, the guy you're minding sheep with. So it's gotta be devastating to get eviscerated like that in front of your peers and the entire Toronto region watching on TV. Oh and then the rest of the planet 30 seconds later online.
Perhaps the most hated sports media member in the Great White North, Simmons personifies the bitter, grating, know-it-all sportswriter who stays past his expiration date, becomes even more bitter, and starts to resent the people he's paid to cover. He also has a 'Controverseries' section on his Wikipedia page.
Oddly enough, there's nothing there yet about the time he violated Auston Matthew's privacy and common decency by reporting that the Leafs superstar tested positive for COVID (for reference, no other hockey writers did this to any other players without permission). Matthews gave a him a proper peepee whack for it.
Because the shit-stirrer blocked me ages ago, I can only post the words in his reply Tweet.
For the record, I have no problem with what Auston Matthews said tonight. He's not a journalist. He's a pro athlete. If we weren't in this COVID situation, I'm sure we would have had the conversation face to face long before this.
Total word salad trying say…something that wasn't 'sorry for giving out your personal health info'. But it only reveals that Simmons, unlike many of his Toronto peers, doesn't have AM34's digits.
Then this past Sunday, Simmons's weekly Toronto Sun bird-cage liner incurred the wrath of longtime NHLer Wayne Simmonds and 13-year pro Akim Aliu (as well as many others) when he foolishy compared the career trajectories of the two Black players of similar age, praising the former in an attempt discredit the latter but instead angering and insulting both. And he made sure to awkwardly inject race into it for good measure.
Wayne is one of the most respected and beloved teammates everywhere he's played in the NHL and he took the hack to task.
Akim recorded a powerful video in which he called out Simmons and recounted some of the ugly shit he dealt with.
"How would this guy who played all over the world for 13 years and four years in juniors have any idea what the issues in hockey are?" is quite the take from Simmons. He also mentions how many pro teams Akim played for yet couldn't get even one quote from a coach or "those who coached" him prior to his pro career to back his point.
This isn't the first time Simmons took shots out of nowhere at Akim, who he doesn't know, never met, and never talked to, while using Wayne as his comp. In a column about Wayne's 1000th game in March, Simmons oddly decided to drag Akim into it just to shit on him (column on left).
That's a weird hard-on to have for a total stranger journeyman.
Just when you thought he couldn't possibly be any dumber…
That was his actual retort after being called out: sending an old piece to Wayne saying "must've forgotten this" as if his boilerplate pabulum was some racial immunity idol. The average bear who gets called out in that manner after genuinely pissing many people off would take a minute to self-reflect and think, "hmm, maybe I fucked up here if I pissed these guys off so much". But not Steve Simmons. He's gonna remind you about that time he wrote about you and that you should be grateful.
I honestly don't even know what point Steve Simmons was trying to make at the end. It's such birdbrain logic which is par for his course. But if Wayne Simmonds, somebody he does know, got that infuriated at him and explained exactly why, he ought to know he done fucked up and just own it.
Steve Simmons: still and forever the worst.
Kudos to John Tavares for making sure he mentioned it and showing the love to Wayne.
And Wayne and Akim's fellow member of the Hockey Diversity Alliance Nazem Kadri also chimed in.